Coral in the Capitol

[ccurnick]

been a long time since I have updated this.... recently moved my tank to a new part of my house and managed to get it *mostly* back together! Lots of projects I did that I will document soon!

 

[WirelessMike]

Love the SCA 90. Been eyeballing that for my next build.

 

[ccurnick]

A few fun neon photos:

 

[ccurnick]

I recently moved my tank to a new corner of my living room and it was quite a project, but everything survived with no casualties aside from creating a few new frags! I also changed my stand doors into removable panels which was a major improvement.


Draining the tank down:

Used a 100g stock tank, which since I live in a city I had to special order. The people at Ace Hardware were very concerned with what I was doing with it ;Woot

Tank in new spot:

Livestock back in the tank, and starting to remove the AWC container, dosing pumps, and other stuff from the cabinet next to the tank, and redoing all of the electrical stuff in the cabinet above the tank. The electrical cabinet is kind of overflowing with stuff at the moment, but trying to find a replacement has been tough as Ikea hasn't had them in stock for months now.

Holy rats nest batman! (The tank didnt run like this, dont worry)

Took over part of my media console for my dosing pumps/reservoirs/supplements.

New view of my tank from my couch (I think my dog likes the new spot)

 

[Adamantium]

Gorgeous. Love the acro colonies.

Looks live you've got some serious water movement in there!

 

[ccurnick]

Gorgeous. Love the acro colonies.

Looks live you've got some serious water movement in there!

Thank you! I definitely do have a lot of flow. I have two MP40's running at 85-90% reef crest mode on the back walls in addition to my return.

 

[ccurnick]

Ordered this bad boy and he arrives today! Will be installing it this weekend as well as redoing some of my plumbing.

This sump gives me a few more inches in each direction, and will actually fit all of my equipment well, as well as give me space for a frag rack in my sump. I am really excited for it!

 

[Gaspipe]

love the updates, thank you!

 

[ccurnick]

Phase 1 of the sump reconstruction is done. Still have some things to figure out where I am going to put, like ATO tank and skim locker, as they don’t fit like I thought they would under the cabinet around the sump.

Empty cabinet & I re-applied a water proof

Test fitting it all

and it’s live! So much more space for my equipment and was able to set up a frag area so I no longer have to have racks in my display.

 

[sam.veilleux30]

Congrats on the new sump!
Never saw your thread...
Gonna start from the beginning tonight

 

[ccurnick]

Congrats on the new sump!
Never saw your thread...
Gonna start from the beginning tonight

I was really good about documenting stuff, and then I stopped for a while once it was up and running and then picked it back up recently.

 

[ccurnick]

Did a mini photo session of some of my favorite colonies and fish.

 

[ccurnick]

Next up in my saga of tank projects is redoing my electronics cabinet/controller board with a larger besta cabinet from ikea since they re back in stock.

here’s how it currently looks sitting above my tank:

And since my tank move and removal of the extra cabinet next to my tank, it’s been a bit cramped:

New cabinet is twice as tall/deep:

I created a template of the false wall I will be putting in as well as cutout for all of the parts to decide how to fit everything:

I will be getting the wood from Home Depot today and hopefully get working on it. I also got an exhaust fan to help with heat from the power supplies.

 

[ccurnick]

Cabinet is finished! Ended up being more of a project than expected but overall it went well.

The board:

Inside the cabinet I used dowels to hold the false wall:

And added an exhaust fan:

What the final inside looks likes:

And hanging above my tank:

 

[ccurnick]

Welp.... as soon as I wrote the idea of replumbing my tank... I couldn’t sit still.







I am much happier with the results and added a manifold which was huge and enabled me to get rid of the mj1200 hogging up room.









Next up is to build a better frag rack when the legs for this rack come in and I get rid of the anemones in the box.

 

[ccurnick]

Been selling a bunch of frags lately, so I decided to treat myself to the new Innovative Marine Helio heater system: https://reefbuilders.com/2020/11/12/ptc-smart-heater-system-from-innovative-marine/

This thing is awesome! Was about due to refresh my heaters anyways, and as you can tell I like the fancy gadgets that go along with reefing.

I recently switched to an inkbird plugged into my apex for backup, with 2 finnex titanium heaters that were about 2 years old or so. I hate the inkbird, as it casued a constant 1 degree temp swing. Previously I just had the heaters plugged into my apex for control, which worked great and kept the temperature super stable, but I was worried about wearing out my energy bar from the constant cycling. Reviews from this new system are rock solid and I am excited to see how it works.


Comes in a fancy new apple-esq packaging:




The heating elements on this thing are super small!



Unfortunately like all heaters/controllers, the cords are really small, which unfortunately for me means that it has to remain in my tank cabinet instead of with all my other electronics... Hopefully they make extension cables in the future.

 

[ccurnick]

Some photos of some colonies I took for a sales post for some frags on another site but I thought everyone here might enjoy them as well.

I believe this one is a Strawberry Shortcake, but honestly I am unsure of the proper name and where it came from, so if anyone knows, please let me know it would be much appreciated.

 

[Dj City]

Great build thread.

I thought I was already following you but I guess I wasn't.
I've looked at this thread several times since I started my build and I can't believe I never commented before.

Anyway,
Great work and progress!

 

[ccurnick]

Great build thread.

I thought I was already following you but I guess I wasn't.
If looked at this thread several times since I started my build and I can't believe I never commented before.

Anyway,
Great work and progress!

Thank you & thanks for following along!

After I got everything up and running smoothly, I sort of stopped updating this thread but recently have started back up documenting stuff a bit more. I got some recent additions and will be updating this thread with some photos soon.

 

[Dj City]

Cool.
You are in my part of the world (DMV).

Keep up the good work and now that I know I'm following (officially), I can keep up on your progress.