HighChief's 225 In wall basement build

[HighChiefKC]

My new FinBaby
Male Bluethroat Trigger. I’ve wanted one since the first time I saw one and read it was cautiously reef safe. My old 180 I had a Niger Trigger that ate most of my CUC. So far he’s the biggest scaredy-cat in the tank.

 

[Sticks And Stones]

Everything looks great! Congrats on your new bluethroat too!

 

[HighChiefKC]

Made a small stand to hold ReefBot and Trident. Water and waste jugs below.
I have the stuff to start dosing, but I don’t think I have the need yet. Debating if I want to get a Neptune DOS just to have the Trident dose cal and alk for me. Use one of two free versa’s for Mag. Don’t know what I’ll ever use 4th versa for.
Also don’t know where I’m going to put the jugs to dose from!

Tank is in the ugly stage. Brown dust on the sand and rocks and glass.

 

[blstravler]

How’s the tank?

 

[MERKEY]

Made a small stand to hold ReefBot and Trident. Water and waste jugs below.
I have the stuff to start dosing, but I don’t think I have the need yet. Debating if I want to get a Neptune DOS just to have the Trident dose cal and alk for me. Use one of two free versa’s for Mag. Don’t know what I’ll ever use 4th versa for.
Also don’t know where I’m going to put the jugs to dose from!

Tank is in the ugly stage. Brown dust on the sand and rocks and glass.

Great build ,thank you for sharing!

I always wondered how big the Reedbot actually was.....dwarfs the trident hahaha

Beautiful setup!!!

 

[JPHawkins]

Anyone use this exhaust vent? Don’t really know what I’m looking for exactly, but my hvac guy said that thing will definitely move some air. But everything he has is 4”, so I have to get everything in 6”

Get a Panasonic whisper line. They are super quiet. I have a 240cfm. They are an in-line so you can put them anywhere and run the intake and exhaust where ever as well.

 

[HighChiefKC]

How’s the tank?

It’s got a bad case of Velvet right now. I lost almost all my fish. In 15 years in and out of the hobby, I’ve never had a disease problem. I tried quarantine tanks in the past and the fish died before they even made it to display. So this time around I didn’t quarantine at all. Which was working great until my final addition of fish, which was four tangs from a store I hadn’t been to before, but was recommended by a friend. Everything was peachy for a month or so. Then the naso stopped eating and just died mysteriously. Before that a bimac anthia had just disappeared one day. Then slowly each tang stopped eating. Then I started to notice them losing their color and being covered in tons of tiny dots. Then one by one they all started dying. I lost 4 tangs, my fav a blue throat trigger, 3 anthias, 2 chromis, 2 clowns and a royal gramma that I transferred over from a nano that I’ve had almost 3 years. It was heart breaking.

I do lawn care for a living and I have all winter off and I stay at home with the kids and do prepayments and office work. Back in August I had ordered a recline just to set in front of the aquarium and just to sit back and relax and watch the fish all day while listing to ocean sounds on the echo dot. I was so looking forward to it.
Yesterday was my first day off and my tank is completely empty of fish. Well except
For maybe one chromis that I don’t know how.

I took out all the rock and drained 70% of the water out just to catch the remaining fish. I bought a used 55 and stand from a customer, and I have it setup as a qt tank now. In it I have my Melanarus wrasse, Foxface, 1 chromis, and a diamond goby. The pistol shrimp is still in display. Treating with copper currently. They were all Alive yesterday. Haven’t checked on them today.

Lesson learned that I will qt from now on.

 

[HighChiefKC]

Get a Panasonic whisper line. They are super quiet. I have a 240cfm. They are an in-line so you can put them anywhere and run the intake and exhaust where ever as well.

I bought the one I pictured. I can’t even hear it run. I haven’t taken the time to figure out how to program it to run it on and off randomly yet. That’s on my list of projects for the winter.

 

[HighChiefKC]

Great build ,thank you for sharing!

I always wondered how big the Reedbot actually was.....dwarfs the trident hahaha

Beautiful setup!!!

I love the reefbot. Haven’t had a single issue with it. The Trident on the other hand....my fault for not knowing, but I unplugged it for a couple of months to save on reagents since they are such a ripoff and hard to find. Well I didn’t know there was a shutdown program that had to be ran and it got clogged up. I had to send it back to them and they sent me a refurbished one. I also thought I could just trust whatever the trident told me the results were. But they said they had to be randomly confirmed with a Hanna tester. So I should have probably just bought them and saved some money.
I have the dos but haven’t set it up yet. Winter project

 

[HighChiefKC]

As for the tank itself, I was going thru the red cyno phase. Hoping it doesn’t turn to GHA while I don’t have any maintenance fish in it to keep it under control. That’s all I need to happen lol

 

[HighChiefKC]

New year update.
Proud moment, after learning the mistake of not quarantining, 3/4ths of the fish died from velvet before I figured out what was happening. Saved the rest by setting up a QT tank.
proud moment was going on vacation for over a week and the tank being 100% fully automated. Top off, WC, and feeding.
Been super busy and still haven’t hooked up the DOS. Plan to do it next week.
So the tank currently only has 4 remaining fish. Two chromis, the Melanarus, and FoxFace.
Waiting till I get back from another trip in February before I start back up with fish.
Bought some corals yesterday, got a beautiful Sunburst anemone. Will be the 3rd different anemone I’ve had in 15 years. I’ve never had any trouble with any over the years. This one was absolutely beautiful at the store. First day I tank it attached in the back to where I can’t see it! Lol
Got a couple frags of a zoa, ricordia, and a chalice.

 

[1ocean]

Minor update. I think I have the majority of my plumbing needed. Got a new 40w UV, and a Vectra M2 to go with it. Still waiting on my 2 105g water storage tanks. I think I have enough rock, they are cooking in trash cans. Just ordered a versa 4 pack with base for AWC and dosing.
Waiting for 3 bulkheads from BRS and when they get here I can start plumbing!
Here is a pic of where I’m at. I put a flat shelf across the bottom of the stand. I have all this room now there and don’t know what I could put there!

love how the build is coming. I just started one myself a 300 gallon with two return pumps, 2 sumps tied together( a dedicated bio one and a dedicated chem one) and 1 refugium in the middle of both sumps that will overflow into both sumps after the protein skimmer chambers. . I will also be doing what you thought of, a pump to run my uv and reactors and then dump back into the dosing area which then feeds my external Ecohtech Vecta L2's. I also like the idea of two sumps because when I have to clean out a chamber of one sump it won't upset the bio load too much on the whole system.
here is my link..https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/300-gallon-oasis-build-in-az.785830/

 

[1ocean]

no it’s a brightwell

good choice on brightwell. They have new blocks out that totally flat and you can cut them to size to meet your water height in the sump and then the left over piece I break up and use in my rubble chamber.

 

[HighChiefKC]

good choice on brightwell. They have new blocks out that totally flat and you can cut them to size to meet your water height in the sump and then the left over piece I break up and use in my rubble chamber.

I went to clean out my sump a couple weeks ago. I’ve had bad luck with chaeto so I completely took it all out. It had turned my fuge chamber almost completely green. And with having the light up above, I was getting algae all over my skimmer. So cleaned it all out. And shut the light off for now.
when I went to pick up the brightwell brick, I forgot how brittle and frail it would be. I just barely picked it up and it all started to fall apart, so I just left it alone. Lol
I’ll check out that build thread when I get a chance!!

 

[1ocean]

I went to clean out my sump a couple weeks ago. I’ve had bad luck with chaeto so I completely took it all out. It had turned my fuge chamber almost completely green. And with having the light up above, I was getting algae all over my skimmer. So cleaned it all out. And shut the light off for now.
when I went to pick up the brightwell brick, I forgot how brittle and frail it would be. I just barely picked it up and it all started to fall apart, so I just left it alone. Lol
I’ll check out that build thread when I get a chance!!

you need to block the light to the refugium so that it does not leak light into other parts of the sump. That is why I did a separate refugium. You could add a separate one to your sump, then you can control the light issue and also makes cleaning it out easy. Just take the chaeto out and you can totally clean the refugium and then put chaeto back...

 

[ethridge78]

Any new updates?

 

[HighChiefKC]

Any new updates?

Not really. Got a yellow tang and yellow eye Kole tang and a yellow coris wrasse through QT. All have been in main display for a couple of weeks and getting along swimmingly.
Battle GHA right now. About once a week I have to take a toothbrush and scrub down the rock in tank. My reefbot says I have minimal phosphate. I’m ordering a Hanna phosphate checker tomorrow and some GFO just in case. I struggled with GHA in my nano cube I had, but I didn’t have any filtration for it.
I will say I’m very happy with my build in that I’ve gone on two vacations this winter and everything has ran great while I’ve been gone!

 

[HighChiefKC]

Trying my luck on growing phyto and pods using the Poseidon Reef Systems kit. I’ve never ordered any product in my life that came with such great instructions. It was like a tiny binder of color instructions. Was impressed.

I got my Hanna phosphate test kit and it matched my Reef Bot results of 0.03. So don’t know why I’m struggling with GHA so bad. I ordered some GFO but don’t know if I even need to run it.

after watching a BRS video on UV, I ordered a Neptune flow kit. Going to install that this weekend so that I know exactly what my flow rate is coming out of the UV.

 

[Skynyrd Fish]

Man what a ride. Tank looks great. Ilike the coast to coast overflow. Sorry about the velvet. back in the day we could just add fish and feed well. Those days are gone. I also killed some of my fish two years ago when I added some disbar anthias. According to my LFS he had them in copper for 3 weeks. More like three days. I knew better, but trusted him as I’ve known him for 12 years.

 

[1ocean]

I went to clean out my sump a couple weeks ago. I’ve had bad luck with chaeto so I completely took it all out. It had turned my fuge chamber almost completely green. And with having the light up above, I was getting algae all over my skimmer. So cleaned it all out. And shut the light off for now.
when I went to pick up the brightwell brick, I forgot how brittle and frail it would be. I just barely picked it up and it all started to fall apart, so I just left it alone. Lol
I’ll check out that build thread when I get a chance!!

are you running GFO reactor? I been hearing and reading that GFO reactors can release iron into the water and Chaeto do not do well in this situation.
I had a huge ball of chaeto in my current 140 refugium and when I increased the amount of GFO in my reactor alot of it turned to mush,,,, I have taken off the GFO reactor and now using it for carbon.
I am going to go with as much natural process as possible on my new 300.