joro's Red Sea Reefer 170 Build

[joro]

Your tank looks great!! Thanks for the shout out!

Definitely! I actually bought the bonded pair of mandarins from you all as well, also got another order of pods coming next week!

 

[y4ngel]

Hey there! beautiful tank, I'm getting ready to build something very similar, the only parts I haven't bought are the tank/rock/sand. I have a few questions if you don't mind.

1) where did you buy your reefer from and how much? they never seem to go on sale.

2) is your ATO working well? I've heard some complaints about them.

3) do you think 2 mp10 is necessary for a full sps tank? have not seen many people run 2 on a 170.

4) how do you have your equipment attached to your stand? are they drilled or did you use velcro?

Thank you!

 

[joro]

Hey there! beautiful tank, I'm getting ready to build something very similar, the only parts I haven't bought are the tank/rock/sand. I have a few questions if you don't mind.

1) where did you buy your reefer from and how much? they never seem to go on sale.

2) is your ATO working well? I've heard some complaints about them.

3) do you think 2 mp10 is necessary for a full sps tank? have not seen many people run 2 on a 170.

4) how do you have your equipment attached to your stand? are they drilled or did you use velcro?

Thank you!

Thanks for the compliment and answers below!

1. I ended up purchasing from a local reefer used (he had it up for roughly ~1 year) for around $400 which I thought was a steal. It had already been drained but did need some good cleaning since it had some build up but nothing a little elbow grease couldn't take care of. For what it's worth, I did have a broken pipe mentioned earlier in this thread which did cost some additional time and money over the original purchase amount. I'd guess all said, I'm probably $500 into it with just the tank/stand itself with everything else being net new purchases (e.g. lighting, powerhead, return pump, etc).
2. I haven't had any complaints with effectiveness thus far but do wish it was bigger now that we're going into the colder months (i.e. the heat is running which increases the evaporation). I've considered putting a separate ATO on the side of the stand but haven't done much research to date. FYI, I'm also just doing straight RODI water vs a kalkwasser mix which I do in my bigger tank. I don't fully trust the ATO since it's not controlled by something and have found dosing 2-part manually to be easy enough.
3. Honestly I haven't had much success with SPS in any of my tanks and not sure fully sure why given the flow/lighting being provided. While I would probably say the 2x MP10s are likely overkill for most situations, it is nice to be able to set them up in opposing flows to create more "natural" patterns. I only run them around 30% at peak to give you an idea and I always figured I could use them on another tank if it wasn't needed.
4. Earlier in the thread I described issues with velcroing things to the stand wall (I think it has to do with the wood finish which is a little glossy even on the inside). I ended up drilling in most of my controllers (e.g. Apex and EcoTechs) but was able to get some velco/doublesided stuff to stick if I sanded the area in question with sandpaper. I'd recommend doing the sanding before water if possible just to minimize any chance of contamination.

Good luck!

 

[joro]

Apologies for the lack of updates lately but between holidays and birthdays, it's been busy I just recently added a few pieces from Joe's Knows Reefs and they are absolutely beautiful. Specifically, I added a group of fat head dendros and a small frag of gonis. Both have been looking great and man are the fat head dendros beautiful (they've been opening and feeding actively). I still need to mount them into their respective spaces but I'm very impressed with the quality of their corals, definitely buying more from them in the future.

 

[Reefandthecurious]

Finally finished the cord management / cleanup exercise and installed the Neptune ALD module with 2 detectors (I may add one more down the road). The movement of the EcoTech controllers and Apex display really freed up a ton of space on the inside. Now I have room to add a doser and/or reactor in the future should I need/want to. I also started dosing the BRS 2-Part solution a few days back and everything is spot on now in terms of Calcium / Alkalinity.

Next project is to mount all these frags hopefully tomorrow

Awesome looking tank! Very well thought out rock scape and cable management. I too have a 170 and was looking for ideas. Did u just velcro all your controls the inner side of the door or did u use screws?