May The Madness Begin. Again. Planet Aquariums 180 Build!

[strawberry_reef]

At 3:00 AM last Thursday, my wife and I awoke to my tank alarm and the fire alarm going off. My oceanic 150 blew a seam and causing an electrical fire. In my 14 years of being in this hobby, I never thought something like this would happen to me (jokes on me lol).

Luckily, there’s no damage to anything besides, the tank/stand and floor. It seems like we caught it early enough. And honestly, I’m just thankful that the dogs and house are safe.

With that being said, I got an opportunity to snag a Planet Aquariums 180 gallon to restart my journey. This first post is just highlighting my “new” beginnings and what I have going so far.

Much more details to follow!

 

[strawberry_reef]

Once everything was torn down and cleaned up, I moved all the coral and fist from buckets into a large troth down in my basement.

So far after nearly 6 days, I only had one fish jump. Everything else seems to be doing pretty well!

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Best of luck with the new tank!!

 

[strawberry_reef]

Tank arrived in amazing condition. Started working on plumbing and wiring immediately. More pictures of the plumbing to come this weekend…and hopefully the rats nest of wires get organized LOL.

 

[strawberry_reef]

Equipment List is below, for those interested!

Tank - Planet Aquariums 180 Gallon (6x2x2)
Sump - Bashsea 36” smart series
Powerheads - AI Nero 5’s (x2), Icecap Gyre 4K (x1)
Lighting - Maxspect Jump 165 LED (x3) - more lighting to be added soon
Return pump - Octo Varios 6 (x1)
Skimmer - Octo Diablo XS225 (x1)
Heaters - Eheim Jager 300s (x2)
Dosers - Hydros dosing pumps (x2)

-Controller 1 - Hydros Control 4 w/ water level sensor, temp sensor, ph sensor, skimmer cup sensor, hydros ATO w/ emergency sensor on reservoir
-Controller 2 - Hydros Control 2 w/ drain flow sensors (x2), hydros dosing pumps (x2)
-Controller 3 - Hydros Wave Engine LE w/ one Icecap Gyre 4k
-All tied into 3 hydros Wi-Fi strips

EDIT: updated equipment as of 5/1/23.

 

[TnFishwater98]

Tank arrived in amazing condition. Started working on plumbing and wiring immediately. More pictures of the plumbing to come this weekend…and hopefully the rats nest of wires get organized LOL.

Carpet… are you putting anything under or around it?

 

[strawberry_reef]

Carpet… are you putting anything under or around it?

I’m not. Having it off of the back wall by 4” and right wall by 8” has it nearly perfectly level. All of my WC equipment is on the wall behind it in the garage, so messes and spills are pretty rare. Everyone thinks I’m crazy lol, but I’ve got it down pretty good now LOL.

 

[strawberry_reef]

Made some water this weekend, also got a ton of wire management (and plumbing) done! More pics to come of all that.

 

[strawberry_reef]

A couple shots of the sump set up. All the plumbing has been tested and not a single leak (7th tank I’ve done, 1st one to not leak LOL).

Return plumbing is soft because I will be upgrading/changing my pump in the future so I just wanted something functional and easy to remove when the time comes.

The hydros flow meters are SO nice. Also got the hydros dosing pumps calibrated and set up for when I transfer everything back over.

Also blown away at the quality of this Bashsea sump. Top notch and well worth the coin.

 

[strawberry_reef]

Control board is “done” so to speak. The back side is an absolute mess, which I plan to address later (lol, eventually).

Still need to figure out ways to run the main power cords behind the wall as well. It’s a slight challenge since this is an outer wall attached to my garage, it’s basically completely solid.

 

[strawberry_reef]

Another update! Water is filled, took a bunch of LR from my old sump that was in the tub (that didn’t have coral on it) and put it in the sump as well.

All brand new water mixed with Tropic Marin classic, as always.

 

[strawberry_reef]

Have TONS of pictures I need to post of the transfer last week…also acquired a “bucket list” fish today. Lots more to come!

 

[strawberry_reef]

Finally got the skimmer dialed back in this weekend and have been slowly bumping the flow up on my Varios6 to assure my drains can keep up. Happy Sunday y’all!

 

[strawberry_reef]

Got another rock structure built today to fill in the gaps! Still need to do one more.

 

[cmaxwell39]

Looks good. Sorry that the start of this journey for you was the disaster of your last tank failing, but glad you kept at it and can't wait to see what you do with it going forward. Looking forward to pictures of the transfer and a stock list.

 

[strawberry_reef]

Looks good. Sorry that the start of this journey for you was the disaster of your last tank failing, but glad you kept at it and can't wait to see what you do with it going forward. Looking forward to pictures of the transfer and a stock list.

Thank you! Yeah definitely unfortunate reason to upgrade, but it worked out awesome. Keep an eye on the thread - lots to come!

 

[RedoubtReef]

well, that's one way to get a new tank. Did insurance cover it?

 

[strawberry_reef]

well, that's one way to get a new tank. Did insurance cover it?

Unfortunately no, but luckily I had plans to upgrade tanks anyways. And there wasn’t TOO much damage that couldn’t be fixed in a weekend.

 

[jp_75]

How long did you wait for tank to be made? $?

 

[strawberry_reef]

How long did you wait for tank to be made? $?

Tank was already done, a customer backed out so it was merely shipping time that I had to wait on (roughly a week). Apparently the customer got cold feet so it was going to be sitting at my LFS anyways. I’m not sure on the exact price, since I paid cash and didn’t have to worry about shipping or delivery - but it was around $3200 for retail cost.