My down size to a 120 build

[general0]

Hello all!

Decided I was not happy with the direction my 165 was going and how it just didn't fit in the area it was put in too well so decided to tear it all down and restart with a 120 4x2x2 reef ready Aqueon! Almost all the equipment from my old setup will be used on this one with a few additions and exceptions to the list.

Equipment list so far are:

120g reef ready dual rear overflow
Custom built my stand 38 inches high for equipment access and easy viewing from the couch.
40 breeder DIY two section sump
Bubble Magus NAC77 skimmer
Vertex Zeolite reactor modded for biopellets
BRS Dual Reactor for GFO and Carbon
MP40 left side
WP40 right side
Tunze 6125 rear wall
2 16" IT240 Reefbreeder LED's with 1 D120 in the center
Eheim 1262 (to be replaced with a Speedwave DC-5000)
Neptune's Aquacontroller 3 with breakout box for ATO, Aquasurf to control the WP40, and 2 DC8's (one day I'll upgrade to an APEX, lol)

The last piece to the puzzle is I have a monster Calcium reactor that is rated for 300-500 gallons and wont be using this on the 120. I will most likely sell of trade for a doser setup or a smaller calcium reactor.

All my fish and corals are in a 100 gallon stock tank and I did sell off a few things that I was not going to be re adding into the new setup.






The new stand turned out ok. I wish I had of used a normal smi gloss paint versus the oil based glossy but nothing I can do about it now!













Thanks it for now! Gotta reprogram the controller, make a mount for the ATO floats and finish up my canopy!

 

[mike007]

Thats going to be a nice build keep us posted.

 

[Rimlessreefer]

Love the stand!

 

[TUSI]

Looking really good keep those pictures coming

 

[ifarmer]

looking great.

 

[general0]

Well, I added around 60# of sand and around 120 pounds of rocks today! The leak test went smoothly and I filled up the tank with RO and vinegar to clean out the plumbing and rocks. Letting everything circulate tonight and tomorrow the cycle begins with salt water!


Very pleased with the rock work my wife assisted me with today and once it's cycled and ready to go I will be pulling the three rocks from my biocube to finish off the layout. This will allow me to have three peaks and it wont look so flat on the top. It's really hard to get a good picture without the lights over it but here you go for a starter:


Everything nice and level



Sump works as planned but I will need to figure something out for the darn gurgling noise!



Before water





Wet!! I will add two large rocks to the left and one one the right once the cycle is done:

 

[general0]

My drain was not as silent as I wanted it to be so I made my own version of a gurgle buster! playing with the height and flow right now to see if I need to make any adjustments.

 

[general0]

Quick question for anyone who has done this before....

All my coral, fish, and a few of the live rocks from my old system were moved to a 100g stock tank with a Reef Octopus BH800S skimmer (with Chemi-Pur Elite), a few powerheads, heater, and two ReefBreeder Photon 16's so things are nice and stable for the long haul. Almost all the rocks were acid washed and the few I did keep were because corals were encrusted on them. so at the most there is maybe 15-20% established rock left that I will be moving back into the system. Other than that it's all new sand and new rocks in the tank. I'm only a week into the cycle so nothing is going into the system just yet and I will be adding a couple of rocks from my biocube to seed the tank prior to moving stuff over.

How should I go about re-adding all my coral and fish to this new system? I'm sure the "big bang" process of just putting everything in there is going to cause some major issues/losses so my intentions are not to do that. Would you add the fish first then corals slowly or corals first then fish? I tried to look this info up and couldn't really find anything consistent in relation to what to re-add first and how soon to add everything. I don't want to have this ugly stock tank in my family room for 6 months but if needed for the health of my livestock I guess I will have to!

Thanks!

 

[general0]

Decided to run my skimmer and was pleasantly surprised how well it has worked in the couple of hours since putting it on line!

 

[Singlefin]

Nice. Following along.

 

[revhtree Verified Admin]

Great job!

 

[general0]

Thanks! I"m following your 120 build too! Looking forward to seeing how you are able to cycle your tank so fast!

 

[general0]

Moved everything over to the 120 from their temporary home. Some pieces are not looking the best but I will get them back into good health now that they are in their new home! I was happy to not have lost too much during this move but one piece I'm a little bummed out about is my nice frag of Red Dragon just RTN'ed on me after moving it to the 120?? Nothing else did this so no clue why it did.

Not the best pictures because I haven't moved my two main lights over when these were taken I'll get some better ones this weekend of everything! This is with 1 AI Sol Blue in the rear middle and two Boost Par30 LEDs at each corner for rear fill. My two IT2040 LED's will go in the front half of the tank (trying to avoid any dark spots). With all the lights on the tank it really does look nice and the AI in the rear middle give it a cool 3D effect! I also switched out the Jebao WP40 for another MP40 and removed the Tunze for a MP10 on the rear wall!

The last few things left to do are:

Program the controller
Setup the calcium reactor
Redo the programming of the lights
bring the biopellet reactor online

 

[Zero Nitrates]

Great build! Your tank is looking good.

 

[Flameback Pair]

Too bad about the red dragon. Could it be from an alkalinity swing?

 

[general0]

I'm guessing it was most likely from a spike in Nitrates and Alkalinity (just did some water testing). I added everything so quickly and my treating the stock tank for redbugs one last time with Interceptor Spectrum before moving everything over was not good. The die off on the live rock and the bioload increase from the corals and fish that I added spiked my water parameters so things are not happy right now. I'll do a large water change tomorrow and add some Dr. Tim's One and Only to hopefully help stabilize things a bit.

I'll wait a month or two for the system to stabilize before I add any other sensitive SPS pieces. I had to move everything in 2 days so I'm sure that's why my parameters were thrown off. I just setup my BRS reactor with 1/3 the recommended amount of GFO and some carbon. Another issue is my PH has been all over the place since the move so I'm trying to figure that out too...

 

[Tradewinds]

Looking good. How tall is the stand?

 

[general0]

Thanks Tradewinds, it's 38 inches tall. I wanted to be able to see it over the furniture in our family room and when I view it I wanted to be able to stand upright!

Things are looking better today! I finally have about 95% of the corals placed adding a second coral to the list of losses... my hawkins echinata frag RTN on me. Got rid of a lot of corals that just didn't fit in with the new setup also so now I can take the stock tank down.


Still need to program the controller and setup my ato and calcium reactors and have been manually topping off and dosing which is a serious hassle, lol!!