My Shallow Seapora 80g Rimless mostly DIY build

PapaElf · Apr 26, 2020

Well, not really a build thread because it's already done. I thought I would catch up with some pictures of my system and some of the tips that I picked up on this forum from others that I put to use.

The tank is a Seapora 80 gallon rimless tank. Dimensions are 48in x 24in x 16in deep. I was looking for a tank with some length for the fish to swim but with a shallower depth to ease up on the lighting requirements some. I also like the lower reach over depth for maintenance. It is pretty easy to get to the bottom of the tank.

Went bare bottom with a 1/4 inch sheet of HDPE siliconed to the bottom. Bought a full 4'x8' sheet and cut it to size using a straight cutting router bit guided by a straight edge. I also used some of the remaining sheet as a back splash for the tank by screwing a piece to the wall behind the tank to keep salt splash off the drywall.

The tank is set up as a peninsula. It's against a wall that backs up to our utility/storage room so it's now a utility/fish room with the sump and a lot of the plumbing and controls behind the wall in another room. In theory the sump would have fit in the stand, but I didn't want to spend all my time crawling around on the floor. It's a lot easier to access in the other room.

Looking back at my notes the dry rock first got wet in some bins at the end of June 2019 and the tank and sump were up and running the end of August 2019. It's the end of April 2020 now so the tank has been up for about 8 months now. First corals went in at the end of December and are growing well. Tank will be mixed reef with zoas, LPS, and SPS.

Current inhabitants:
Foxface
Yellow Eye Cole Tang
Pair of clowns
Green Chromis
Tailspot Blenny
Cleaner Shimp
8 Trochus Snails
~60 Dwarf Ceriths
1 emerald crab
~10 Florida Ceriths

Target Tank Parameters:
Temperature 79F (dual 250W heaters in the sump with Ranco temperature controllers)
Salinity 1.026 (Milwaukee Digital Refractometer) Reef Crystals salt
Ph 8.2 (Red Sea)
Alkalinity 9.0 (Red Sea Pro)
Nitrate 5 (Red Sea)
Phosphate 0.03 (Hanna Ultra Low Range)
Calcium 440 (Red Sea Pro)
Magnesium 1400 (Red Sea Pro)
Potassium 400 (Red Sea Pro)

I'm going to try and break this up with short posts on the different parts of the system (lights, stand, plumbing, sump, etc) coming up over the next week or so.

PapaElf · Apr 26, 2020

DIY stand.

The stand is the the typical DIY stand framed with 2x6 and 2x4. I found some DIY stand instructions on this site and adapted them for my size. The outside paneling looks great for a $20 per sheet laminate and the top and bottom trim pieces are some cheap vinyl laminate as well. The exterior material all came pre-finished so no staining or painting required. This is just in our rec. room so no premium materials but it looks great. Done start to finish in a day.

The tank sits on some 1 inch Styrofoam, so the top trim piece was adjusted to cover the foam sheet and the bottom 1/4 inch of the tank.

One side of the stand is removable for access to the plumbing. The bottom trim was spaced out to provide a slot for the door to slide into to hold the bottom. For the top I found some door closure magnets in the cabinet hardware area that have a magnet and a metal plate. I used four of these for the top of the panel and they hold it in place just fine.

JumboShrimp · Apr 26, 2020

Very, very nice, you should be proud of yourself. I love shallow tanks, by the way. Thanks for sharing the photos…

PapaElf · Apr 26, 2020

Lights

Light is a 6 bulb T5 Amazon special AgroBrite. For a little more you can get this dark finish rather than the agricultural white finish. Looks real nice. 4 ft six bulb unit for $187 shipped. I figure as the ballast go out I can replace them with ATI HO ballasts and I will still be money ahead. I re-wired the ballasts and added a cord so I have 2 bulbs on one circuit and 4 bulbs on a separate circuit to I can have "morning" and "afternoon" lighting. I think the one downside to these budget lights is there is definitely a lot of light spillover as you can see from the pictures.

I'm currently only using 4 of the 6 bulbs with 3 ATI blue plus and 1 ATI Actinic. The Actinic and a Blue are on for 10 hours and the two other blues come on for 7 hours. For a light controller (and for everything else) I have several Kasa WiFi power strips. They have a phone app to control all your switches and allow you to do time scheduling. I think I got them on a Black Friday deal for $50 a piece.

I think of the whole system I am most proud of my DIY cantilevered light hanger. The wall on the back side of the tank is unfinished, so I was able to anchor the mount on the other side of the wall. The light support goes through the drywall, through my HDPE backsplash, and extends out 4 feet to support the light. Looks really clean. I added a little catch on the end so it couldn't slide off the end and some tiny drawer knobs to keeps the support cables from sliding. The lights came with some hanging cables, but I bought some bulk cable to get the height and look that I wanted.

PapaElf · Apr 26, 2020

Aquascaping

For the aquascaping I wanted room for the fish to swim and I wanted a lot of surface area for future corals. This lead me to the peninsula design. For the aquascaping I ran the rock up the middle, and there is room to the front wall, to the back wall, and two arches so the fish have room to "swim laps" if they desire. The large block towards the back is fairly open inside, and my Kole tang spends the night inside.

The various rocks and arches are held together using Moldamer moldable plastic pellets. You put the pellets in some water, heat them up in the microwave, then use them to "glue" the rocks together. When the plastic cools it turns to a hard plastic that stays molded around the irregular features of the rocks to hold them firmly together. Both of my arches are two rocks held together with the plastic and they are very strong. The arches aren't fastened to the support rocks, they lock and hold in with gravity so I can disassemble the system into about 8 individual rocks if needed.

Another reef2reef tip I got was to mount the rock on frag disks. This spaces everything off the bottom of the tank by about 3/8 of an inch. This combined with the bare bottom and some low mounted powerheads flushes most of the debris off of the bottom of the tank. A couple of the frag disks are visible in the pictures. I have some separate "island" pieces that I will put in the tank when it is more filled out with coral that will make these disappear.

JumboShrimp · Apr 26, 2020

Not trying to be a Debbie-Downer, but I just searched R2R for “Moldamer” and yours is the only post to come up. After all your hard work I suppose you know for sure that the stuff is not toxic to fish?

PapaElf · Apr 27, 2020

Struggling to find the reference that sent me in this direction. It is just a low melting temperature plastic. There is no chemical reaction involved. It just melts and then re-solidifies. I believe this is the material.