Skep's 225 gallon build

[Skep18]

 

[Viner87]

Ace seeing this come together... this is gonna be a great build [emoji1303]

 

[MAREEF]

Wondering if you are going to be encasing the entire tank? Is why you went with a little heavier duty on the mounting system? Just wondering why this setup rather than a more minimalist setup? Not saying I don't like it, just wondering thought process. Excited to see what comes next for you! I like the aqua scape.

 

[Skep18]

Wondering if you are going to be encasing the entire tank? Is why you went with a little heavier duty on the mounting system? Just wondering why this setup rather than a more minimalist setup? Not saying I don't like it, just wondering thought process. Excited to see what comes next for you! I like the aqua scape.

Yea, I'm going encase it to match my kitchen cabinets is the goal. The doors and some details will be a bit different but hopefully it'll flow with the rest of the cabinetry.

Good eye!

Took a photo for reference:

 

[MAREEF]

That makes more sense. That will look nice!

 

[Skep18]

Such much busy.

Got an Apex and the ATK along with some other random goodies. Getting everything wired up temporarily to get the tank running. Super impressed with both the Apex as well as Neptune's AMAZING customer service.

very temporary panel.

Also, did a little "reverse" on the heights of the stand pipes in my Bean Animal overflows. It might sacrifice some crazy scenario where both primary and secondary pipes clog but by raising the secondary pipe as high as I can, it minimizes the water level drop over the weir teeth and keeps things quieter. Very much recommend. I can get photos/details for anyone if they want.

It's hard to get a good angle but the emergency sits higher than the secondary but lower than the secondary air bleed hole. I know I can air hose that hole lower but at the moment, I'm not worried about it. That and it'll hit the lid. I'm maximizing secondary pipe height to maximum quiet. I figure I can add some leak detection circuits in a breakout box to kill my return pump in the case of an overflow where two of three pipes are completely clogged.

Oh, and I added my two additional 3/4" return nozzles back to my return manifold now that I know I have return flow rates that seem reasonable with the pump. lol. Also, my little center hose straw breaks back siphon without making splashing sounds so that's a plus. But with the bean animal dialed in now, its SO quiet. Awesome.

 

[Skep18]

Been getting sloppy at snapping photos. No worries though as its been mostly electrical equipment installation. I'll grab a photo but kinda completed the temporary control panel. Also bought a DOS and DDR from a member on here. Just getting everything to work right on the Apex. Its not horribly complicated but I will say its not as easy or straight forward as I lead myself to believe. But Neptune support has been AMAZING. SO fast in responding. Super awesome to work with.

 

[Skep18]

Late photos are better than no photos I guess.

Please note, this is all temporary installation to get things running. After the tank is up and stable and I feel good about things, this will all be cleaned up.

I also swapped out the wall plug for a GFCI until I can run a dedicated circuit to the tank. To complement the GFCI and hopeful minimize effects of induced voltage on my sensor equipment I've added a grounding probe as well. While discovering how temperamental this Apex conductivity probe is I measured 3V roughly in the sump. This took it down to a negligible number.

 

[Skep18]

Not much to update lately as most of the major hardware build was done. I've got some fish through QT and in the tank. Tangs went in today.

Bunch of fine tuning. Put the gyres vertically blasting across the back wall. I had them horizontally but the surface agitation made it hard to tune the overflows to be quiet. The gyre surge made the overflow water level vary pretty dramatically.

Got an order in to @AlgaeBarn for some pods and a Kessil H160. Their chaeto is out of stock but as soon as that gets in I'll grab some. I've been contacting them for a few weeks now about their products. I've been super impressed. They're embracing clean, pest free products is inspiring. I'll still QT their chaeto but I feel better knowing the source is very high quality. QT will be more of a "trust but verify" process. I'll also get invertebrates from them when my tank is ready for a CUC.

The tank went through a brief brown film algae period for like a few days. Never got too bad and one day it was pretty much just gone over night. I expect it to come back with these tangs though. Compared to cardinals and firefish, these tangs are super messy. Lol.

 

[Skard]

Nice setup! Really like the rockwork, how do you like the gyres running vertical? The LED's do a good job of lighting up that tank.

 

[Skep18]

Nice setup! Really like the rockwork, how do you like the gyres running vertical? The LED's do a good job of lighting up that tank.

Thanks!

I'm surprised I actually like them vertically a lot more than I did horizontally. I ran them horizontally for at least a month. Vertically it might leave some dead spots in the middle but it flows so much more water, at least visually. There's space on all sides of my rock including the back and it really makes that gyre movement. Vertically it seemed the flow wanted to break up before going the 6ft across the top. To make sure it didn't I had to aim it high which disturbed the surface a lot. I think that lost some flow energy too. Also coming down on the rock work wasn't as smooth as circling the glass walls either. I am going to get some power heads though to aim towards the middle before SPS go in. Although the middle opening does get some flow coming off the back wall. I also tried them vertically mounted in the front. Big eye sore though ...

Very happy with the @Reef Breeders Photon V2+ 32" lights. There's a little disco ball effect but not bad. I might get some T5 fixtures to smooth it out and supplement. We'll see.

 

[Skep18]

Little update.

@AlgaeBarn pods came in. Let me start off with they are a top notch vendor. They're great to work with and are very easy to reach with questions. I knew 1 jar of 5280 pods wouldn't be a substantial seeding of the tank enough to notice anything anytime soon. I wish I listened to myself and cultivated the jar but I didn't have phyto yet and wasn't sure it was necessary.

I ended up tossing to pods in after temperature acclimation. The next day I went to my LFS and got some Algagen PhycoCure to dose my tank with until my next Algae Barn order with Chaeto and Phyto comes in tomorrow.
Anyways, dosed the phyto.

I'm expecting my Kessil H160 to come in today from my Algae Barn order, made with the pods. I will confess, my pods arrived with a receipt saying the H160 was included. There was no H160. I discovered this after a long night at work, getting home at 9pm. I thought the light got left out by mistake and kinda freaked. Well... Algae Barn promptly responded to me saying they don't directly ship hardware or something. They gave me a second tracking number for the light.

So with Chaeto coming in tomorrow, I've started a QT tank for it. I'll probably go 21 days in QT just to be safe. I suspect it'll be for nothing but better safe than sorry. Filled with DT water for the nutrients. Will install the H160 today.

 

[Skep18]

Also, we went ahead and ordered a bunch of coral from @budman (I think this is his user name) on his site https://www.budmanscorals.com/ and wow! These are great coral at a great price! They were likewise great to deal with. I think I got some pretty nice coral considering these will be my first and so far, so good. Shipping was fast. And like other interactions of mine, I prefer getting advice from the suppliers and this guy gave great direction. Big, chunky specimens. Very clean. Polyps were extending on some while I was acclimating them in solo cups (to keep organized who was who). And to add to it all I got a freebie coral as well as a couple upgrades where he sent frags bigger than I ordered!

Anyways, they're on our coral QT now. I have a Seneye coming in Friday to dial in PAR but they look great. Two powerheads and a HOB for flow.

 

[Skep18]

Well as of this morning I think it's pretty certain I've lost one frag. Tissue falling off the skeleton pretty quickly. This frag wasn't encrusted though so maybe it's a fresh cut that didn't ship well. I assume this is RTN.

None of my parameters seem alarming to me and other frags still look good. One frag I can't tell if it's just how it looks or not but it's kinda white and fuzzy around top and base. I'll keep an eye on it though. We'll see.

Other than that, wow are acropora just stunning. It's impossible to capture in photos how they look in lightly blue light when the polyps are extended. Super cool.

 

[Skep18]

Kinda an abandoned thread here but I've added some more SPS and some more equipment since last update. All 12 of my initial 13 frags above are doing great in the main display. My little 20gal QT I don't think was stable enough for some of the SPS frags. Some were OK but others, not so much. They were starting to look worse, showing some receding tissue thickness, whiting at the base, etc. However after putting them in the DT, they bounced back pretty well. I'm seeing some bleaching/losing color at the moment but am just gonna ride it out. I'm chalking it up to still adjusting only being 2-3 weeks in their new DT environment.

I also had a bacterial bloom which I documented in this thread. Latest update explains my UV sterilizer purchase and install. It was pretty gnarly:

[REMOVED QUOTES FOR FULL SIZED PHOTOS]

Well I hooked up the UV. Definitely makes a very noticeable difference rather quickly.

Approximately 1:30pm when I finished plumbing it in:

Roughly 3hr later at 4:30 running it at around 250gph:

To get this in I had to finally commit and build the accessory manifold off my return plumbing:

Put in a gate valve between the ball valve and the sterilizer so I can turn the feed on/off without effecting the flow rate with the ball valve. I figured placing it before the UV would reduce the water pressure in the unit thus being inherently less likely to leak (not that I thought it would). Also, I've not thought about it much, but it seems the less line you have restricted pressure in, the less total energy loss you'll have in the system. In theory this just makes things easier on the pump, i.e. run less amps per unit flow:

Of course the Pentair 40W UV Sterilizer on a quick little stand made of oak, the same material the final cabinetry will be made of. Just some rough tube plumbing directly into the tank as to not recycle the UV-filtered water back into the sump:

And a little FTS of the setup:

 

[Skep18]

Little DIY fixture for my LED and T5 hybrid. Mid progress.

 

[Skep18]

 

[Skep18]

Well my first batch of SPS have been hit or miss. Lost one right off, my guess is bad health or fresh cut. Lost a second tenuis a week or so ago finally after a longer STN. The rest are either brown/bleached but surviving our doing pretty well. Great thing is Walt Disney is doing great.

Second batch from Jason Fox are OK. The two I really wanted are doing well. I learned on this batch the importance of light acclimation. Two were high and slowly bleaching. Moved them to a rack on the sand bed and they're regaining color and encrusting.

This batch is doing awesome. Graduating on a frag rack that started at the sand bed. I'd say 90% are visibly encrusting.

I added T5 lights and dosed NO3 and PO4 and with light acclimation, my SPS success went from iffy to seemingly great.

I'm consuming a constant amount of alkalinity and finally my calcium and magnesium started to drop. All good signs.

Sending out an ICP just for curiosity. I started to wonder about my salt before I saw positive changes.

I'm cultivating nano phyto and tiger pods, slowly adding amounts to the tank. That's going well.

Overall things are finally looking better.

 

[sikorskys]

Why do you people start a tank with SPS corals? Is that confidence, excess of money or lack of experience?

 

[Skep18]

Why do you people start a tank with SPS corals? Is that confidence, excess of money or lack of experience?

Haha, probably a good question. My answer is I have no interest in anything else besides some zoas. That and I just refuse to accept there is a magical SPS fairy that comes at my tank's 18 month anniversary. Its gotta be doable in a new tank and figuring that out is the appeal. I think the existence and documentation of the BRS160 tank shows publicly the notion that new tanks with dry rock can't grow SPS is a little out dated.

I was getting a little concerned I might be losing some $$$ on lost frags via the learning experience. But honestly, I'm finding myself pleasantly surprised. Most, maybe 90%, are looking like they'll be fine, even in my very young system. I do reserve the right to be wrong in the future though, lol.

I would feel worse about buying some torches or something just to get rid of them later. And, in my opinion, the time lost waiting to "grow" into SPS isn't worth the money to try and avoid the learning curve just diving right in.