Waterbox 270 LX upgrade

[Acropora52]

We'll see how diligent I am about updating this but here goes nothing.

Tank: Waterbox 270 LX (72x30x24) with stock stand and sump
Lights: 60" ATI LED/T5 hybrid fixture
Water Motion: 1 MP 60 ES, 3 MP40 QD, Tunze stream 3 x 2, Vectra L2 return x 2
Skimmer: Bubbleking SuperMarin 250
Replenishment: Deltec Automatic Calcium Reactor, Litermeter Auto Water Change, Litermeter kalkwasser topoff fed into an Avast kalkstirrer
Fuge with Chaeto, lit by Tunze ecochic and a Kessil 80.
57 W Aqua UV sterilizer fed off manifold
Neptune controller

 

[Acropora52]

The tank is going to replace a Reef Savvy 100 and a IM 24 that are plumbed together with the 100 being SPS dominant and the IM24 for zoas.

Prior 100 Reef Savvy

IM24

My prior 270 build, in a prior house:

Large Build - Roni's 270 Miracles Tank

I've got a thread going on my local forums but figured I'd put this up. It's still very much a work in progress but slowly progressing. Hardware: Tank 72 x 36 W x 24 T Miracles rimless tank. central overflow; custom stand built by a local club member. Lighting I debated LEDs and LED/T5...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Acropora52]

Rockwork

New circuit wired, ro lines run, light hung

Tank in place and starting to fill

Some corals/fish moved over 9/14

Most corals over, still some fish waiting to come over 10/4
October 2021

November 2021

January 2022

March 2022

 

[Acropora52]

Thought process:

I went back and forth about dimensions, which room to put the tank in, stocking, etc.

I almost pulled the trigger on a Miracles custom tank. Derek at Miracles is a joy to work with and they did a fantastic job on my last custom tank. This time, I didn't really have an easy way to do a sump in the basement and given the room that the system was going in, the limited time I have between work and family responsibilities, I decided not to pull the trigger on a really large tank. With Miracles, I had been looking at a 8 x 3 x 2 foot tank.

I also consider CDA but same issues. They were fantastic to work with and seem to have a fantastic product.

I had been intrigued by the all in one simplicity of the Waterbox systems and the new LX line offered me an opportunity to get a decent sized aquarium with better dimensions then most standard packages. The ability to also not have to source out the sump, having the plumbing ready to go and having an attractive package clinched it. I was originally going with the 320 LX but there was a 10-12 week wait and my wife was a little concerned it would overpower the room (9 ft wall) so after talking to my LFS, pulled the trigger on the 6 ft 270 LX.

Dave @ Nova Tropicals was fantastic in coordinating with Waterbox, setting up movers to get the system off the truck and in the house and then helping with getting things initially installed. For those in the Northern Virginia area, you'd be hard pressed to find better service.

One of the challenges with my prior system was finding space for everything under the tank and my focus on this system was to keep things as simple and organized as possible. I kept my salt reservoir and freshwater reservoir remote in the unfinished basement and ran tubing under and through the joists and then drilled a small hole behind the tank for the tubing to exit. I'll use my trusty Litermeters to do top off as well as automated water changes.

I likely had enough electricity to supply the system but decided to put in a dedicated GFCI and 20 A circuit for the system to be on the safe side.

 

[Acropora52]

Fish

True percula onyx (cquest line)x Picasso . Regularly spawning

Purple tang

Tonimi tang

Yellow tang


Flame Angel

Flame Hawk

Starki Damsel

Gem Tang

Powder Blue Tang

Desjardini Tang

Convict Tang

Imperator Angel

Filefish

tailspot blenny

pair of mandarins

Pair of Blueline Angels

Pair of bluejaw triggers

To be added:
pair of fridmani
geometric hawkfish
Copperband Butterfly
Dispar anthias
Moorish idol

 

[Acropora52]

Coral placeholder

 

[Acropora52]

Slowly moving things over. Little bit of a cycle as I start cycling out the phosphate from the dry rock. Pardon the quality of the pics, just shooting with my phone and a orange filter so colors are a little off. and still light acclimating the ritteri so have a janky screen above it to diffuse the light a little.

 

[Acropora52]

A few top downs while acclimating some new arrivals

something about green slimer that has always spoken to me. I'll always have this in my systems

copps 24K mille...starting to slowly start to hit it's stride after the move

Ritteri which continues to color up. Started off pretty pale but slowly getting adjusted to the light (though still keeps it's foot buried below the shelf). My clowns spend most of their time their, particularly my new picasso, which was a replacement for my onyx female.

Pretty amazing clam and a piece of one of the corals I've been looking for forever, a white with green center pipe organ from @Lazys Coral House. Great vendor!

yellow porites, another "old school" coral that will always have a place in my systems

 

[Acropora52]

Great cluster of small feather dusters that arose from the rock

Hungry holy grail micro

 

[Ky_acc]

Tank looks incredible — I’m very inspired and looking at the lx series myself.

One question, does your apex controller fit in the side cable management cabinet?

 

[Acropora52]

Tank looks incredible — I’m very inspired and looking at the lx series myself.

One question, does your apex controller fit in the side cable management cabinet?

Thanks for the kind words! Definitely a ways to go but I'm happy so far. That is actually my task for this weekend. I have everything in the cabinet but the extra wires and cords don't allow everything to close yet. I would have preferred more space personally

 

[Acropora52]

Carpet is settling in but took a trip over the hammers.

The new male clown hasn't left the ritteri

OG mummy eye

 

[Acropora52]

Couple of side pics since I cleaned the glass and one of the clowns in the morning before the lights are fully on

 

[Ky_acc]

How is the dual return pump situation working out?

how are they plumbed so that one keeps the circulation on flowing to the display if one fails?

tanks coming along really nicely!

 

[Acropora52]

How is the dual return pump situation working out?

how are they plumbed so that one keeps the circulation on flowing to the display if one fails?

tanks coming along really nicely!

Thanks! Slowly coming along. Picking up a few fish this weekend and will be close to finishing stocking.

It's going well. Its still a manual process in the case of pump failure as you have to turn a ball valve or flow goes out the pump that is inactive. However, the thought was this allows easy servicing without shutting down at return and also for my tank sitter to turn a ball valve instead of having to hot swap a backup pump. This came about because I had a pump fail to cycle on after a power outage while out of town. Thankfully unplugging and then restarting worked but i realized that if it hadn't worked, swapping out a pump was too much to ask a tank sitter who wasn't a reef keeper.

I run them at about 55% each so hopefully will have decent pump life.

 

[Maxcmo]

Slowly moving things over. Little bit of a cycle as I start cycling out the phosphate from the dry rock. Pardon the quality of the pics, just shooting with my phone and a orange filter so colors are a little off. and still light acclimating the ritteri so have a janky screen above it to diffuse the light a little.

Looks good I have the Same pink birds nest about the same size it looks pink under white lights with white tips but has barely or no growth and everything else in the tank is growing good. Do you know the exact name of that piece?

I am debating this exact setup or. Red Sea Reef 1000 s still not sure which way I want to go I really like the extra section of sump to have a frag tank under there. Could you post some pictures of your sump and the controller access section? Thanks in advance…

 

[Brett Miller]

We'll see how diligent I am about updating this but here goes nothing.

Tank: Waterbox 270 LX (72x30x24) with stock stand and sump
Lights: 60" ATI LED/T5 hybrid fixture
Water Motion: 1 MP 60, 3 MP40, Tunze wavebox, Vectra L2 return x 2
Skimmer: Bubbleking SuperMarin 250
Replenishment: Deltec Automatic Calcium Reactor, Litermeter Auto Water Change, Litermeter kalkwasser topoff fed into an Avast kalkstirrer
Fuge with Chaeto, lit by tunze ecochic and a kessil 80.
57 W Aqua UV sterilizers fed off manifold
Neptune controller

Hey, love the thread. I purchased the 270 as well! Should be here in the next few weeks. Any suggestions or tips/tricks do you have for a new 270 owner?

 

[Ky_acc]

Thanks! Slowly coming along. Picking up a few fish this weekend and will be close to finishing stocking.

It's going well. Its still a manual process in the case of pump failure as you have to turn a ball valve or flow goes out the pump that is inactive. However, the thought was this allows easy servicing without shutting down at return and also for my tank sitter to turn a ball valve instead of having to hot swap a backup pump. This came about because I had a pump fail to cycle on after a power outage while out of town. Thankfully unplugging and then restarting worked but i realized that if it hadn't worked, swapping out a pump was too much to ask a tank sitter who wasn't a reef keeper.

I run them at about 55% each so hopefully will have decent pump life.

That makes sense, and is a really good idea!

At first I thought you’d done some plumbing black magic to run redundant pumps off one return line which had me intrigued haha.

still a really good idea though, the thought of walking someone through a full pump swap is painful…

 

[Acropora52]

Looks good I have the Same pink birds nest about the same size it looks pink under white lights with white tips but has barely or no growth and everything else in the tank is growing good. Do you know the exact name of that piece?

I am debating this exact setup or. Red Sea Reef 1000 s still not sure which way I want to go I really like the extra section of sump to have a frag tank under there. Could you post some pictures of your sump and the controller access section? Thanks in advance…

Hi, I think it's just the generic pink birds nest (Seriatopora hystrix). It's always been a hardy fast grower for me. I do give it a lot of flow though as I've found that with low flow algae grows between the branches.

Here are some pics under the tank. It's night time so maybe a little harder to see. The controller area is a mess for me. I'm sure if you're someone who only wants to run a couple pumps it's fine but I have too many pumps. It's on my list of things to mess with but my girls managed to convince me to keep my old tank up as well so it'll have to wait until I'm really bored

Hey, love the thread. I purchased the 270 as well! Should be here in the next few weeks. Any suggestions or tips/tricks do you have for a new 270 owner?

Thanks! You'll love the tank. I think my biggest gripe is the lack of customization, which is to be expected. One thing I didn't realize from the pictures is that the section between the top off container and the sump has a sheet of plywood. I had some ideas about a small frag tank in that area draining into the sump but alas It wouldn't have worked either way as my calcium reactor and kalk reactor took up most of that space.

It took a while to silence the system. You have to use the ball valve for rough adjustments and then set the ball valve to just overflow at the emergency to quiet it. It's not the best design imo. Ideally you'd want the emergency to be just that and just a single valve and staggered heights to get a 99 to 1% flow. I also didn't run socks in my system and the noise was a little rough. If you don't use socks, I can show a trick I used to reduce the waterfall noise.

Still overall, beautiful tank, affordably (for a large system) priced and ready to get up and running within a couple hours. Definitely start a build when you get your system in and feel free to ask any questions. I didn't see a lot of LX builds and it's a little different tank then the waterbox tanks that you see. I think you'll really love it. Just not a ton of space. Not sure where I would have put the equipment if I had used the topoff reservoir.

That makes sense, and is a really good idea!

At first I thought you’d done some plumbing black magic to run redundant pumps off one return line which had me intrigued haha.

still a really good idea though, the thought of walking someone through a full pump swap is painful…

I'm a big fan of the keep it simple principle. I've done some intricate plumbing in the past and it's probably just me but it's rarely done as well as simple

 

[Maxcmo]

Thanks for the pics the space is my concern as well I may go custom with a built out cabinet to cover an entire wall but the r lx is so tempting bc of price and system volume will keep following to see how yours progresses and your right not many build threads or videos online yet…