Is anyone interested in seeing Reef builds anymore?

[Stussi613]

I have my build progress well documented, but I haven't posted it on OVAS because nobody seems interested in builds anymore. 

Show of hands, who wants to see some new builds on here?

I'll give you a small sneak peak to get you interested...

[Dxpert]

I'm interested. I should do the same thing for my build.

Cheers,
-Mike

[gerryo]

I'm interested.  This is the first tim that I will be doing a FOWLER and would be interested in other's builds.

gerryo

[FocusFin]

The build is my favorite part of the hobby.

[Philnashbass]

Go for it...I'm interested.

[Mike L]

I'm not even a salty and I'm interested Stuart.
Regards Mike

[Jeff1192]

Absolutely, love watching other tanks coming together.

Jeff

[guck]

It's aquarium build, therefore it's interesting.

[Stussi613]

Okay, here is chapter 1.


First off, if you don't like narratives and lots of pictures then I don't think this post is going to be for you.  If you stick in until the end I would love to hear your thoughts, your feedback, advice and criticisms.  I tried to make this the best tank I've ever seen...but I'm relatively new to saltwater (only 1 year with a few small tanks) and if you think I could have done it better than I did, I sincerely want to know about it. 

This build took me nearly 9 months to complete to this point and this first post is a synopsis of all that work. 

It took me that long partly because I don't move very fast, and partly because I nearly scrapped the whole project a great many times as I was going through it.  I can't tell you how many times I wished I had just sold the tank and bought a 90G Starfire tank and been done with it in a few weeks.  But I'm glad I stuck with it because when my vision was finally solidified a few weeks ago it was better than I could have imagined.

The story of this tank starts nearly 5 years ago.  At the time I had a 60g short tank with cichlids in it.  I went to buy some valisineria plants from a person in my local fish club and she had this amazing planted tank with discus in it.  My wife and I were enthralled with the tank, and the stand and everything about it.  We told her if she was ever going to sell it to let us know.  Fate, as it turns out, favoured us.  About 6 months later she got pregnant and decided to downsize to an Iwagumi style rimless tank and called us to see if we were still interested in the tank.  We promptly made a deal and went to get it. 

It was a Miracles tank with Starfire front glass that started life as a reef tank, but she converted it to freshwater.  I tried to mimic the style she had with driftwood and plants, but I never quite got the tank to take off.  I was running 2 canister filters being fed through bulkheads in the bottom of the tank and the head pressure was just a bit too much, even for big filters.  The tank worked okay for a few years, but it always had problems with algae, or dying fish...or something else. 

I was never quite satisfied with it and when I took it down it looked like this:


I decided at that point to convert it to a cichlid tank.  I capped all the bulkheads, bought some aragonite and few hundred pounds of lace rock and got to building.  This always takes forever in my world because I work and have kids in sports and don't like to rush.  Going over the back with the filters made the tank work much better, and everything started off great.  Then I realized how hard it is to get good quality haps and peacocks where I live and how truly evil African Cichlids can be.  I had a few fish take over the tank, and other fish breeding and couldn't find stock and I felt like I had done it all for nothing.

I was never quite satisfied with it and when I took it down it looked like this:



Around that time I had started an 8 gallon all-in-one CADLights tank as a mini reef.  Everyone told me learning about reef keeping on a nano tank could be hard since things can go bad fast, but I was up for the challenge. 
That little tank thrived and I fell in love. 

Big time.

I started the little tank in May and by August I put all the fish and gear from the cichlid tank up for sale to get it empty and start building my dream reef.
This is what it looked like the day I ripped it apart to rebuild. 


The stand was a square steel one covered in melamine that I got with the tank and the lights were an 8 bulb T8 job that also came with the tank.  I knew they were both going to go, so I sold the lights and used the stand a work bench until I was ready to build the new stand out of 2x4's.
I started my whole build thinking about my lights.  I had 2 braces on the tank and it's 6 feet long so I Knew I was going to either have to go with 3 LED's, or change the tank.  I started looking at spread patterns of lights and coverage areas and settled on either Radion Pro's or GHL Mitras. At the time the Mitra's were on sale and two of them would cost less than 3 of the Radions so I went with them.

Of course that meant I would have problems from my center braces if I didn't remove them so that was step one.  I got a hack saw blade and carefully cut into the plastic, then removed the top brace.  Let's just say I wouldn't want to do it again.  It's not hard, just tedious and when you have starfire glass any little touch of the blade will scratch your glass.


Once that was done I decided to re-seal the whole tank.  The original silicone was clear and had a bit of algae behind it from careless scraping and it was in relatively crappy condition.  I very carefully removed all the interior silicone without going through the seams between the panels.  Once that was done I taped up my lines and re-sealed with GE SCS1200 black.  I've seen many, many new tanks with black silicone and I love it.  It's so clean and you don't really lose much viewing space - you certainly don't gain anything using clear over black and you'll never see algae building up on it.




This tank had quite a few holes drilled into it.  There were two 3/4" bulkheads in each corner, and one 3/4" plus a 1" in the center of the tank.  I decided to go with rectangular corner overflow boxes, but really wanted 1" overflows on the tank.  My return pump is a DC2640 so I had no concerns with 3/4" returns.  But I wanted at least 1" overflows based on calculators online for the volume of water, overflow box size and flow rates I was hoping for.  Problem is, the holes were drilled for schedule 80 bulkheads at 3/4".  David has a really good set of bits, so we built up some tape and proceeded to drill two of the holes bigger to accommodate the overflows.  Worked like a charm, likely because the glass on the bottom of this tank is 1" thick.


With that done I ordered my acrylic for my overflow boxes from a local supplier, cut to size.  I then got a buddy with a CNC machine at his work to cut the gates in the top of the acrylic for me, which worked out relatively well, but if I did it again, I would cut the panels short and then use those pre-made combs you can get to attach to the top because it was allot of work.  He was trying to perfect the method for doing it, so I guess it was worth it.


I mocked them in, then put them in with GE SCS1200.  I know that silicone doesn't really bond acrylic to glass that well, but be patient because it won't matter soon enough

[Stussi613]

Chapter 2


Oh yeah, before everything got sealed into place I did a light test to see how the coverage would be. 
Looking pretty good.


At this point I decided to pick up some stuff I was going to need for the build.


Reactors:


Vertex 100GPD RO/DI:


Sump, DC Return pump and Skimmer:


Jebao WP-25's:


The time had come to start working on my background.  I had decided, in the beginning, to cover my overflow boxes with a spray foam background.  when I started looking at it though, I realized it would probably look good if I did the whole background with spray foam.  So I mocked up the egg crate for the panels.


Then started to work on the overflow panels outside the tank.

[Stussi613]

Chapter 3

Then we flipped the tank over to work on the big panels inside the tank.  And promptly found the inspection sticker from 2004.  I doubt I would have ever seen this before as the tank was sitting on a stand covered in Melamine that you couldn't really see through.


Then the work on the background started in earnest.  I used the Great Plains black pond foam since it's UV resistant and comes in pretty big cans.  I stopped counting after about 8 cans of it




As you can see, pliers can be used to space rocks on top of all their other uses.



After I don't know how many bottles of hobby epoxy and how many pounds of aragonite and nobody knows how many times of laying the tank on its back, then standing it upright, then tipping it over, then putting it back...the background was almost done.


Except for a few veritcal lines on the edges of the overflow boxes, which I patched with a good amount of epoxy and sand.




Once that was done I started in on my rock hardscape.  After about a week of placing rocks, changing them out, busting them up, smashing them, sculpting them...and general stone masonry...I was happy.  Everything got epoxied together and the new stand was built.

[Stussi613]

Chapter 4

That sump is 48"W x 20"D x 15"H and I was worried about putting it directly on the bottom of the stand without any kind of foam, but my space was super tight under there so I picked up some of this tool chest liner from Lowe's to put under it.

I'd like to eventually have a visible refugium with sea-horses next to this tank, but in the meantime I needed a place to keep some live rock rubble, chaeto and ulva once I started the system.  The sump is plenty big, so I made a small refugium in there by adding some glass and a comb that overflows into the baffles.


At this point I did some odds and ends like beefing up the stand with supports in the corners and making sure it was rock steady.  I'm sure some of you are thinking "wait a minute donkey, you took the top brace on this tank...you'd have to be an idiot to fill that sucker up without it"!

And you'd be right, I didn't get any pictures...but I Eurobraced the tank with 3" strips of the same 3/8" glass the tank is made from, which I came up with using 3-4 different online calculators and asking a few tank builders.

I started filling up with tap water to let the marco rock, background and everything soak and leach out any badness.  Then I emptied it and did it again and ran the tank for a few days with tap water in it.




I decided to go with Durso overflows on this system.


And I spent no less than 3 days fooling around with them trying to quiet them down.  Still not 100% there, but much better.


I finally started making RO water and mixing salt (in the tank since you only get the pleasure of doing it once!!).


And tested the lights out with water and background and rocks in.

[Stussi613]

Chapter 5

At this point I had a friend who keeps reef tanks and is an amazing cabinet builder come over and measure to make my stand.  There was a bit of lead time ahead of me, and I have Bengal cats that love water, so I needed to come up with a way to keep them out of the sump.  I knew this because I had caught them in the sump 3-4 times when the tank was full of tap water.  It was pretty late at night, and I may have had a few old fashioned's.  Or should I say a few too many old fashioned's.

Either way, I came up with what I think is the best ghetto skin in history.

Yes friends, that is cardboard and Duck tape skinning my stand.


And just to prove it was necessary, the smallest and baddest of my two bengal cats tried to find a way in minutes after I finished putting it on.

My cabinet guy finished the stand a week later.  What I told him I wanted was for the tank to look like a built in at the end of our open concept living room/dining room area.  I needed a way to hang my lights and I didn't want to see wires from the ceiling, or any kind of equipment.  Some bookshelves on the right side would be nice.  Maybe a corner style cabinet on the left.  He took those loose ideas and then blew us away when he was finished installing.  I'll let the pics speak for themselves here.


                                    
                                 
The lights are suspended from a transom that holds the two sides together and holds the upper doors on using strips of wood cut on a 45 inside the upper doors and the opposite 45 on the transom.


And this is what the tank looks like with the lights hung and turned on.



I've already started stocking the tank, more details on that and all the equipment in later threads.

[Stussi613]

This is a pretty good view of what the tank looks like when you walk in the front door of the house.  I was going for "big impact".

[Lehner]

that is sic! great job buddy. just fill that with sps now:)

[Stussi613]

that is sic! great job buddy. just fill that with sps now:)

I'm not quite ready for SPS yet, should have my doser online this week and then I'll start over with SPS.  Focusing on LPS for the time being.

I have some more pictures that I'll update soon, but you'll probably see it in person before I get the updates done.

[SlyAngel]

Wow that looks great Stuart, you did a great job!........but I think I will pass on Salut Water  lots of work.

[ajm1961]

Love the rock work!
Thanks for contributing your thoughts and efforts with the club with this post. OVAS should be first and foremost sharing individual experience, insight and passion in the hobby - and you have done that with spades!

Keep us posted on your progress.
Cheers.

[Jeff1192]

Wow that's amazing. The do it yourself background looks like it was a ton of work but the final product is beyond worth it. Great tank!

[charlie]

Simply amazing, my friend you have outdone any other build I have seen on OVAS - congrats!
Errol