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450 Gallon Reef, 855 Gallon System


oxx155

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Hello Everybody! New to the forum, love to see everyones tanks, thought I would post my own.

I just started this tank, I previously had a 125 Gallon Reef and 240 Gallon Fish Only, decided to do one large Reef Tank.

Tank: 450 Gallon, 120"length, 36" width, 24" height, 3/4" Acrylic, the overflows are built at an angle so as to help waterflow around the tank, 4 - 1-1/2" Drain Lines

 

Refugium: 180 Gallon Acrylic, 72"length, 24" width, 24" height, one side of the main tank will drain into here, 2 - 1-1/2" bulkheads will drain into the sump

 

Sump: 180 Gallon Poly Stock, 72"length, 24"width, 24"height, this will house most of the equipment and has 4 flow pumps connected

 

Lighting: 4 - 250 Watt HQI 14k Phoenix Metal Halides, 4 - 110 Watt Super Actinic T12 Fluorescent, 3 - 75 Watt 10K Aquasun T12 Fluorescent, 20" box fan on both ends

48" Odyssea HQI 175 watt system over the Refugium

72 LED Moonlight system

 

Flow: Sequence Reeflo Dart for main waterflow running 1-1/2" lines directly into the tank, Iwaki 100 will connect to three 1" Sea Swirls and other lines, Iwaki 75 and Iwaki 55 will run all equipment and any extra flow needed, two Tunze 6000's and two Tunze 6200's, I am thinking about adding a tunze wavebox or homemade wavemakers (upside down tri-sprinklers)

 

Calcium: Geo 624 Calcium Reactor, Ph Probe will go directly into chamber, modified with JBJ bubble counter

 

Skimmer: ASM G-6 Recirculating Protein Skimmer, modified with three Sedra 9000's, 48" tall, 12" diameter

 

Other Filtration: 36" Lifegard Fluidized Sand Bed Filter, 24" Lifegard Fluidized Rowaphos Phosphate Filter

 

Kalk: 24" Kalk Stirrer by Fishbowl Innovations

 

RO/DI: 6 Stage PureWater RO/DI 75 gallons a day

 

Monitors: Phosphate, Alk, Calcium, Salinity (I think they are all Milwaukee)

 

I ordered 500 Pounds of Live Sand and 500 Pounds of Live Rock

 

I used Milk Crates (modified) to hold up some of the rock so that there was plenty of swimming room for the fish.

 

The rock doesn't cover all the blue crates, but I think as coraline grows they will dissapear.

 

Here is the equipment

 

I will spend the next two months cycling the system before adding any fish or corals.

I do have a fish list and will post that soon (lots of tangs).

Thanks for looking and feel free to ask questions.

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Guest Moderator

Oxx, I removed your links to RC to get rid of the broken images and so I could see the images of your tank on RC.

 

This is the link to his RC tank thread for all who want to see:

 

Oxx's RC Tank Thread

 

Look into what Garrett suggested. I use photo bucket myself and have had no problems.

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Thanks for the advice, I will look into photobucket this week and see about reposting the pics.

Thanks for posting a link to the RC thread, I wasn't sure if that was proper here or not.

I had been researching for about 3 months before even starting this system, I have had years of experience but when you jump up into this size you really need to have everything set out ahead. I learned a lot and really feel ready.

I will keep you all updated as things move along.

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The pics on RC look very nice. I really like this one. Keep us updated!

 

To cover the blue eggcrate that is showing, you may want to just place some frag epoxy over it and let coraline build up on the epoxy. You might not have to worry about it and the coraline may just cover all of the blue, but if not give it a try.

 

In the future you are going to have to have a bunch of us come down and check this thing out. It really is awesome!

 

Garrett

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Ok, here are the pictures in no particular order.

If you have any questions please feel free to ask.

Maybe when things get going well and I have fish and corals in the tank I will have an "open house" so people can come see, or just setup individual appointments, whatever comes easier.

One bummer I just found out today while running tests on the pumps is that the right side of the tank is 1/8" taller (because of a stupid 4X4) and causing the overflow to not process as much as the other side, so I have to figure out how to trim down the 4X4 an 1/8". Its just so darn hard to get things exactly level over 10', LOL.

oxxreef1.jpg

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Here are pics of my 125 Gallon Reef I used to have. This was after the 1st year, unfortunately I lost pics I took from the 2nd year before I sold, ah well.

Tank2.jpg

Anenome1.jpg

InsideTank1.jpg

Mushrooms1.jpg

These suckers below ended up taking over the entire right half of the tank

Stars1.jpg

Xenia1.jpg

Zoas1.jpg

 

And here is the 240 Gallon Fish Only I had

TankFish1.jpg

Lion1.jpg

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I actually just found two pics from when I sold the tank, the tank wasn't very clean because the guy took 3 weeks to move everything, and unfortunately he had already taken most of the equipment, so I couldn't scrape the glass.

The leather got to about 22" in diameter.

Aquarium008.jpg

Aquarium009.jpg

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welcome to the site!!!! So what are you planning on keeping in that monster tank?

 

I know its a lot (some of which is going in the refugium), but I plan on keeping the following

 

Lawnmower Blenny

Scooter Blenny

Red Scooter Blenny

Copperband Butterfly

Longnose Yellow Butterfly

8 - Pajama Cardinals

2 - Percula Clownfish

2 - Tomato Clownfish

Mandarin Green Goby

Blue Hippo Tang

Blue Atlantic Tang

Naso Tang

Purple Tang

Desjardini Sailfin Tang

5 - Yellow Tangs

Yellow Eye Kole Tang

15 - Green Chromis

Six Line Wrasse

Fairy Wrasse

Various Red Leg and Scarlett Hermit Crabs

Some Turbo, Cerith, and Nassarius Snails

Couple of Sand Sifting, Blue Linkia, and Red Starfish

Sand Eating Cucumber

Couple of Fighting Conchs

Couple of Bubble Tip Anenomes

Various Scarlet Cleaner, Banded Coral, and Peppermint Shrimp

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Road Trip (clap)

 

You must really like tangs! So this is going to pretty much be a fish only tank? Thanks for sharing your pictures!!!

 

I do like tangs a lot, they seem to have great personalities. This is going to be a full blown Reef Tank, the fish will be split between the main tank and the refugium. If I calculated right it should be under any max restrictions. I may end up shorting the list over time, but we'll see when I get to that point.

 

Thanks everyone.

I am still testing everything right now. Its kind of a bummer that the stand ended up being a shave off level, I thought for sure I checked it, ah well, I think I will have it fixed tomorrow, than the pumps will go full time.

 

This is my parents home (I happen to work in the warehouse behind the home every day, so I get to see and work on the tank daily) so I will have to clear it with them for any visitation. But, they like group get togethers and I am sure we can work something out. It probably won't be before the new year though, we are pretty busy right now with work, traveling, holidays, and I am getting married.

If you want to check out where I work you can visit Strapworks.com.

 

I will probably update with more info and pics this weekend.

 

Night

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  • 2 weeks later...
Congratulations on soon to be married!!!!

 

Thank you, got pretty lucky, going to Italy for 2 weeks and New York for 3 days for our honeymoon.

 

May I suggest, buy what you can while you have the chance .

 

She doesn't mind, she calls me her sugar daddy, she gets what she wants, so do I. LOL

 

 

I am sorry I haven't updated recently, been pretty busy at work.

Updates:

1. Protein Skimmer is running at full speed, still need to dial it in a little, but its getting out some nice dark brown crap

2. Fluidized Filter is running like a champ. But, it was clogged initially and I had to drain it and refill to get it working properly. Its a pretty cool device. The sand definitely looks weird floating in water.

3. I haven't gotten the calcium reactor running yet, its my project for this weekend.

4. Did my first water change last weekend and it only took 10 minutes! But, it took 10 hours to refill via RODI. And the best part is the entire system ran with no problem while the RODI refilled the water change tank, best addition to the tank I think I could have made.

5. All parameters are leveling out and looking good. The monitors are pretty cool and finally got the probes to an area where they get a stable reading.

6. Brown Algae has now covered my rock and sand, which was expected. I am just waiting for my cleaner crew now to get rid of it.

7. I will have more pics soon, I left my camera at home, I will have it tomorrow and will post more pics.

8. Maybe my tank can help get Eugene on the map (the map in the upper right corner that is), LOL

 

Thanks for reading

Later

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More Pics:

The tank lights are off to keep algae growth down, but you can pretty much see brown algae everywhere. My cleaner crew comes in thursday, the list is below.

oxxreef19.jpg

 

Here is one of the seaswirls connected and running

oxxreef20.jpg

 

The overflows were pretty noisy because the water was falling two feet before getting to the bulkheads, so I created drain pipes to reduce the drop.

oxxreef21.jpg

 

I dropped down to one fluidized filter right now, but it works great and I plan on adding the other back soon.

oxxreef22.jpg

 

You can see here the skimmer bubbles are thick and fine and producing some dark skimmate

oxxreef23.jpg

 

Here are the monitors, the Salinity is right on but the number shows low for some reason, I guess I will just have to find the right numbers, the calcium is still low but rising, the PH is about right.

oxxreef24.jpg

 

I have the following coming for a cleanup team and get rid of the brown algae

Red Legged Hermits

Scarlett Hermits

Nassarius Snails

Cerith Snails

Turbo Snails

Sand Sifting Cucumbers

Sand Sifting Sea Stars

Fighting Conchs

Green Serpent Brittle Stars

 

I think around the end of the month (November) I will start to add some fish and soft corals

 

More to come later

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