~200G First Time Reef Adventure ~350 total

[WillKatt]

Hello All,
My name is Kris. I have been mostly just a lurker here for some time. I finally feel like now is the time to start my own build thread. This is my first “real” build (sort of). This is actually a third attempt as I have started over a few times now finding that I didn’t like the direction the build was going. I started with a 90G corner, then switch to a custom Glass Cages 120 starphire, then finally went as large as my little house would allow with a custom ~200G Miracles. Allot of this rework came from lack of knowledge and trying to pass up the smaller tank experience and going straight to something more complicated. As I moved along with the different stages of the other builds I obviously learned more and more and kept making the decision to take huge steps backward in order to try and get it right the proverbial “first time”

I am relatively inexperienced in the hobby. Even though I have entrenched myself in the hobby, reading and researching the hobby for about 4 years I have only had a 28G nano cube up and running since last August as my “practice tank”. I don’t think any amount of reading I have done (and it’s been ALLOT) can replace real world experience.


I suppose this build thread is more for me than anyone else. After all there is nothing special I am going to show anyone here. I hope that what I have to show is well received and beg you all to be kind to the noob.

Even though much of my build is already complete I will be starting it from the beginning in order to document the whole process.


The Tank:
Custom Miracles ~200G starphire.
Dimensions are 50”L x 36”W x 25”T

The Sump:
~150G glass drilled
Located in a separate equipment room that is one floor down and 24’ over on the opposite side of the house.

This is where the tank will sit and what I envision it will look with the wall removed and the trim work all finished:

This is where the equipment and sump will be located and the layout I have planned:

 

[WillKatt]

One of the first things I knew for sure I wanted to do was isolate the electrical system from the rest of the house. My house was built in the early 90s but the electrician that wired it must have been on acid as there is just no rhyme or reason as to how the house was wired. For example I have outlets in the master bedroom on the same circuit as lights on the guest bedroom two floors down In the basement.

I knew it might be difficult to know what all was running on one circuit to the next plus the basement where most of the equipment was going only had a single 15A receptacle anyway.

The simple solution was just to add a sub panel dedicated to the system but I faced once pretty big issue. My house was only supplied with a 100A main and was already pretty well maxed out. There wasn’t going to be any chance of adding another circuit large enough to handle everything I had planned.

I ‘m a EE and worked as a commercial electrician for several years while putting myself through college and I knew that getting an upgrade to the panel was going to be pricey and require a city permit and a licensed electrician (which I am not) to acquire said permit. I called an electrician to get me a quote and as expected it was going to run roughly $3000. I was pretty bummed when something occurred to me that was not only going to save me money but also make the Mrs. very happy at the same time.

My wife had been hinting at the need for a new washer and dryer for awhile and the truth was we really did need them. The existing Dryer was on its own 30A circuit and was already conveniently located in the basement adjacent to where I had planned for the sump to go.

The answer was now very simple I just needed to tee off the gas line for our furnace and go with a gas dryer. So as it would go the wife got a brand new washer and dryer and I got power for a dedicated 30A sub panel.

I went to work on installing the electrical. I opted for a panel with 8 separate 15A circuits mostly for redundancy not because I actually needed 8 circuits but I wanted both return pumps on separate circuits as well as both heaters that way if one breaker was to pop I wouldn’t lose both heaters or both return pumps.

The tie in to the existing 30A circuit coming from the main panel and the new washer and dryer.

Lots of plugs everywhere I could think to put them. Nice and high away from water.

The sub panel.

 

[WillKatt]

In additional to the electrical work I also tapped into the sewage line in the powder bath on the other side of the wall as well as the water lines. I installed separate shutoff valves for the hot and cold and ran Shark bites over to the future sink area. I plumped the drain for the sink and continued the drain around the wall to the edged of where the sump will rest for water change convenience. I also put in a few other access points to the drain for the skimmer collection and RO wastes lines to hook up to.

I live in a very dry part of the United States and not having ever had a tank up and running of any notable size was not sure how bad humidity issues could be in a closed off room this small. I asked some local refers, but like everything else in this hobby got some radically varying responses. I got comments ranging from “not an issue†to “everything in your basement rustâ€.

This scared me a bit if not just for mold reasons so I decided it’s better to be safe than sorry. I installed an air duct and ventilation fan in the ceiling to the outside of the house with a humidity controller. I also lined the walls and ceiling with 8 mil vapor barrier before putting up the drywall. I painted everything including the concrete with heavy duty water sealant paint.

On a separate trip to Home Depot I came across some 4’x8’ sheets of PVC and decided id also line the walls with that as well. It seems like it would be great for wiping down the wall and the best protection against splashes and salt creep. Since I’m a little anal and obsessive compulsive I sealed all the joints with silicone.

Somewhere along the way I lost some of the pictures of the drywall and sink plumbing install but these are some of the finished product pictures.

I also found these water resistant switch and receptacle covers that have little windows so I can still see the indicator lights on the GFCIs. They actually have rubber billow that extend so that they will accommodate any size plug and cord but still seals everything off really well.

 

[WillKatt]

Considering the space constraints I had to work with and all that I wanted I had to start getting a little creative with my planning. I wanted to be set up to do the largest water changes possible but still have separate fresh water and saltwater vats. The only way I could figure to do this given the space I had was to stack the two containers. I only had 18.3/4” clearance between the wall and the edges of the sink so I was pretty limited with my options. I really wanted something that was tall and square to maximize the space but couldn’t find anything that was narrow enough to squeeze in.

I ultimately was forced to go with two 40G roto mold containers which fit the bill at 18” in diameter and were still short enough to fit one atop the other. Now I needed to build a stand to support the two containers full and be able to stager the lower container out enough that I could easily access the top to drop in salt mix and whatever else and also give me a place behind it to mount a circulation pump.

I knew from the beginning I was going to want all steel powder coated support structures and I have always wanted to learn to weld. This project was going to grant me that opportunity. My neighbor across the street had an old gasless flux core wire fed mig welder that he was kind enough to let me use. He gave me a short little lessen and a box of scraps to practice on. I was in love! I liked it so much that my wife sprung for a brand new Hobart 140 handler with gas hookup for C25 for my birthday!

My welds were not super pretty but after some practice I feel like they were pretty good and structurally sound. I took a couple weeks off from work and went after both the sump stand and container stand like a madman! For these smaller units I settled on 1”x1” 11 gauge square tube steel with extra supports and lots of leveling feet as the tile floor was very uneven and far from level.

Off to powder coat

 

[WillKatt]

And here is the stand and water tanks sitting in their home along with the sink all plumbed in.

The switch and receptacle located at the right of the container and just below the stand at the right are switched outlets to control the recirculation pumps and heater for preparing new batches. At this point I have yet to drill the container for bulk heads and plumbing.

 

[WillKatt]

Time to go to work on the sump/fuge. The sump tank was lightly used so I had a bit of clean up to do. The original owner had the tank pre drilled with two 1.5” holes at the far right end of the tank and already had baffles installed but I didn’t not care for the placement as they were not aligned with the cross bracing of the tank making very difficult to get larger equipment to fit such as an internal skimmer, open top fuge/etc

So I tore out all the baffles and scraped down the tank with nice sharps razors, rubbing alcohol and highly concentrated vinegar. This is what the tank looked like when I got it and what I had planned for it.

I had a local glass company cut me some ¼” pieces and went to work installing them. I had allot of conflict with how I wanted to lay out my sump and without prior experience I went with a very common simple design that seemed to work well for the dimensions of the tank and the space I had for it. I hope it will be successful. I put a spot in the middle for either a fuge or small frag tank. I wasn’t sure which way I will ultimately go with this but tried as best I could to lay it out so I had options. Any thoughts good or bad?

The process of installing the new baffles. I kept them high as possible because I wanted maximum water volume but also left enough room when the returns are off as well as installed an extra safety feature which I will show later on in this build. I taped up my silicone seams with masking tape so that I had nice clean sharp edges at the joints and no sloppy booger welds. 

 

[WillKatt]

So while all of this was going on I was also planning my DT. I shopped around allot and based on seeing a good friend’s very large AGE tank I really wanted to go that route. Unfortunately it didn’t sound like AGE was very interested in a tank as small as mine and said it could be a year or more before completion. Not to mention the lack of returned calls and attention was mildly annoying. However I do see it from their point of view. My little build not really worth their time. Their tanks are mind blowing though!

Next step was to look at local builders. The problem there was apparently only one guy working in glass and I did not want acrylic. I spoke with the local glass guy and received some mind boggling estimate of $3800-$4000! Also I didn’t get a warm a fuzzy feeling from him. A little pricey for what I wanted. I then went to Glass Cages which I had a prior tank from them before that never saw water. The build construction seemed ok but was very sloppy like someone was getting a tad over emotional with the silicone application it was everywhere! Also there were lots of big air pockets in the jointed ends which worried me. Never the less I called CG for a quote and did not like the way I was treated. I wanted an external coast to coast over flow set up for the “BeAnAnmial” method and was basically told “That’s dumb why would you want to do that?” Mind you this comment came from a lady answering the phone that really couldn’t give me a good explanation of why this was a bad idea. I will say in their favor that they were prompt in getting back to me and the price quoted was very good!

Further research stumbled me across Miracles in Glass. I had never heard of them but several other local members and national members had boasted some very positive feedback. So I called up Derrick and was blown away by how helpful they were and how they helped guide me to a design that would best fit my requirements. The shipping was pretty steep at nearly $700 but even so the price still came in at nearly $1300 less than the guy local to me quoted. I pulled the trigger and was glad I did. The tank was delivered one week earlier that I was initially quoted and was built far better than I could have hoped.

There was only one issue. I had requested the tank be drilled with “heavy duty” bulkheads. My error as I should have stated specifically sch 80. The tank was drilled unfortunately for standard ABS bulk heads. My fault for not being more clear and not really the end of the world I suppose.

Because of my desire to get the tank way up against the back wall I decided on a corner over flow drilled through the bottom instead of an external overflow box. I went round and round on this layout and hope it works out. I’m still concerned with the possibility of flow issues. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see. The two returns were placed along the back in the euro bracing.

Under construction:

Picking up the tank at the loading doc:

The Tank, beer for scale:

 

[WillKatt]

I got my little sink area pretty well set up with a shelf and paper towel holder and mixing station plumbed in. I also upgrade the RO/DI unit above the sink to a little beefier Spectrapure with more stages. This RO unit will be used primarily just for filling the RO tank up top. I also purchased a second 6 stage RO/DI unit with booster pump and auto flush from AquaFx to work with my ATO and Kalk reactor. I installed a few extra valves so that if I ever needed to I could redirect the output to the RO container and get about 200gpd.

I wanted to be able to have a little hose I could pull out from the sink with a gate valve so I can easily fill separate jugs with RO and also use it to since foods, equipment, etc.

 

[WillKatt]

Time to start plumbing the return pumps and drilling the wall to run the plumbing to where the Display will be.

I got to be honest I really lost allot of sleep over this. I was not sure how I wanted to plumb this and was very afraid I might make some serious mistakes. I thought it out allot, thought some more, asked some other people and got even more confused and thought about it yet again. Finally I just decided to go with my gut and get started. LOL 

Due to the significant head pressure I was going to need to overcome I decided on two Reeflo Wahoo pumps rated for a max of 1500gph and max head of 33’. These are high pressure low flow high efficiency pumps. I was not at all concerned about the lower flow as I plan I running at minimum of three MP40s or two 40s and one 60. I’m going to start with three 40s and see where that gets me first before jumping to the 60.

Based on the calculated 16’ of head the pumps should still be able to push ~1100gph through the sump. I only plan on running one return pump at a time with a second one plumbed and ready to go for backup. I wanted to simplify water changes as much as possible so I also plumbed in the Salt vat to a ball valve so I could push new water up into the display there by displacing the water in the sump and pushing old sump water into an over flow that goes directly to sewage. This obviously won’t be a 100% efficient way of changing the water but considering the distance the new water would have to travel back to the sump overflow the loss of new salt mix should be less than 10%.

I have already tested this method several times it works pretty well and makes water changed as simple at turning three valves and nothing more. If it turns out that for whatever reason changing the water with this method is problematic I have built in some alternative measures.

I wanted the pumps to come in and out very easily so I devised a mounting system that would allow me to quickly remove the pump not in use for maintenance or repair. In retrospect I think I really over complicated things and would have been better off just plumbing a single pump. Oh well $500 plus in sch80 true union ball valves and Gate valves is not going to come out now unless I am forced to change something.

 

[WillKatt]

The wall adjacent to where the display tank will sit has been ripped out. The loop that is seen in the pictures below is basically just a loop back from the sump so I could test my return pump with a fairly accurate representation of head loss.

I was really surprised at how powerful these wahoo pumps are. I should have no issues powering my reactors off of these pumps as well so I was please with that. I did have two very slow leaks at the inlet of each pump where they were threaded. I tried three times to reseal the threaded union but each time still had a leak. I finally tracked downs some Spears blue 75 thread sealant which did the trick and no more leaks.

I added this 1.5” gate valve just in case I do ever need to throttle the pumps back a bit.

As with the equipment room where the sump is located I was very concerned with humidty issues around the display. Also in the winter time I have found that it’s a little tricky to keep the ph above 7.8 when the house is all closed up so I wanted a solid solution for both humidity control and air exchange. While temp could be a concern as well I wasn’t worried about that as much since I will be running all LEDS.

A good friend and mentor to me “reefsafe” had installed a really nice air exchange unit in his fish room that works great for controlling humidity, temp, and air exchange in the winter months. To make it even better it is dead quite! I knew it would be overkill but I decided to install the same unit along the back wall of where the DT will be. I have already run one 4” duct for the inlet but still need to run a second one for the output as well as frame in a box to mount it.

The unit is made by Panasonic and these are the specs for anyone interested:

http://www.rewci.com/whisper-comfort...Fcyb7QodhS20Xg

At this point I need to decide if I’m going to get the hardwood floors refinished. My wife and I want something a little darker to match our home decor. I think now is probably the time to have it done as I’m not crazy about having someone run a floor sander anywhere near my tank. Also the door just to the left of where the tank will go opens in an unfavorable direction toward the tank. I am going to have to order a new door and door jam that opens to the left instead of the right.

 

[WillKatt]

The last week or so I have been working on building the stand for the display tank. I’m a pretty tall guy and I don’t like always having to bend down to look at my current tank so I wanted the stand to be high enough that I could comfortably enjoy it while standing but not so tall that others would have difficulty. Plus I didn’t want it to be too tall that it made a big hassle for cleaning. I settled on making the stand an even 40†tall which combined with the length and width of the tank made it impossible to construct one solid steel frame that would fit through the largest door way of our home. The stand was going to have to be built into to pieces that stacked one on top of the other and locked together for stability. The first time I had ever thought of this I for some reason envisioned two stands side by side but quickly realized that would be very difficult to level up perfectly with one another when the time came to put the tank on it and it just didn’t make that much sense. I haven’t made a sketch for my own stand yet but this is a sketch I did for a friend with a 280 that wants me to build his stand also. This picture still illustrates the same basic concept I am using for my stand. The really big difference with my stand aside from the dimensions of course would be that The two pieces would not be the same height. I want the bottom piece as large as possible to allow for easy access so on mine the bottom will be 30" tall and the top piece will make up the other 10" inches.

 

[WillKatt]

Getting started with the stand. Once I got all the measurements figured out I went through the tedious task of cutting all the pieces to length and beveling the edges to allow create a channel at each joint for the molten steel to flow into. I purchased a point of sale cutoff saw from Harbor Freight that got the job done but I had to go pretty slow with each cut otherwise the blade would flex and give me a cut that wasn’t perfectly square.

I built a larger table than I had for making the other stands for the sump and the mixing station. I used part of an old stand I had built for my 120 and some 4x4 posts with leveling feet so I could get a nice perfectly flat perfectly level surface to build the stand. I started with each of the four horizontal frames making them just like I did for the sump stand but this time my welds look much more professional. (or at least I think they do)

 

[WillKatt]

Hands down I would say the most time consuming part of building these stands is attaching the leveling feet. Considering this stand is going to be much heavier and have a lot more weight on it I decided to use 5/8” zinc plated bolts for the leveling feet. I found some really heavy duty swivel foot bolts on line but they were $30 each and the only place I could find that carried them said they would be special order and take at least 4 weeks to get. I figured standard bolts would work just fine.

I probably could have just drilled the frame and welded the nut right to it but I like to over build thing so I opted to first weld a 3”x3” 1/8” thick plate to each corner and cross member first. These are some progression shots of the base of the stand.

 

[Pappy]

Did you say new? New at bluffing maybe? Jk holy cow for a new guy to build! Sick setup dude


Mike D "like the beastie boys" Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[revhtree]

I am loving all this so far and am very jealous of your tank room! Looks like you have paid a lot of attention to detail. Looking forward to more!

Welcome to R2R!

We appreciate your membership!

Thanks for joining and please make sure and post often!

 

[ckozma]

Looks awesome! Great amount of detail man.

 

[Pkunk35]

Did you say new? New at bluffing maybe? Jk holy cow for a new guy to build! Sick setup dude


Mike D "like the beastie boys" Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hah, I was thinking the same thing...what a SICK first build!

I'm at work now, but I'm going to comb this thread later. Very nice tank thread and awesome documentation, very inspiring.

Dude. I need a garage and some welding equipment! That stand is awesome.

 

[BarbH]

Wow looking great, look foward to seeing more updates about this build

 

[WillKatt]

Thanks for the warm welcome! I'm really hoping life dosnt throw me any curve balls and I'm able to stay on track. I should have the display stand done in a couple weeks and hope to have water in the tank sometime in August.

Also I really hope that the larger tanks are easier than the small ones. I've had a heck of a time with my jbj 28g nano cube.

 

[revsgirl]

Wow!! Gettin' it done!! This is a crazy first time build!! Amazing job!! Welcome to R2R!! I'm lookin' forward to this one!