SPS Dominant Upgrade to 180g

[mshonk]

I am fortunate enough to have been given a 180g tank. It was a fresh and is older but I haven't ever focused on having top notch equipment. Free its for me! The game plan is to take my current set up which is a 40g breeder, 60g frag tank, 10g satellite tank, and a 2 long sump and put it into the 180. I have coral stock for days in the current setup. Acro colonies, stylos, poci, birdsnests, montis, shrooms, zoas, palys, duncans, blastos, hammer, frammer, and more the frag tank is fully stocked with barely any rock in it.

 

[mshonk]

 

[mshonk]

Some of the stock that is going to go in it. My existing is using vipars and t5's and I have no plan on upgrading. The is about 30lbs of LR in about 120g total. I run two UV's a 9w and 36w. the 36 is hit first then immediately to the 9w that is one of the turbo twists. I like to sen the UV back through the filter sock. I have a chiller and dosing pumps. I DIY my dosing solutions with guidance from the old Randy's Reef Recipe.

 

[mshonk]

I already started this build and it currently has water in it. First thing I did was clean up and get the old sump out. it was an ok sump just not what I was after. It has the far from fancy pine stand. I never had one I always built my own and was appalled at the minimalist design it has. So I fixed the bowing ply bottom and reinforced the stand with 2x4's. I lucked out on sand from petco. They had the carib sea aragonite 10lb bags on sale for just over $5. Between live sand and the dry I have 165lbs of sand for about $100 total. I bought a jecod return for $4 thanks to credit card rewards. It move 2500gph and salt was on sale with free shipping from saltwateraquarium.com for 57 a bucket (Red Sea not pro) plus I had $15 off in points.

 

[mshonk]

Got an old 40g breeder for free and spent $10 on silicone. cleaned it up and slapped it together.

 

[mshonk]

Then I designed a modular filter sock holder for 4" socks. The I wanted a little extra so I designed some baffle caps.

 

[mshonk]

Then it was on to plumbing. about $120 eaten up here due to an overzealous mistake. I glued the unions to the bulkheads with out the fasteners on them. The drains were changed a little yesterday, by dropping the ends into the water inside the filter socks the noise is greatly reduced. I also made my own Durso's for fun and they sucked. Literally sucked slurped and drove me insane. I had to that were given with it but they were slightly too small for the bulk heads hence why I tried to make them. I designed and printed parts but ended up heating the ends of the manufactured durso's to push them out to fit.

 

[mshonk]

Then I rinsed the crap out of all the dry sand. and started filling.

 

[mshonk]

I printed dosing hose holders for in the cabinet and onto the sump and ran the ends. No pics of that stuff but some cable management more or less.

 

[mshonk]

Oh I forgot my least favorite part so far was moving the existing setup so I could place the new tank where the old was. It was piece milled together and far from planned which made it a terrible thing to move. It took like 6 hrs.

 

[mshonk]

Rock is setup. Well the rock without coral on it. I threw a shrimp tail in to kick it off and have been adding leftovers from when I feed the fish in the other tanks. No Nh4/Nh3 reading on day two. I also scrap the glass from the old system and throw it in the new tank once a day.

 

[mshonk]

So I transferred everything last night. Well all day yesterday. Holy crap was it a ton of work and I still have things left to do.

 

[mshonk]

Pics tonight or tomorrow

 

[mshonk]

Quick pics

 

[phillybean]

That is fantastic!

 

[Super Fly]

great job!.... can't imagine how much work was involved in transferring 3 tank contents

 

[mshonk]

I put in 10hrs on Sunday, 5 hrs Monday, 4 hrs yesterday and still have some rearranging and gluing to do. that is the transfer alone too and not counting picking up the tank, prepping, and plumbing etc. I did some wire management last night and I definitely got lazy at the end.

 

[mshonk]

Ooo this pic in whites.

 

[phillybean]

Looks great, with the exception of the perfectly clean sand, it looks like it has been running for years. It's basically an Insta-Reef

 

[mshonk]

the round of uglies to come has me nervous. The center tower is only lightly cured and the sand and tank surfaces are new. So there will be things to maintain and watch as they age. I actually 3d printed a holder for all the 3" tiles I used on the acros when they we in the old system. Using it as additional bio media. It came out nice.