Chuck's 210 Build

[ChuckLawson]

After some prodding from folks who tell me it's a great idea, I figure it's time I finally post a build thread. I'm not sure where to start, so for lack of a better idea, here goes...

About a year and a half ago, I needed a place to stick a 40 gallon breeder quarantine tank, and ended up putting it in my office (I work from home). Fish came and went in it, on their way to my other tanks (I have a 70 and a 105 in my bedroom), and eventually it kind of ended up being a permanent feature.

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40 Breeder

I'd been wanting a six foot tank, and last fall I found a used 135 with stand and canopy at a local shop that I really liked, so I bought it and had it delivered, with the idea of putting it in my office.

Not surprisingly for me (I can procrastinate forever; it took me over a year to get water in my 105), the 135 sat (dry) in my dining room for months.

A couple of months ago, I had a problem with the circuit that my 105 was on, and I ended up having an electrician out to fix it (an outlet had gone bad in another room). As long as he was here, I asked him about adding a dedicated circuit for the tank, and he ended up coming back two days later to install a dedicated circuit for the 105, and (while I was at it) one for the 135 to go in the office.

This actually got me motivated to straighten up my office, tear down the 40 breeder, and get the 135 moved into the office.

My original (rather dumb) idea was to set the 135 jutting out of the wall kind of in the middle of the office, more or less where the 40 was. After walking around the (still dry) tank for a couple of weeks, I decided that maybe wasn't the best idea.

Meanwhile I ended up back at the same LFS, and I ended up trading the (still dry) 135 in on a new 210 gallon Aqueon.

The thought (rationalization) was that a) setting up a new 210 wasn't substantially more expensive than setting up the 135, and b) it was enough bigger that I'd have to actually re-arrange my office and set it on the wall where it should be.

I'd scheduled the delivery about two weeks out, which was good, since this pretty much ended up causing a (long overdue) overhaul of my office, losing an entire wall full of books and bookshelves, and repainting and rewiring everything. It was a pain to do, but I'm actually quite thrilled with the result -- wish I'd have done it five years ago.

 

[ChuckLawson]

Here's the 210 when it first arrived (please excuse crappy camera phone pics):

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Before I moved it into place permanently, I needed to get the sump in place, the drain and return plumbing done, and the light suspended.

The sump is a 55 gallon plexiglass tank that has been converted to sump and refugium duty; I bought it off another local reefkeeper about a year ago, and it's (like so many things) sat around waiting for me to do something with it.

Since my office is a cat-free zone (unlike the rest of the house, unfortunately) I could do something I wanted to do for awhile, and run the tank open-topped. I found a 72""white label" version of the Aqua Medic "Ocean" light (which I've always rather liked), and suspended that over the tank. The light is a 4 x 250 watt HQI fixture.

Basic plumbing done and light in place, I finally started pumping in RO/DI:

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It took roughly two days to fill. I did a little math and marked the tank at the 160 gallon mark, and when it hit that point I added a 160 gallon bucket of Reef Crystals and a mixing pump, and made up another 60 gallons of water in a pair of rubbermaid brute trash cans.

 

[ChuckLawson]

After the salt was mixed, I added rocks and sand:

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The rock was a mix of dry reef rock from Bulk Reef Supply, along with another 120 pounds or so from Albert, and rock that I had been cooking since tearing down the quarantine tank. The mix is probably 2/3 dry rock and 1/3 freshly cooked, for probably 300 - 400 lbs (wet).

The sand was old sand that had been bucketed since tearing down the quarantine tank (and a couple of tanks before it), and another 80 lbs of fresh aragonite.

Here's a little more detail on how the light is mounted:

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The light is suspended from three two by fours running perpendicular to the ceiling joists (and screwed into the same), and painted to match the rooms trim. The cable runs through pulleys over to a piece of MDF mounted on the wall next to the tank, and clips to a cable hitch. There are two hitches, one for "running position", and another to raise the light another 18" for easy access to the tank.

 

[ChuckLawson]

Once all of the rock and sand was in place, I then topped off the tank from the Brutes. Tank filled and sump at operating level works out to right on 225 gallons of water in the system.

With only 1/3 "wet" rocks, I'm surprised at how fast the tank cycled. By a week in, I had a solid run of diatoms going:

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A couple of days later, the diatoms were dying out, and hair algae taking over. (No good pic of that, sorry). At this point there was no detectable ammonia or nitrites remaining, and less than 5 ppm nitrates (I expected more, but maybe the algae was taking it down as fast as it appeared).

To keep things a little under control, I added a 2-bar rabbitfish, and a pair of sleeper gobies to sift the sand and try to get all of the fines into a filter sock.

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[ChuckLawson]

Circulation in tank (so far) is via a pair of Hydor Koralia 4 circulation pumps, a Tunze Wavebox, and a Vortech MP40w.

The return pump started out as an Oceanrunner 6500, which was only about three times more pump than I needed. This sump runs much better at a nice slow volume across the (relatively huge) refugium section, which makes more sense anyway. After throttling back the Oceanrunner to about 75%, I switched it for a Mag 7.

The skimmer is a Tunze 9015, which is off the beaten path a bit, but I'm extremely fond of it -- it produces good skimmate with zero fiddling and adjusting to keep it running. It has a vanishingly small footprint, and could care less if the water level changes in the sump. In fact, about the only thing I have to do with it is empty the waste container -- it doesn't even matter much if I clean the collection cup or not.

Some not very good photos of the sump area:

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Since those pictures:

I've added a Bulk Reef Supply dual media reactor, running GFO and carbon, and a Litermeter III. The litermeter is (so far) just doing top-off, drawing through 40 feet of poly tubing in the ceiling to the fish room, where it pulls from a PM Kalk Reactor that's attached to a 70 gallon RO/DI storage tank. (The 105 in the bedroom also tops off through the same kalk reactor).

As soon as I get the fish room back to some semblance of organization (whenever that is), the remaining two pumps on the Litermeter will be used to do a constant 1 - 2 gallon daily water change from a salt water storage tank (the 105 will do the same).

 

[ChuckLawson]

I'd expected cooling to be my biggest problem (I run a fair amount of wattage in this office anyway, before adding a kilowatt of metal halides. To that end, I added a vent over the top of the door to allow hot wet return air to circulate to the return vent just across the hall (there's no return air vent in the room). That and a ceiling fan seem to be doing the job.

The far worse problem was noise. Running the stock megaflow standpipes, the mag 7, and the magnetic ballast on the lights was just a little too much. I've lived with noisy computers in the office for years, but the last few years I've actively been trying to reduce fan noise, etc., as much as possible.

The first order of business was the lights. I replaced this 4 x 250 watt HQI magnetic ballast:

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With Icecap electronic ballasts:

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Okay, how many noticed there are only three ballasts there?

The light as originally configured had 4 x 250 watt HQI fixtures in it. Unfortunately, the center two were pretty much exactly over the braces on the tank -- you can probably see the shadow of these braces on some of the photos above.

I decided that (at least for the time being), 3 x 250 is probably plenty of light for this tank. Fortunately, the Ocean light is pretty much modular -- it's pretty easy to open it up, remove one fixture, and center the remaining ones, which is what I did. All the parts were collected in a bag so that if I (or the next owner) want to run 4 lights down the road, it'll be simple to put them back.

The next order of business is the standpipes. I'd considered building a "Herbie" drain, or trying one of the various homemade Durso alternatives (virtually all of which are likely to be quieter than the megaflows), but I happened to run across some posts talking about "CJStandpipes", so I decided to give them a try:

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They appear to be more or less a variant of the "Hofer Gurgle Buster", and they actually work quite well. It took about 2 weeks to receive them, and they were an exact fit (he asks for some fairly detailed measurements in the order process).

They actually work quite well. You could doubtless build your own as good or better, but if you don't want to fool with it, this isn't a bad alternative. About the only noise now is from the air tubing going into the standpipes -- I've tried a "venturi muffler" like you'd put on a skimmer, but so far the one I tried is a little too restrictive, and causes some surging noise when I run it.

Last but not least, the pump. I should have known better than to put a Mag 7 on this. I swapped it out yesterday with an Eheim 1260 (no pics) which is much, much quieter. The Mag 7 will be relegated to salt mixing duty, which they do fairly well.

 

[ChuckLawson]

Before adding any more fish, I figured I'd better work on being able to keep them in the tank. I like open tops, but I need something to stop the occasional jumper.

I ended up constructing 3 mesh tops from aluminum window screen frame, and a cut-up monofilament fishing net:

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About the only difficult part of this is that the net ended up not being a "flat" piece -- it constricts and expands. I ended up taking a piece of wood slightly larger than the screen frame (about 22" square), adding screws in the corners and the center of each side, flipping it over, putting down the screen frame, and "snagging" the net on the screws on back until I had it pulled mostly flat, at which point I rolled the screen spline down into the channel.

This doesn't do a bad job, although I'm on the lookout for a black 1/4" mesh to replace the monofilament with. I don't see any light reduction in the tank from the monofilament, but the reflection back off of it when looking in the top is a bit much. I figure the black would be pretty much invisible.

 

[ChuckLawson]

Which pretty much brings us up to date. It's now about 3 1/2 weeks since firing up the tank, and everything seems to be going fairly smoothly. I've been trying to be good and not rush it, but I've added a few additions -- some frags from the frag swap, as well as a few zoas from some of my other thanks. The only new fish are a pair of Borbonius anthias:

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and a male Lyretail anthias from Joe (shrimp_fried_rice):

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Here's a couple of current full tank shots:

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Anyway, if anybody has read this far, thanks for putting up with my rambling and my crappy pictures

 

[Wes]

nice start, thanks for sharing. i love those anthias, they eating well and getting along? hopefully i can share pics of my 210 soon...

 

[ChuckLawson]

Thanks Wes.

The Borbonius? Doing very well so far (knock on wood); both eating mysis like there's no tomorrow. One's also eating pellets, but the other one hasn't figured it out, and apparently it frustrates him -- watched him mouth and spit out a pellet the other day, and he turned around and bit the body of a nassarius snail on the rock next to him in half... lol -- never seen a fish do that, let alone an anthias less than 2" long...

No aggression so far (to anyone other than snails anyway).

 

[BigJay]

Great build, it's coming along nicely.

The rockwork aquascape you've built is extremely well done. The algae is receding and is being replaced by purple coralline algae.

I'll tag along.

 

[ChuckLawson]

@BigJay wrote:

Thanks BigJay! It was a treat to be able to use some larger pieces finally; that center rock I've had for several years, and (all of my other tanks being 18" deep) I've never been able to use it in an aquascape.

As far as the coralline, in all fairness most of the pieces that are colored up there were rocks that were already covered, and had been cooking in the dark for a few months; after a week or two of light, the coralline is back on them in force. On the other hand, I noticed some "pepto-bismal-splatter" spots on some of the base rock today -- I'm hoping that's sign that they're beginning to get covered as well, and not just a patch of cyano starting

 

[ChuckLawson]

Just a couple of random coral shots. Trying to learn how to take a marginally less bad picture with my point-and-shoot...

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[TWycoff15]

were did you get your anthias?

 

[ChuckLawson]

@TWycoff15 wrote:

The Borbonius I got from Aquatic Trading in Garland; the male Lyretail came from another reefer.

 

[TWycoff15]

@ChuckLawson wrote:

The Borbonius I got from Aquatic Trading in Garland; the male Lyretail came from another reefer."]

Ya i live right by theyer (1 minute drive) thats why i asked cause he has them alot of the time. And was wondering if you got them from theyer.

 

[ChuckLawson]

I'm not doing a terribly great job of keeping this thread updated... Let me see if I can sum up what all has been going on with the tank...

Knowing fully well that I shouldn't, I took advantage of an online deal on some female lyretail anthias, and added them without adequate quarantine. Predictably, they failed one by one over about three days, first stopping eating, then showing some odd discoloration, then finally disappearing into the rockwork. The vendor was great about honoring their guarantee, and I thought that was the end of it, until about five days later, when my male anthias broke with (and succumbed to) the same thing. I immediately started a course of Prazipro, and (fortunately) didn't lose any others. As long as I was running Prazi in the tank, I took the opportunity to add a pair of cherub angels who seem to be doing quite well.

Somewhat more fun to report, I finished setting up automatic water changes with the Litermeter III. I'm currently changing around 2.5 gallons per day, drawing from a 55 gallon barrel located in the fishroom, and running old water down the drain. The plan next is to set up the 105 and 70 to do the same thing, and have all of the old water run into a 5 gallon holding tank ("bucket") with a drain standpipe and another fitting to allow it to be flushed into a 58 gallon quarantine tank for 5 gallon daily water changes on it.

As much as I liked the looks of the Oceanlight fixture, I eventually got frustrated trying to get both PAR and a color balance I liked in the tank without any actinic supplementation. I did a little horsetrading, and have replaced the Oceanlight with an "old school" Hamilton fixture running 3 250 watt SE bulbs (2 x XM 10K, 1 x XM 20K) and two 72" VHO Super Actinics. The Hamilton fixture is far less sleek looking, but I am much happier with the light in the tank. Currently the VHOs are running 12 hours a day, with the 250 watt halides running six hours each, staggered over a 10 hour period.

Last but not least, I got inspired by Brian to try to figure out the white balance on my crappy little point and shoot... I think I've got a much better handle on that, but I still need to wheedle it into letting me have more control over focus, and figure out which closet my ancient tripod is in.

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[ReefGod]

Tagging along, great progress, finally a big tank, all the frags you buy deserve it, lol.

 

[ChuckLawson]

@ReefGod wrote:

lol! I'll probably have to do another round on yours soon, now that I have a tank that (knock on wood) is doing a bit better with SPS.

 

[Jeff]

Love that Sunset Monti. Great work Chuck.