Jody's 55 Gallon Reef Ready Build

J

jreimers

Well... Here I go... Upgrading already.

My 36 Gallon is only a little over 9 months old and yet here I am upgrading. I started down this saltwater road because my girlfriend's son is autistic and I discovered he fascinated with water and fish. What I didn't know up front was that he is also fascinated with watching things fall in water, so he has a habit of dropping things into the water or just wanting to put his fingers in it. So I found that I really needed a canopy and I couldn't find a suitable one for my 36 gallon bow front. I thought about getting a biocube and then thought if I was going to have to get another tank.. I might as well go bigger. Why only a 55 gallon you ask. Well I live in an apartment and space is a premium so 55 gallons is about all I have room for.

Ben (bdare), said I was obligated to do a build log so I will attempt to do so....


Here is a picture of the tank...

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I didn't know much about reef ready tanks, but Ben (bdare) and Heath (Heathd) have both been very helpful. Heath even volunteered to come over and help me plumb it.

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I couldn't do a traditional stand pipe so I am using a modified (longer) version of the Gurgle Buster. (Thanks to M@! for pointing me in that direction)

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Here is a detail of the Gurgle Buster.

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Plumbing has started. The sump is a 20 gallon high I bought from bdare and as I mentioned before Heathd has been helping me with the plumbing. I am considering modifying a 5 gallon jug to use as an ATO. I am using a mag 9.5 for my return pump .

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Here is a photo showing why I can't use a traditional standpipe.. just not enough room...

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A few more random photos...

60 pounds of new live sand for the new tank...

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A shot from the top looking down...

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I am still waiting on my skimmer to show up... hopefully in a day or so.. here is a shot from under the tank showing the bulkheads... it's a tight fit there too..

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Finished the plumbing last night.. Thank you Heathd once again for your help. And my new skimmer came in. I have read really good reviews of this skimmer on other forums and for the price I figured I might as well give it a shot. I plan on doing a full review of the skimmer once the tank is up and running. The Skimmer is an SC165. I bought it off of ebay for $100.00 shipping included. It uses an Atman 2500 pump and is made of heavy acrylic. They didn't cheap out on this one.

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Here are some pics of the finished plumbing with the skimmer installed. I had to rebuild my sump a little. The skimmer was about 1/8" too wide to fit so I moved the weir by 1/2" to make room.

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Looking good Jody! Can't wait to see how it progresses. Looks like you were able to get past the union issue.
 
@Heathd wrote:
you made quick work of getting the baffles moved and siliconed back in Tapatalk said:
Hey... what was wrong with those baffles? (He bought the sump from me [smilie=wink.gif] )
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He was a quarter inch short on getting the skimmer to fit into its designated chamber. The handy work looked good though :D

Tapatalk
 
@Heathd wrote:
He was a quarter inch short on getting the skimmer to fit into its designated chamber. The handy work looked good though :D Tapatalk said:
ahhhh. Glad to hear it wasn't a design flaw :)


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I am here: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=32.899923,-96.466308
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@bdare wrote:
Looks like you were able to get past the union issue. said:
I exchanged my slip bulkheads for threaded bulkheads. Solved the union problem. I have one more union I think I will add (right above the return valve and before the 90 that leads to the other 2 unions). That way I can remove all the plumbing from the sump without having to unbracket (is that a word?) the plumbing from the stand.

Oh, and my reefkeeper lite will be showing up on Monday. Looking forward to seeing if I can learn how to program it.
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This is an upgrade tank for me. I will be moving my mixed reef over from my 36 gallon bowfront. I don't have much in it really, some rics, a couple of montis, a couple of birdsnests, and a couple of candycanes right now. I have 200 watts of LEDS I will be using for lighting.
 
Thank you, Matt. I just used the rocks I already had and with Heathd's help I tried for a more open look. I still need to epoxy some of them into place. I have a Coral Beauty and a couple of turbo snails that think they are bulldozers.
 
More Pics...

Updated Plumbing.. We added a union so that I can break apart the entire system without having to remove the mounting brakets.
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Here's the Working Sump/Fuge. I may have Marc build me a custom one with a built in auto top off
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My Reefkeeper Lite System. I need to add another PC4, and I want the Net Module. Probably means updating to the Elite sooner than I expected.
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My new Ebay Skimmer working hard. This is after 1 day folks!
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