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Jake's 180 Build


Jakedoza

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I've been in stealth mode for the past few years.. Yes, I still take photos.. Yes, I still have my 135 reef tank up and running.. Yes, I have moved it 3 times.. Yes, I have lost a lot of coral and fish.. Yes, I am now happily married, have a new house, and my wife approves of and supports the reefing.. Now that all of that is out of the way, on with the new project. As some may know I have reconfigured my old 135 to a peninsula setup and it sits between our living room and kitchen as seen below.. Please keep in mind that we were still in process of moving in during these photos.

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Here are some closeups..

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Ok.. so now on to the new tank. I picked up this tank from a neighbor in our new neighborhood for $175.. It is a 180gal tank that is 72"x24"x24".. it is not drilled and came with a stand he had built himself that is sturdy enough to hold a tank 8 times this size..

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So.. Plans..
clean and drill tank.. but drill tank in such a way that it will not permanently deem this tank as a peninsula tank.

Shorten the stand to cabinet height and install panel doors for easy access to sump.

customize canopy for new LED fixtures
New LED fixtures I'm looking at, or at least something very similar.. I've heard good things about these and at the price.. why not..

http://www.ebay.com/itm/WELLPAR-165W-LED-Aquarium-Light-Dimmable-Full-Spectrum-for-Coral-Reef-Fish-Tank-/181686921507?hash=item2a4d626923:g:oyQAAOSw5b1XItYh

Cleaning time.. I cleaned all the sand out of the bottom and started scraping all of the algae off of the glass.

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okay.. I've been very lazy updating this..

so I decided to drill the tank in a way that it will not kill it as being ONLY a peninsula tank. So I have decided to drill two holes in one of the back corners for a silent overflow design. Not knowing for sure if the tank was or wasn't tempered I just decided to go for it. I did try some preliminary LCD and polarized glasses thing and decided that it wasn't.. I think.. so here it goes..

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okay.. Here we go..

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whew.. not tempered..

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cerveza time..

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Jake I bought 2 of these similar LED fixtures off of Amazon, they have a remote, and no need for timers cause it has one built in that u set to the time u want. U can also dim the whites and blues individually. Pretty cool. I have mine set at 20% and they are bright. Look at my new 40g tank build for pics.

Sent from my XT1058 using Tapatalk

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Jake I bought 2 of these similar LED fixtures off of Amazon, they have a remote, and no need for timers cause it has one built in that u set to the time u want. U can also dim the whites and blues individually. Pretty cool. I have mine set at 20% and they are bright. Look at my new 40g tank build for pics.

Sent from my XT1058 using Tapatalk

Will do! From all the research I have done on them they look to be pretty good lights.. especially for the price.

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. . . and my wife approves of and supports the reefing. . .

Soooo, she found a sucker to setup and maintain a reef tank for her? grin.png

One thought for the overflow is to do a rock tower at the end farthest from the wall equadistant from the sides and end then hide your overflow in the center of it. The overflow would only need to be a few inches in diameter. If you move the tank the bulkhead could be plugged or a piece of glass could be siliconed over the hole. Return lines could come up over the end against the wall so the only hole that would need to be drilled would be for the overflow.

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. . . and my wife approves of and supports the reefing. . .

Soooo, she found a sucker to setup and maintain a reef tank for her? grin.png

One thought for the overflow is to do a rock tower at the end farthest from the wall equadistant from the sides and end then hide your overflow in the center of it. The overflow would only need to be a few inches in diameter. If you move the tank the bulkhead could be plugged or a piece of glass could be siliconed over the hole. Return lines could come up over the end against the wall so the only hole that would need to be drilled would be for the overflow.

My thoughts are to do a closed loop as well.. Thoughts?

Sent from my SM-N910P using Tapatalk

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  • 2 months later...

so.. the guy that I bought the tank from put soooo much freaking wood into this stand that I had to remove about half of it. I also shortened the stand by 3 inches to be counter height..

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My helper. :)

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I purchased a piece of ABS plastic and cut it to size and melted it to make the 90 degree bend and then I sealed it in place.. I think it turned out alright.

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I pulled all of the plastic edging off the top of the tank and there was no center brace... so I decided to make my own and leave the edging off.

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I then coated it in silicon to seal it.

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Moving day was a *%*.. I started the day by draining the tank into a couple of tubs and a tank I borrowed from River City Aquatics. At this point I did not have a plan as to who could help me move the old tank out and the new tank in..

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I made a few texts and a buddy of mine came over and we just handled it.. We moved this one out and moved the new one in. Let me tell you, a 300lb tank really needs more than just two of us to move, but we handled it. The wife helped too (she is awesome!).

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Over time I will finish the stand and seal it up and build a canopy to house some new LEDs that I want to get.. I need to sell the other tank first though... so, for now this is what I have. smile.png

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Once things settle down a bit with the house and getting cars running I'm wanting to host a meeting or two and get back involved. Life really threw me a huge curve a couple of years ago, but I'm better off now. We are doing good to make ends meet and I'm trying to get the other 2 of the 3 vehicles going that we have. Life is grand!

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I've been in stealth mode for the past few years.. Yes, I still take photos.. Yes, I still have my 135 reef tank up and running.. Yes, I have moved it 3 times.. Yes, I have lost a lot of coral and fish.. Yes, I am now happily married, have a new house, and my wife approves of and supports the reefing.. Now that all of that is out of the way, on with the new project. As some may know I have reconfigured my old 135 to a peninsula setup and it sits between our living room and kitchen as seen below.. Please keep in mind that we were still in process of moving in during these photos.

IMG_20160511_114405%20(Small).jpg

IMG_20160511_114440%20(Small).jpg

Here are some closeups..

IMG_20160519_193415%20(Small).jpg

IMG_20160607_211105%20(Small).jpg

IMG_20160607_211113%20(Small).jpg

IMG_20160511_132649%20(Small).jpg

Ok.. so now on to the new tank. I picked up this tank from a neighbor in our new neighborhood for $175.. It is a 180gal tank that is 72"x24"x24".. it is not drilled and came with a stand he had built himself that is sturdy enough to hold a tank 8 times this size..

IMG_20160622_183504%20(Small).jpg

So.. Plans..

clean and drill tank.. but drill tank in such a way that it will not permanently deem this tank as a peninsula tank.

Shorten the stand to cabinet height and install panel doors for easy access to sump.

customize canopy for new LED fixtures

New LED fixtures I'm looking at, or at least something very similar.. I've heard good things about these and at the price.. why not..

http://www.ebay.com/itm/WELLPAR-165W-LED-Aquarium-Light-Dimmable-Full-Spectrum-for-Coral-Reef-Fish-Tank-/181686921507?hash=item2a4d626923:g:oyQAAOSw5b1XItYh

Cleaning time.. I cleaned all the sand out of the bottom and started scraping all of the algae off of the glass.

IMG_20160623_193011%20(Small).jpg

IMG_20160623_193016%20(Small).jpg

I picked up two of the Wellpar lights for my 120 and I also got one for my 36gal Fluval M90. I have an AI Prime on it now that doesn't cover the tank well, so I picked up another Wellpar 165w.

I'll let you know how the corals respond to these. The 36 is a mixed tank with softies, LPS, and a few SPS.

John

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  • 2 months later...

Update...
It has been a while since my last post about this.. I'll admin, I've been lazy about posting updates. So here it goes. I got tired of waiting for the 135 to sell to get new LEDs so I decided to go ahead and get them on credit and pay myself back when it does sell. I also scored a new used apex controller and could not be happier.

These are the lights I ended up getting off of Amazon. They were $99 each.

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The spectrum is a bit more red/white even with the blues on compared to the BML LEDs that I have. The whites and blues are on separate drivers and are dimmable via a POT knob.

Know knowing the size of these suckers (a lot larger than anticipated), I began planning on building the canopy. I wanted a design that is sleek and will also allow me to access the tank without being in the way. This also being a peninsula I wanted the ability to access the tank from either side. So, I decided to go with a gull wing type design.

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I want to apologize now, but I did not take photos of the process of wiring these things up to the apex controller, but I was able to do so. I took them apart and discovered that the drivers being used are a $7 part and that they are 0 - +10v dimmable. I soldered a CAT5 cable to the proper wires on the drivers so I could utilize one cord for both channels. I did this for all 4 fixtures and terminated them with an RJ45 connector. I created a One to Four split cable using CAT5 to go from the one v1/v2 port on the Apex. You cannot do this with a data cable, but you can do this with a voltage cable. This made it where I could connect all 4 fixtures to the Apex via one cable. I created the canopy so I could hang the fixtures inside.

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Next step will be to mount 4 of the 6 BMLs in the canopy as well and to the apex for dimming so they can run for midday full lights. the other 2 will go on a frag tank under the tank. My next step for the canopy and stand is to find some used fence pickets and make it look rustic.

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  • 1 month later...

I took the week off between Christmas and New Years this year so I could just chillax. I helped a buddy with his fence and took some sections home with me. I had an idea for the stand and I built it with the intent of skinning it somehow with something. anyway... enough of my rambling.

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