85g oceanic tank build

[Timfish]

Nice build thread! Regarding questions in your first post, Scott Micheal's book "500 Hundred Essential To Know Aqurium Species" lists a 30 gallon as minimum size for an adult Zebra or Fuzzy lionfish (20 for the smaller Fu Manchu). I would add the clownfish first and make sure they are doing well before adding the lionfish. (I've seen very large P. volitans swimming around with damsels they can easily eat but as the damsels were established first the lions assumed they belong there [this doesn't always work though]). You are trying a combination of animals that is a bit more of a challange to keep and will require closer attention to water quality. Your lionfish and moray will want lots of meaty foods compared to angels and tangs and this will contribute to a fster build up of waste products in the water. Arguably using organic seafood that has not been preserved with triphosphates or polyphosphates will save you in time more than what the additional labor cost in doing increased maintenance you will need to deal with the phospates in most seafoods from the stores.

You need to be careful getting large starfish as some like the Chocolate Chip will eat mushrooms. Cucumbers and small snails (I don't like snails personally) and hermits should be safe. As far as LEDs you want to build something that will give you 70 - 100 PAR at the bottom if you want to grow the various 'shrooms and zoas, there's no magic number as there are so many variables. I like hoods/canopies since the block the glare from the lights but it's a subjective issue.

[gibs]

Nice build thread! Regarding questions in your first post, Scott Micheal's book "500 Hundred Essential To Know Aqurium Species" lists a 30 gallon as minimum size for an adult Zebra or Fuzzy lionfish (20 for the smaller Fu Manchu). I would add the clownfish first and make sure they are doing well before adding the lionfish. (I've seen very large P. volitans swimming around with damsels they can easily eat but as the damsels were established first the lions assumed they belong there [this doesn't always work though]). You are trying a combination of animals that is a bit more of a challange to keep and will require closer attention to water quality. Your lionfish and moray will want lots of meaty foods compared to angels and tangs and this will contribute to a fster build up of waste products in the water. Arguably using organic seafood that has not been preserved with triphosphates or polyphosphates will save you in time more than what the additional labor cost in doing increased maintenance you will need to deal with the phospates in most seafoods from the stores.

You need to be careful getting large starfish as some like the Chocolate Chip will eat mushrooms. Cucumbers and small snails (I don't like snails personally) and hermits should be safe. As far as LEDs you want to build something that will give you 70 - 100 PAR at the bottom if you want to grow the various 'shrooms and zoas, there's no magic number as there are so many variables. I like hoods/canopies since the block the glare from the lights but it's a subjective issue.

Thanks for the advice Tim! Yeah I am pretty sure I am not going to get all of my "dream fish" I have been whittling it down more and more with research. The Fuzzy dwarf is a must, and I love the look of White Tail Bristletooth Tang which should be a good match. Still on the fence about the eel while there is a lot of people that keep snowflakes and zebras in smaller aquariums I think 2' is a bit much for my 85, maybe if it was a long but either way still considering it but it will probably be the last thing. I will probably try to get to black ocellaris first, I really like these guys and this will be my one concession to my daughters who want nemo in the tank LOL. I have read that the lionfish will almost always eventually snatch the hermits or any crustaceons up? I am not a big fan of snails either but they seem to be the safest that the lion or if I get a eel they won't munch on them. The starfish yeah I have read of the chocolate chip and a few others that will eat softies so still looking at them but this is another one that I am on the fence about. Now I have been looking at urchins and I think they are very cool and one or 2 of them in the tank would be nice

As far as the lighting goes I am building my own LED unit. I have a 20" heatsink that should hold 48 leds. Right now I have on order 12 cree warm whites and 24 cree royal blues. This will give me an additional twelve I can play with to try some ultra violets, reds, greens or maybe some neutral or cool whites. Canopy?? I like the look of the tank with it off but I like the idea of everything being covered and less chance of big splashes landing on the floor for whatever reason. Annnddd since I had my goby in my 16g last night jump out of it through a 3/4" hole in the lid for my finger I really don't want to see anything else on the floor. It's all a work in progress and I plan on the stocking to take at minimum a year....I have already learned nothing good happens in a tank fast

[Timfish]

. . . I am not going to get all of my "dream fish" . . .

Sounds like you already have another tank in the plans!

. . . Still on the fence about the eel while there is a lot of people that keep snowflakes and zebras in smaller aquariums I think 2' is a bit much for my 85 . . . I have read that the lionfish will almost always eventually snatch the hermits or any crustaceons up?

If you end up trying an eel get one that won't outgrow you tank, odds are you will have to tear your tank apart to catch one that outgrows your tank.

I've had a few lionfish and have not had a problem going after hermits or Coral Banded Shrimp I do not see them stalking like I see them track a prey item (try a bag full of ghost shrimp). Invariably when a group of hermits are put in a tank they will pick themselves off one by one. Since I've seen this happen irregardless of the fish species I would not think lionfish are the culprite when this happens.

Urchins are cool and excellent algae eaters. Read Martin Moe's research for NOAA. http://www.instantocean.com/Ocean-of-Knowledge/SeaScope/~/media/UPG/Files/Instant%20Ocean/SeaScope/Volume%2020_2003.ashx (scroll down about 2/3rds of the age).

[gibs]

. . . I am not going to get all of my "dream fish" . . .

Sounds like you already have another tank in the plans!

. . . Still on the fence about the eel while there is a lot of people that keep snowflakes and zebras in smaller aquariums I think 2' is a bit much for my 85 . . . I have read that the lionfish will almost always eventually snatch the hermits or any crustaceons up?

If you end up trying an eel get one that won't outgrow you tank, odds are you will have to tear your tank apart to catch one that outgrows your tank.

I've had a few lionfish and have not had a problem going after hermits or Coral Banded Shrimp I do not see them stalking like I see them track a prey item (try a bag full of ghost shrimp). Invariably when a group of hermits are put in a tank they will pick themselves off one by one. Since I've seen this happen irregardless of the fish species I would not think lionfish are the culprite when this happens.

Urchins are cool and excellent algae eaters. Read Martin Moe's research for NOAA. http://www.instantoc...me 20_2003.ashx (scroll down about 2/3rds of the age).

LOL you read my mind! If I ever get a place big enough I am already thinking of keeping my 85g as my reef tank then having another tank a little larger that will be FOWLR that I can keep all those fish that I really like but eat corals and such . You are not the only one who has said that about lionfish especially dwarf lions so I am really considering just getting some and seeing what happens! Thanks again for the advice!

[gibs]

Ok I could not stand it...I put the baffles in and did a small teeny tiny water test for about 30 minutes....I only put about 3 inches of water in it but it didn't leak a drop. And all the bubbles I was so freaked out about..90% of them went away. I don't know if I am lucky or if thats normal but man when it held water and didn't leak I wanted to run outside and dance in the street!

I did make a small error in not taking the hinges into account I thought leaving myself a inch door to door was fine...I lack about 1/4 of a inch of just being able to slide it in perfectly. As it is I have to put in at a angle. I am still happy as a clam though!

Edited August 6, 2012 by gibs

[gibs]

Put water in it this morning all the way up to top and left to run errands. Just got back been full for about 6 hours and no leaks... . LOL this has been quite fun and can't express how satisfied I am even though it has a ton of little flaws, such as when I put in the baffles I took all the paper out of the bottom and now have a ton of drip spots from the weld on. Some of the edges aren't 100% true and all that. But it works! Going to leave it up till tomorrow just ordered my skimmer/pump and ro/di. Going to start plumbing the whole tank in the next couple of days and my leds came in so got to put that together. Hoping to be freshwater testing by the end of this weekend if not before!

[bige]

Nice! It's very rewarding to build it yourself.

[gibs]

Nice! It's very rewarding to build it yourself.

Yes it is! Thanks Bige!

[gibs]

Hey guys not sure if you knew this or not...but it's christmas! Or my BRS order just came in

100g Octopus Skimmer

Eheim 320gph return pump

RO/DI unit with a ton of extra tubing and adapters and fittings

Air filter for octopus skimmer

Soda Lime for air filter

Dual line TDS meter for RO/DI unit.

Man I am probably going to see my GF this weekend in SA....but I am almost there!!!!!!

[scubasteve92]

Which oct skimmer did you go with? Needle Wheel?

[gibs]

Which oct skimmer did you go with? Needle Wheel?

Yes it's the NWB110

[scubasteve92]

Sweet, that is the one I am looking to get for my tank!

[gibs]

NIce! I am hoping to start cycling the tank by the end of next week I will let you know how it works!

[scubasteve92]

That'd be awesome! Im following along, so ill keep watch.

Also, is the footprint that is posted online accurate?

[sifuentes31]

Great build bud....keep up the good work!!!

[DerrickH]

This guy does some good work! And hes part of the apex cult....HAHAHAHA

[gibs]

That'd be awesome! Im following along, so ill keep watch.

Also, is the footprint that is posted online accurate?

I will have to get back to you on that haven't even unpacked it yet!

Great build bud....keep up the good work!!!

Thanks!

This guy does some good work! And hes part of the apex cult....HAHAHAHA

LOL thanks Derrick

[gibs]

Ok so got my stuff yesterday so first thing to set up was my ro/di. So here it is.

Mounted to the wall added a few tie wraps and hooked up everything. This kit for 159.00 from BRS is awesome I had tons of extra hose and connectors left over and I am really impressed with it.

Attached to the cold side (don't use the hot it kills the ro membrane), on my washer dryer hook up using a water hose y valve. No leaks and everything works well.

This is my #1 line between the RO and the DI on the tds meter, as per BRS's recommendations. If it's put between the RO and DI you can see when your TDS starts coming up out of the RO and know it's time to start looking at replacing the filters and membrane. I did hook it up first to my main line coming in and it was 256.

This was line #2 coming out of the DI unit. 0 is good all day long

Filled up my 5 gallon jug in about 30 minutes and no leaks and everything looks awesome I am completely happy with this system so far!

[gibs]

Ok so I went this evening to drop off some stuff to a fellow club member and I got so inspired by his tank I came home and worked on it all night since the GF canceled. Or I was just impatient and really wanted to see water in this thing. Your choice I am happy with either LOL. So here goes.

So first off I had ordered some weldon #16 to fix the small tiny leaks in my baffles in my sump I made. Worked very well it's much thicker and I just ran a bead of it around all the problem areas and let sit (I actually did this about noon today so it has about 9 hours cure time....recommended is 24..I am impatient sue me!). As you can see refugium and overflow/skimmer areas now hold water like a champ and I have no leaks in the return at all! I did however put the sump in backwards and had to siphon all the water out and flip it around.

The sump is pretty level even though it looks off from the pic but I think that is more the angle than anything.

Next was plumbing I went into Fishy business the other day and talked to Shane. Pretty nice guy even though he is a little rough around the edges. He had the idea instead of using ball valves and splitting off my over flow to run the pump to 2 over hang nozzles and run my 3/4 bulkhead to my refugium and the 1" to the skimmer. Seemed like a good idea to me so I did it! Pretty straightforward plumping and I put a union high on both of the PVC so I could disconnect and make it easy to remove sump if needed. I ran both lines below the water level ( more on that in a minute).

This is my lines coming up to my nozzles from my return pump in the sump. I have to figure out a way to stick these where I want and keep them in one place. Any ideas?

[gibs]

Here it is up on it's stand and looking beautiful!

Length ways

Width ways its not 100% level but from what I can gather I am in the money.

Holy crap water! /crossfingers

Nice shot of the refugium overflow working.

Discerning readers will notice here that, that is not the Eheim I posted I ordered in a earlier post. I got this 152-620gph tunze off another guy for 50$. I was planning on saving it as a spare pump or for another project, but the Eheim I needed to go buy another adapter for to make it work with my plumbing....So I used this one. I may still get the eheim up, but this one is adjustable and seems to be working quite nice.

Tip on plumbing when you put your over flow pipes in...don't glue them till your one hundred percent sure they are the same height...the 3/4 was just high enough that it wasn't getting any flow so it's hard to see in the picture but the one furthest away I had to use some snips and metal shears to get it cut down enough to get some flow in it to my refugium. This brings up a BIG point that I need you guys to help me figure out where I screwed up....this thing works beautifully but man those drains going to the sump.....sound louder than my bathtub draining. It is BAD please help, I am thinking that I am making it work to hard because I have the PVC running to below the water line in the sumps. I did this so it would make very little noise but I am refraining from doing anything till I get some advice on how to quiet this down....again please advice?

Final shot with all the water put in siphon out of the way and pump chugging along.

Here it is full of water!

Ok final thoughts of the day before sleep. Other than the noise I have no leaks and everything is working great. The protein skimmer which says it's foot print is 6" x 10" is a little off. My skimmer area is 8" x 15", the 10" on the skimmer is perfectly fine, saying 6" will work though is a bit of a stretch even though it does measure 6".....However in my 8" sump the inlet for the pump barely has any clearance from the baffle or side of sump. In fact when I first started it up it wasn't working to well and after looking it over realized that it was almost touching the baffle. I turned as far as I could to get it back and I have a little more than a inch of clearance now. It's working great but I am going to have to work on a wedge or something to make sure it doesn't accidently get turned back and stop up the inlet. Just something to think about for anyone else wanting to use this skimmer. I also had to raise mine up a bit with a old tackle box....probably get some eggcrate underneath it as a permanent solution. Water level on the tank is as much as I can measure it the same all the way around with maybe a 1/8" difference but with the water moving it's hard to get a really accurate reading.... LMK what you guys think I am super excited to get this thing started cycling, plan is to let it run all weekend, and Monday I have to go out of town when I get back on Tuesday going to do a final cleaning of the tank (after it was filled I found a few spots I missed), and start filling with RO water and looking for some live rock!

[scubasteve92]

Looks great man! I like sump setup.

Thanks for the info on the PS. I have a reef octo HOB PS on my tank now, and I really like it. So I will probably go with that one.

[Teresa]

Looks awesome! One thought - can you zip-tie the return lines together behind the overflow so you don't see the tubing?

If you search sump, overflow, noise, I'm sure you'll find plenty of threads on how to silence an overflow. There's a lot of info about it on the web as well.

[gibs]

Looks great man! I like sump setup.

Thanks for the info on the PS. I have a reef octo HOB PS on my tank now, and I really like it. So I will probably go with that one.

Hey no problem man hope it was helpful. Thanks for the comment!

Looks awesome! One thought - can you zip-tie the return lines together behind the overflow so you don't see the tubing?

If you search sump, overflow, noise, I'm sure you'll find plenty of threads on how to silence an overflow. There's a lot of info about it on the web as well.

Thanks Teresa! Hmm haven't thought about that but yes I could...will probably wait a few days and make sure I am 100% with my plumbing before doing though.

[gibs]

Ok I spent a lot of time yesterday researching and making multiple trips to Home Depot. I built myself a dursos pipe and a stock man pipe. Both helped but it was still pretty loud..a friend told me today that probably the holes I was drillling was to small or to big but most people use a valve and airline tubing to control it. I didn't ready anything about that in my research but that does make more sense since both of these use air to control the fall of the water. However what I ended up doing late in the day was going to home depot and purchasing 2 ball valves. The purpose of this is to slow the flow down to the exact amount of your pump. It took a little bit of doing and both of the ones I bought from home depot are really hard to adjust (bought some off brs to fix this), but the tank is 100% silenced. It's almost quieter than my nano now! Here is a pic

Tip of the day! Dry fit all of your plumbing and if possible don't glue any of it until you do your freshwater testing so it's alot easier to take apart and cut up if needed!

[gibs]

Small update! I drained all the water out today and did a bunch of last minute cleaning (90% of it was fine but man with water in it, I really saw a ton of little spots I missed) got all that done repositioned it to it's final spot and started filling with RO water. Thanks to Derrick who had some extra line and unions I was able to run the RO line directly to the tank and slowly filling it up. Also blacked out the back today with the seaview tank background stuff, also used their adhesive on it. Looks good thinking of running a bead of silicone on the whole back edge to double up on keeping it in place and getting no water behind it. Anyways here is a pic of it in it's current state, picked up 50 lbs of live rock tonight and picking up another 50 tomorrow. Got it stored in my saltwater mixing trash can right now, til I get saltwater going in the tank.

Also got a small delay with finishing up my led's and my canopy, I was using some fans I had laying around in storage, which was fine, but one didn't work and one had broken shroud and made a ton of noise. So I ordered some new ones from newegg and some fan grill/filters. Should be here tomorrow or Thursday so I will finish that up also. Got a Tunze 6212 wave box for flow in the tank, (thanks VU deezy!) so ready to see that in action. Also had to order some floats from BRS to finish up my ATO. Plans over the next couple of days are to move my apex, get the saltwater mixed in tank, start adding live rock, and finish up ATO and canopy.

Again any advice or just general comments are always appreciated. Thanks guys!