Wazzupmac’s office tank - 150 gallon

[wazzupmac]

After about 2 years, I’ve upgraded my office tank from a 30 gallon Red Sea to a CDA 150 that I picked up from @Meshmez. I’m excited to see where it takes me and the summer is a great time for me to tinker with all of the intricacies of testing new equipment - I caught my boss at the right moment when I asked to put 150-210 gallons of water in the college counseling office.

Tank - CDA 150 — 60*24*24
Stand - custom built by @Meshmez
Sump - Truvu 60 gallon custom built with 1 baffle
Return - COR20 custom plumbed 1.25” —with 3/4” tank return — gonna update this later to better hide the vinyl tubing
Circulation - 2 MP40’s - thinking of counter/cross flow with 2-3 MP10’s
Lights - 2 G6 Radion XR30 pros and 1-2 Kessil A360X
Skimmer - TBD
Manifold - to be built - BRS Deluxe Reactors on hand
UV - Pentair 25W - to be plumbed

Tank has about 120-170 lbs of live rock from small tank and Rubbermaid (8 months), 120 lbs of dry CaribSea aragonite sand, and lots of CUC (snails, hermits, emerald crabs).

Current stocking is 2 designer clownfish, 4 PJ Cardinals, 1 Leopard Wrasse, and 1 Possum Wrasse. Coming additions - 2 clownfish from @Srt4eric, 1 Green Mandarin Goby, 1 Six Line Wrasse, and 1 2-3” Kole Tang.

More to come….

 

[wazzupmac]

Early photos of it coming together. Just waiting to install RMS rail with lights next week and the Neptune Apex and assorted automation.

 

[H2OPlayar]

Be honest...how many students are going to pivot to marine biology after their first counseling session in this office? Beautiful setup!

 

[wazzupmac]

Some quick updates:
RMS rail system is supposed to show up on Thursday and full lighting will be mounted on rails by the end of the week -- 2 Gen6 XR30 Pro and 1-3 a360x (on super low setting for more shimmer/visual look in the office)
Breaking in skimmer - Reef Octopus 150 -- nothing being produced - just bubbles -- need to feed more?
Reactors mounted in cabinet - 2 BRS deluxe canisters installed but not operating until I am seeing excess nutrients/nitrates/phosphates
Neptune Trident running for 3-5 days now -- all parameters looking good (Alk - 9.25-10.1; Calc - 384-409; Mg - 1374-1389)

Picked up 8 blue/green chromis, 3 more PJ cardinals (small), and Gem tang from AC on Saturday -- everything settled in well, eating, and playing well with each other

Observations:
Seems that coralline algae on live rock is consuming more Alk than I thought it would -- you can only read so much -- sometimes you have to see something happen before your eyes
Coral got stressed with no LEDs (lights) for 1 week -- attached a360x to chair to provide lighting until rail system shows up
Programming Apex is challenging but when it works, it is great -- keeping a tight temp of .4F max swing (is this overkill), pumps (COR20 and MP40s) and skimmer shutdown for 5 minutes around feeding,
Neptune needs to build/sell something akin to an Aquabus hub -- it would be nice to just plug stuff into fewer modules and monitor from there

 

[Coral reefer]

Good luck. Looks fun

 

[Qwiv]

Re Aquabus Hub,
if you can find an older energy bar 8, it has 6 aquabus ports.

looking good.

 

[Matthew Meyer]

Looks great. I need to get another vortech wavemaker too to, to mix up the water. Fish looks great!

 

[wazzupmac]

Re Aquabus Hub,
if you can find an older energy bar 8, it has 6 aquabus ports.

looking good.

I do have an EB8 but I don't like how it shows up on the dashboard in fusion or the app -- it shows up as an AMMeter and not as easy to just click on each outlet do whatever I need to do or see which outlets are doing what they are supposed to do. I suppose that once everything is operational and I've figured out which devices I want plugged into which EB832, EB4, or EB8 I will be able to reduce the clutter and know where to look quickly.

Right now I have 2 EB832, 1 EB4, and 1 EB8 hooked up.

Non-SUMP DUTY: EB832 - 1 will handle the skimmer, UV, lights (Radion), fan (evaporative cooling in sump), emergency heater #3
SUMP DUTY: EB832 - 2 will handle Kessils (though not in sump but to spread the load around), return pump (COR15 or Varios S8), pumps for GFO and Carbon reactors, sump/cabinet lights, ATO/Tunze
EB4 has the heaters - my office is temp controlled to the chagrin of the head of maintenance (I keep it at 74F) - if the heaters or EB4 fails, I'll get the alert and the 3rd heater will kick on at 76F (it will be connected to an EB832).

A thought just kicked in based on what you informed me of -- I might put all of the modules and display on the EB8 since I won't be worried so much about power draw and they will be largely handling auxiliary functions such as leak detector, flow meter for UV and manifold, etc.

I'm lucky that my office has 20A outlets! 3 outlets on wall behind tank to spread the load for the power bars.

 

[wazzupmac]

Some pictures related to supplying/handling power for the tank and the UV placement.

Wire clutter will be the last task after all equipment is installed and running and labeled.

 

[Qwiv]

I do have an EB8 but I don't like how it shows up on the dashboard in fusion or the app -- it shows up as an AMMeter and not as easy to just click on each outlet do whatever I need to do or see which outlets are doing what they are supposed to do. I suppose that once everything is operational and I've figured out which devices I want plugged into which EB832, EB4, or EB8 I will be able to reduce the clutter and know where to look quickly.

Right now I have 2 EB832, 1 EB4, and 1 EB8 hooked up.

Non-SUMP DUTY: EB832 - 1 will handle the skimmer, UV, lights (Radion), fan (evaporative cooling in sump), emergency heater #3
SUMP DUTY: EB832 - 2 will handle Kessils (though not in sump but to spread the load around), return pump (COR15 or Varios S8), pumps for GFO and Carbon reactors, sump/cabinet lights, ATO/Tunze
EB4 has the heaters - my office is temp controlled to the chagrin of the head of maintenance (I keep it at 74F) - if the heaters or EB4 fails, I'll get the alert and the 3rd heater will kick on at 76F (it will be connected to an EB832).

A thought just kicked in based on what you informed me of -- I might put all of the modules and display on the EB8 since I won't be worried so much about power draw and they will be largely handling auxiliary functions such as leak detector, flow meter for UV and manifold, etc.

I'm lucky that my office has 20A outlets! 3 outlets on wall behind tank to spread the load for the power bars.

Yah, I have things I don’t care about power metering connected to the EB8. A lot of my stuff is DC so the meter doesn’t work very well anyways.

 

[PeetaJai]

Looking forward to see how you plumb your UV. Will the output from UV going to tank or back to sump?

 

[wazzupmac]

Looking forward to see how you plumb your UV. Will the output from UV going to tank or back to sump?

Will drill a hole through stand to manifold and plumb directly back into tank - nice 1” hole in eurobrace by the return

 

[PeetaJai]

Will drill a hole through stand to manifold and plumb directly back into tank - nice 1” hole in eurobrace by the return

Nice, I was thinking about drilling my stand as well. Looking forward to see your finish product then ill copy it!

 

[wazzupmac]

RMS and rail showed up today - quick initial installation pics attached. Last Kessil a360x will be added next week when I shutdown the RSM Nano in the garage.

Kit is surprisingly stable on the eurobrace - supported by weight and tension from the rail. Scary to have $3K+ in lights just hanging there. Will do cord management for lights after I add the final Kessil tomorrow or next Tuesday.

 

[Reefinglens]

RMS and rail showed up today - quick initial installation pics attached. Last Kessil a360x will be added next week when I shutdown the RSM Nano in the garage.

Kit is surprisingly stable on the eurobrace - supported by weight and tension from the rail. Scary to have $3K+ in lights just hanging there. Will do cord management for lights after I add the final Kessil tomorrow or next Tuesday.

I've been thinking about doing something similar. Get the best of both worlds Kessil shimmer and Radions spectrum and output!

Great progress and looking good @wazzupmac

 

[wazzupmac]

Minor updates / cleaning up office / skimmer starting to pull crud out of water column

4 more bottles of AlgaeBarn ecopods seeded - 4 from initial set up prior to intro of fish (2-3 days to hide) - small number seen in sump

Testing out different seaweed/nori - red then purple then green

 

[wazzupmac]

Hooked up the GFO and Carbon reactors today. Still gotta do the CO2 scrubber - I hate crawling around on the ground playing with the dump but the light at the end of the tunnel re: plumbing looks to be getting brighter.

Cleaned the skimmer body, neck, and cup yesterday - it smelled like death!!! Had to scrubs my hands for 5 minutes.

Looks like diatoms are creeping in - lowered the light intensity and duration. Hoping GFO lowers whatever silicates exist though all rock was live after 8 months in a Rubbermaid. Phosphates should be lowered though I haven’t tested in a few weeks. Nitrates are less than 10 based on weekly testing. No new fish but lots of corals thanks to the frag swap - thanks all!

Plumbing a 25W Pentair later this week - I’m excited for the project (not really but it needs to be done).

pics tomorrow - sump looks ugly but it super functional and accessible - btw, I hate filter socks.

 

[wazzupmac]

Quick update:
Installed the CO2 scrubber today as recirculating (picture below) - we'll see how it does. My CO2 wasn't low but it wasn't high either
The GFO reactor seems to have fully kicked in (diatoms faded within days) and doing its job (along with the carbon filter). Water looks great - maybe not so great in picture below because I just fed food, phyto, and zooplanktons. I wouldn't call the diatoms a full fledged bloom but it didn't look appealing to me though most co-workers barely noticed it.

I just attached a bunch of frags to the aquascape that were sitting on frag rocks based on how like coral were doing with their temporary placement.
Created a mushroom garden (pictures below) and a mini euphyllia garden (pix attached) on a chunk of rocks close to the base of the aquascape.

It's coming together -- hopefully this week I actually add the 3rd kessil a360x and have the lights finished, plumb the UV? (box from BRS is sitting on a desk in my office - pic attached). I'll clean up the wires and sump when I feel motivated for 2 hours.

Lastly, I'm gonna set up the DOS(es) and DDR. Thanks to @JVU I'll have a prettier waste container than a 5-gallon water jug for the Trident and use the remaining Core7 1L jugs for any additional dosing containers I want to keep laying around in the stand. One day, I'll get around to adding the BRS 6-stage RODI system in the Biology lab that is in the adjoining room to my office - serendipity! A 1/2-1" discreetly placed hole in the wall and I have my RO water on-site.

Thanks all for the support and guidance thus far.

 

[wazzupmac]

Ooop! As I was placing the Yellow Scopas hybrid that I picked up from @Holly94583 in the acclimation box it wriggled and fell into the display tank. No aggression with the gem tang that has been in the tank for 4 weeks. The gem is smaller but knows the tank well and can fit into every crevice.

And a big shout out to @Wlachnit who I picked up a mp60 from yesterday. It’s working like a charm and the counter-current flow is amazing. It kicked up so much detritus that I had to change the filter socks that were just changed yesterday.

Some photos attached - I’m liking the look thus far. Still need to do some plumbing.

 

[wazzupmac]

More photos…