Cook's 180 gallon

[Cook]

I always like to start with a little history for these threads. This 180 Gallon Marineland Reef Ready tank was Leo's (@lmm1967) and I am very glad to have it for an opportunity to move from my Planet Aquarium 90 Gallon display to the largest tank I could possibly fit into it's place without moving to another house. This build wouldn't have happened without @Doberman13 and @Adam as the night before we were set to move this tank, I got Covid. These guys still moved the tank to my garage with me looking on from the inside unable to do anything. Huge thanks for your help guys!

So why did I want do this? The 90 gallon was my first reef tank in years and while I renovated the rock structure last year, I couldn't change the fact that I had a lot of live rock in that tank. I pulled a few pieces out, but it's still a wall of rock. Also, as my corals have grown, the flow within the tank has diminished and that is not helping my issues with algae in several forms. I'm facing algae issues again and taking that tank apart to reset it is the best time to move to a bigger tank.

I'm going to be taking some liberties with this build and we will all see together how that's going to work out. Last time, I rinsed all the sand within my existing tank and it took hours and hours and is the fastest way to crash a tank, if not careful enough. This time, I'm replacing the sand with new. I have considered going bare bottom, but I think that might be taking a little too much risk from a stability standpoint. We will see when the time comes to start adding the sand.

 

[Cook]

Shower pan liner installed. This is a must have for me especially after this trick saved my hardwood floors when I overflowed the refugium on my 80 gallon frag tank.

 

[lmm1967]

glad to be able to follow along here and see the build/transformation.

 

[Cook]

Bath time. Starting to see how much bigger this tank is versus the 90, it’s a lot of glass to clean. It took hours last night. Bought two bathtub stoppers to fill and clean the overflows.

 

[Cook]

Onto the sump area. Everything that was outside or separate in my 90 gallon now has to be inside the cabinet including electrical. When I started this, it seemed like I had a lot of room as there is an extra 2 feet here, but as I am planning the equipment, it's proving to be more of a challenge.

 

[Cook]

The sump is set in place and the basic equipment layout confirmed. Plumbing for overflows, drain lines, and return roughed out. Not going to be fun to glue together as there is little room for error. I went with the Sicce 7.0 DC pump for return.

 

[Cook]

I am changing the siphon overflow strainers as well. I went with a tower design that has more surface area. Old strainers for comparison.

 

[Cook]

I have been stalled out on this project as I have gone back and forth on a few decisions related to going up to this size tank. I finally disassembled the PVC plumbing and glued everything together tonight with the intention of leak testing the system in the garage tomorrow. I also have a 25w UV sterilizer from my previous frag system that I want to connect. I have to repurpose the unions on it and the plumbing takes up more room than I can spare currently.

 

[Cook]

The leak test was successful, eventually. One of the siphon drain bulkheads leaked when I tested it and I was not looking forward to cutting out the bulkhead and doing it over again. Before I did that, I took the bulkhead loose twice, the first time the leak was a lot better but still there. The second time I cleaned the gasket and tightened the bulkhead nut after I had reconnected the drain union. The leak resolved itself. I filled the tank in the garage and got the drains set, the left one drains faster than the right, but they are both quiet so no issues.

 

[Cook]

An update is long overdue. I elected to move this whole system on dollies as one unit with the sump and plumbing connected from the successful leak test. This created a few challenges inside the house, but I was eventually successful. I had to drain and move my 90 gallon to set the 180 in it's place. Effectively, I had to take the 90 gallon down twice to do this. When it came time to start moving things over, the fish were separated from the live rock and corals. For the 180, I went with new aragonite sand and I power washed all the live rock as I have done in the past to knock down GHA. I chose to also use FritzZyme Turbo Start 900 shortly after I filled the tank with water. I followed that up about a week later with Dr. Tim's EcoBalance. One or both of these helped me kick a cyano problem that was forming in the old tank.

 

[Cook]

Lighting, this was an expensive journey as I scrapped my lighting plan three times. I love the look of Kessils. I planned to go with two Kessil AP9X's for this tank. I bought them before I realized that the braces on a 180 wouldn't let me use them with the stock mounting brackets. I was having great success with the two Reefi Uno's I placed into my hybrid T5 light on my 80 gallon frag tank, so I bought three of those used with mounts since the Uno 2.0's were coming out in a few months and the originals were out of stock. The tank mounts for the Uno's were 1/4" too narrow to fit the rim of the tank and I spent a few days trying to modify them before giving up. Daniel at Reefi suggested moving to a bar setup, pointed me to the vendor he used for all his 2040 extrusions, and sold me the 3D files to print the side mount brackets when his printer went down. After two days of printing and a UPS delivery, I got the three Uno's setup on the bar and while it's not as clean a look as I wanted, it still looks good.

 

[Cook]

But that still wasn't good enough. Fast forward a month and I noticed that my Garf Bonsai colony was having some die off due to shadowing. The Uno's were spaced too far apart and I couldn't add a fourth without creating shadowing from the tank braces themselves. I started researching LED light bars and came across Quanta located in Wisconsin. https://www.quantareef.com/

I was on the fence about these bars until I got Luca on the phone and had an opportunity to talk about LED's. He's a stickler for wattage and proper heatsink sizing. He's also developed his on take on appropriate spectrum vs other bars on the market. Luca recommended his Reef Crest Daylight 72" bars also apparently known as "Thunder Sticks". The main reason is that the Reefi's already have a ton of blue and violet LED's and the RCD spectrum should balance the Reefi's output, they are based loosely around Coral AB+ spectrum. I liked the fact that I could also get these 72" long instead of 60" like the Orpheks for the same price. So now I had these bars on the way, but I needed a way to mount them. I started by designing and 3D printing some support struts for the existing side mount bars that bolt into the 2040 and are adhered to the tank rim with high strength double sided tape for outdoor applications.

 

[Cook]

When the lights arrived it was interesting.

 

[Cook]

I mounted the Quanta's the first time with leftover 2040 from the Uno's, but they were only 18" long. I have since replaced them with 24" 2040 extrusions and created a 3D printed adapter to make the Quanta standard brackets connect with the metric 2040. With the shorter extrusions, I couldn't get as much angle as I wanted to really minimize the shadowing. These are bolted to the top of the center bar with 8 bolts per side, so should be plenty sturdy. I also used the adapters to drop the bars another 1.5" lower. 8"-10" off the water was recommended by Luca. I went with 10" to keep them up out of the way when working in the tank.

 

[chuck]

When the lights arrived it was interesting.
View attachment 65373View attachment 65374

thats crazy love the logo

 

[chuck]

Im sure your happy

 

[Reefplumber13]

Looking good brian..

 

[Cook]

Livestock: I lost my snowflake eel in the transition to the new tank. It got stuck in a rock structure in the back corner of the 180 and died. I was traveling and returned home to find him recently deceased. I decided not to replace him to go with some more utilitarian fish instead.

Existing Fish from the 90 Gallon:
Tomini tang
2 Green Chromis
Pair of Ocellaris Clownfish
Royal Gramma
Valentini puffer
Geometric pigmy perchlet

Fish / inverts purchased from Dr. Reef (Quarantined):
White tail tang
2 Springer damsel
Carpenter's wrasse
McCosker's wrasse
25 bumblebee snails (split between 180 and 80 gallon tanks)
3 Tiger conchs
5 Astrea snails

Addons from local reefers
1 Red Anthias - Thanks @larrynews - This is my son's fish
Yasha goby & Randall's pistol shrimp (Shrimp may or may not still be alive)

Quarantined by me (One week of observation left - treated with Chloroquine Phosphate)
Gold Rim tang
Phantom clown pair (for 80 gallon frag tank)
Indigo hybrid dottyback (undecided where it will go currently)

 

[Cook]

I lost the Gold Rim tang this morning. He would have been released into the tank tomorrow. I did not see any signs of illness prior to this and was eating well.

 

[Rainblood]

I'm sorry