T-Cam’s 75 Gallon

[tcampbell23]

Update time:

Plumbing Changes
After cracking 2 of the 5.5 gallon tanks, I have accepted that it’s not meant for me to drill and I am throwing in the towel. I will purchase one more 5.5 gallon tank and use it as an ATO reservoir instead of housing my filter socks. With the filter socks moving into the main sump, I’ve reduced the size of the refugium and at this point, it’s not big enough to do much so I may fill that area with bio blocks or some bio filtration media. Over the top of this section will be the algae scrubber which I hope will do most of the nutrient removal work.

Lighting
Initially, I mentioned using Kessils to supplement the 8 Bulb T5 fixture and add some blue light to the tank. I’ve since decided to save a little money here and go with a few Nicrew 30W pendant LEDs from Amazon. I’m not relying on these to provide any real coral growing light to the tank but solely for the color it gives when I look at the tank. I’ve gotten two of them in the mail and I really like the color of light they give off. Can’t wait to see them over some corals and sea critters. They do leave a bit of a dead spot in the middle of the tank so I went ahead and ordered a third light and the hanging hardware for the T5 fixture. Once I get the T5s hung up, I’ll be able to get the height of the lights set in place and that’ll determine if I need the third nicrew pendant. If it turns out I don’t need it, it’ll serve as an excellent light for my Coral/invert QT tank.

Mixing Station
The original plan was to stack the tanks vertically, however, given the way everything fits in the closet, it may be better for it to be a horizontal arrangement. This allows me to build a table top over the containers that I can use for other reefing activities.

 

[tcampbell23]

Picture dump

 

[tcampbell23]

Update:

I've been working kind of feverishly at this tank for the last few days. I have aquarium related stuff all over my house and its beginning to drive me nuts so I've gotta get this thing done lol. I've finished the mixing station which took some trial and error. On the first run, I learned to check all of my cement joints to make sure they are cemented, put plenty of teflon tape on threaded joints, and that a loud pop when tightening a bulkhead might mean the bulkhead broke. Some great lessons learned and I hope that me learning them and sharing them here with you all will prevent you from learning these things the way that I learned them.

Anyways, I plumed up my mixing station fixed and replaced the necessary components, added an additional ball valve to turn the circulation off and force the water put of a nozzle that I can attach a hose to. I'll be able to keep about 15 gallons of RODI and 15 gallons of salt water on hand that I'll be able to pump as needed. A younger me never really had space to have a mixing station and I think I earned my reefing stripes by carrying (spilling) buckets of water all over the floor (my socks).

I added my Nicrew 30W LEDs to my T5 Fixture so now i have a 6 bulb T5/LED fixture that is essentially my budget ATI/Kessil fixture. Hopefully I get similar results lol. My lighting schedule tentatively will be as follows: 7 AM - 8 AM Blues ramp up, 9am - 12pm whites ramp up, 11 am - 3pm T5s on,3 pm - 5pm whites ramp down, 5 pm - 7pm blues ramp down, 7pm - 10pm blue night light. I'm not even sure how programmable the nicrew fixtures are but I'll make the best of them.

I cut out a few of the baffles that were in the 20 gallon long I purchased from Steve and removed (broke) the tallest baffle. I broke it while trying to cut it down an inch or so but the 1/4" glass is a lot harder to cut than I thought it would be. In the end, I realized it would be ok to just have the protein skimmer section height set at 9." inches. I re-siliconed the first baffle at about 15" and the bubble trap baffle about an inch behind that. This left me a small 'refugium' area that my algae scrubber will dump into.

The last thing to do is dry fit the plumbing for the tank itself, and put it in position. Once its there I'll level and shim the stand as necessary fill it up with tap water to test all of my pumps and seals and give it a final clean.

The last two major purchases for this tank will be the flow pumps and the dryrock to aquascape. I'm so close to getting water in this thing that I can taste the salt!

 

[tcampbell23]

Pictures

 

[tcampbell23]

More pictures

 

[york1]

DAmn I was to slow

 

[tcampbell23]

View attachment 55812 DAmn I was to slow

I’m on it!

 

[york1]

Good to see i am not the only one who needs at least one room to scatter stuff in during a build.

 

[tcampbell23]

Update:

today I purchased about 150 or so pounds of dead “live” rock from another member and soaked it in muriatic acid to kill off the last living organic material and hopefully wash away some of the phosphates locked in the rocks.

I also began dry fitting the plumbing and I have a question:

the middle drain line is the emergency overflow drain. Can I just T this into the secondary non full siphon drain? I can only imagine the risk being if the line clogs after the T, I no longer have overflow protection. Can anyone validate or invalidate my thoughts?

thanks

 

[tcampbell23]

Good to see i am not the only one who needs at least one room to scatter stuff in during a build.

Lol man it NEVER fails. Every tank I’ve built led to a room being destroyed during the build. Never fails

 

[tcampbell23]

So I decided against Tee-ing the emergency drain and just reorganized the drains in the overflow box (duh).

I went with gyres for my flow pumps, specifically dual xf230s. I got a great deal on both pumps and the controller and I couldn’t pass it up.

The rocks were rinsed off pretty well last night and the acid bath really cleaned them up. They weren’t very far from live rocks and I figure whatever is left in there and still has to decay will be good for the cycle of the tank. I left them out to dry last night and I’ll leave them out until this weekend. Hopefully my cement will be here by then and I can break these rocks up and get started building my scape.

In the mean time, I’m gonna get this tank cleaned up and looking brand new then weld this pvc. So close to water!

 

[tcampbell23]

Pics or it didn’t happen

 

[tcampbell23]

Weekend update:

still slowly chugging through the plumbing on the tank. Whenever I get some downtime I go and glue a few pieces.

I broke up the large pieces of dry rock yesterday and started toying with my aquascape. I usually do the rock pile thing out of sheer impatience but, this go around, I’m taking the meticulous and artsy route.

I don’t know if it’s me getting older or just doing everything “right this time

 

[tcampbell23]

I don’t know if it’s me getting older or just doing everything “right this time

“right” this time* but I don’t remember a tank taking this much work to put together lol

 

[tcampbell23]

 

[tcampbell23]

Final(ish) aquascape.

 

[tcampbell23]

So my idea behind the aquascape is that I can create a canopy of sps corals on the upper level of the tank and torches, anemones, other Lower light lps and zooanthids on the lower levels. I really want to play with the depth of the tank and be sure to place corals in the foreground and background. I think back on some of the aquascapes I’ve done before and I didn’t take advantage of the depths of the tanks nor did I do a good job of creating an environment that my fish would feel at home in. I want the tank to look like a slice of the coral reef in my office.

 

[AWarnick]

Looking good, that rock on the left looks super cool and I can see all kinds of places for fish to hide. I also like the utility of having multiple different rocks that you can place corals onto that won't necessarily bridge to another rock. This will allow you have have zoas and encrusters on some rocks without worry of a mass takeover of the single scape you had in the first picture.

 

[tcampbell23]

 

[Doberman13]

I don't remember if you said that this tank will be a bare bottom or not. Bare bottoms have been growing on me and your scape looks perfect for it.