Ramsey's 185+ Gallon Marine System

[ramsey]

This is the story of my 185G gallon marine system. Current FTS's:

MIA - still building

Here is the current equipment list:

TANKS:

185G DSA - Softie/LPS


SUMP:

Ace (hobogato) built custom sump somewhat modeled after the MRC bio sump. Dimensions are 2' x 8' x 18". Built into the sump are chambers for six filter socks, bio media (more details on this to come), skimmer/reactors, frags, return pump and finally ATO. Total volume is about 185 gallons. The "bio" chamber will be used for either bio bale or Seachem Matrix. This is to help with filtering but more so to keep media active with bacteria handy for a canister filter used to quarantine fish. The sump will be built with a framed wood box around it that will also double as a sitting area.

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LIGHTING:

2 x 250w 10000k MH
4 x AI sol blues

FLOW:

1 x Vortech MP40 ES
1 x Vortech MP10 ES
1 x Waveline DC-10000 II DC controllable pump (2600gph)
1 X Jaebo WP40
1 x Sicce 5000
FILTRATION:

1 x RLSS DB10i protein skimmer powered by DC controllable pump
2 x Nextreef reactors - for carbon and possibly GFO
1 x BFS RO/DI unit
~150lbs dry rock which will be seeded

BRAIN:

Apex controller
1 x Apex VDM's
1 x Apex WXM
1 x energy bar 8
2 x water on floor sensors
Various float switches and water solenoids

Cooling:

1HP chiller

LIVESTOCK PLANS:

These are ready to go when the tanks up:
Cabbage coral
ORA green polyp toadstool
candy cane
pulsing xenia
anthellia
GSP
Two different gorgonians
dendro colony
fat head dendro
duncan colony
various ricordia, st. thomas and other shrooms
blastos
Green nepthea
GBTA

These are future additions for the time being:

yellow fiji leather
colt coral
ORA loco lobo
devil's hand leather
vargas purple monster
A couple other photosynthetic gorgonians
RBTA
maybe a few other easy LPS

non-coral or nem inverts:

pair of skunk cleaners

Fish:

8-10 long spine cardinal fish
pair of engineer gobies or a diamond goby or two
horned blenny
2-3 chalk bass
2 firefish
Sailfin tang
trio or pair of anthias
trio or pair of wrasses
pair of clowns (probably ocellaris)
a few clown gobies (or other small peaceful gobies)
AND MAYBE! MAYBE! A few damsels if everything is settled in nicely. But it's a big maybe.

In other words, when it comes to fish, I want to do a 185G nano if you exclude the tang. I want a lot of small fish and movement instead of five or six giants. I also want relatively peaceful fish. I'll probably add the clowns, tang, chalk bass, blenny and wrasses last to give the more timid fish time to settle in.

[ramsey]

Ok, now that I've got the ice breaker post out of the way. Here's some pictures Ace took while building this incredible, grotesque, downright offensive beast that's also known as my new sump:

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[ramsey]

18907
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Ace did an incredible job on this sump. He knocked it out of the ball park for sure! The pictures don't convey how enormous this thing is. It's built out of 3/8" acrylic and it's SOLID. With this sump, apart from the specific features I wanted, I wanted something very big that's going to have plenty of space for anything. I also do not want this under a stand that I'm going to have to crawl under and contort to shapes not meant for fat bodied humans to contort to.

I was going to wait to post a build thread until I actually started plumbing but I was so excited and blown away with my sump that I couldn't resist!

I'll have more updates soon on design plans, live stock plans and other goodies soon so don't be a square and stay tuned!

[ramsey]

FTS 02/2014:

http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/02/10/4ejuvu2u.jpg

03/14:

http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/03/28/asyja6av.jpg

http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/03/28/amydubuj.jpg

FTS 3/14:

http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/03/28/ynyzeqy7.jpg

[ramsey]

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[ramsey]

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[jwalk034]

I'm thinking about doing this with my 240 and my 120.
Ill definitely follow along to see how this turns out!

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using Tapatalk 2

[allan]

That is definitely a beast of a sump.

[Big_Pun]

wow !

[Scutterborn]

Those dimensions are 96"X24" aren't they? That's exactly double my sump! Phenomenal.


-Ben-

[sdunn90fowlr]

That is nice!

[Reefnub]

Wow that's bigger than my tank and sump put together lol.

[Paul28]

man thats alot of salt for water changes

[BBQHILLBILLY]

Thats a gorgeous sump/refug. Very nice :bigsmile:

[Flyride95]

Man that sump looks amazing. I'm starting to get jealous of these Ace built items lol. I may have to hit him up for a canopy.

[FireWater]

That's awesome Ramsey. After looking at the pic of the water tests and being to Aces house way more than once I get a feeling of how big that thing is. Wow!

Let me know if you need anything or any help.

[Big_Pun]

Ramsey if you need help moving it let me know.

[ramsey]

Thank you guys. To say I'm happy the way it turned out is an understatement. I can't wait to put this bad boy to use!

[ramsey]

I've decided to change directions slightly. I will be doing the 185G FOWLR and 40G fuge. The 55G was just too tight of a fit. Yesterday the wife and I went to some LFSs and looked around. We ended up coming home with a 38G IM Nuvo 38! So that'll be my main coral tank and will run apart from the other two. I'll make a new post for the Nuvo and post some pictures of this build later.

[Big_Pun]

sounds like a great plan!!

[ramsey]

So I've changed my mind a bit with this build. The 40g display fuge is not going to happen. We moved the 185 back into the living room and the 40b just doesn't look right. So it's only going to be the 185G and it's going to be softies and LPS's and I want a ton of small fish in it (overstocked slightly). The sump is going to be in the garage with a 1HP chiller plumbed in. It'll be nice to have all the noise of the pumps in the garage. It also let's me do creative stuff that my wife wouldn't allow in the living room. One idea I already have is a mangrove filter. I may take a 55G or the 40b I have laying around (maybe even buy a stock tank), put some sand and mud in it, then hang a 4X24w T5 light I have over it. I'm also thinking about hooking up some misters that will mist them with fresh water a couple of times a day. I've always thought it would be cool to grow out some mangroves and hopefully I'd have enough space and mangroves that it would help with filtration. I want to buy a storage shed and further clear out the non-fish tank stuff out of the garage. I want it to eventually be my fish room/man cave. At this point, I'll probably put an AC unit in, a couch, maybe even a full on conversion into a room, then my dream of an awesome display refugium will become a reality.

As far as the main build goes, I have a lot of the plumbing parts I need to get started. My tank has two 3/4" drains and two 1/2" returns. I'm going to run the drains both to a 1.5" adapter T and the pump will go from 1.25" adapter T to two 3/4". This way, I only have to drill two holes for pipe through the wall. I know it means a single pipe for the drain, but it's 1.5" so it should be pretty hard to clog it. The chiller is going to be a little tricky. I'm going to have to run PVC up a wall, across the garage then go down and outside of the garage. I worry about the pump size that's going to be needed to do this and still give me around 1000GPH. Any advice here would be welcomed. Anyway, just thought I'd update the build thread. It's been slow but I've just about got everything I need to put it all together so I'm running out of excuses to go do it. :P

[BBQHILLBILLY]

sounds like a neat plan, heres a tiger shark link with some HP for sure

http://www.reeflopumps.com/powerpumps.html

[ramsey]

sounds like a neat plan, heres a tiger shark link with some HP for sure

http://www.reeflopumps.com/powerpumps.html


Yeah, I'm eyeballing a few of the reeflo pumps. I need to figure out what my head pressures going to be. I know it's going to be over 20' for sure. Going 8' up the wall twice is 16', plus whatever I lose from the chiller and around 9 elbows. Yeah, I'm gonna need a massive pump or figure out somewhere else to put the chiller.

I updated my stocking and tank plans in my first post! It's how I'm currently leaning but it could change at any moment. :P

[ramsey]

I've been tinkering with this build more lately and I'm getting closer! I bought 2 250MH lights that I'm going to run 10000k bulbs in. Then with the SOLs I'll just be using for mostly blue and sunrise/sunset. I bought a couple of brackets and par38 refugium lights from reef radiance. They were specifically made to grow macro so they have a lot of red. I'm hoping they'll be nice a bright and grow some mad cheato.

Also, I managed to get aquarium speciality to replace my RLSS pumps with the new generation pumps! That was really awesome they were willing to do that.

I put new bulkheads in tonight! I have to shuffle some stuff around in the garage but I'm hoping to get some plumbing done this weekend and hopefully have a dry run (FINALLY!).

[ramsey]

Like most things, the build's taking longer than expected. I've been working on plumbing and I'm about done with the inside (under the tank) plumbing. I'm hoping to have holes in the wall tonight and pipes sticking into the garage. Once that's done, I'll need to move a few things around in the garage and position the sump. Then I'll need to plumb to the sump which shouldn't be too bad. I'm going to run my pump externally so I'll need to drill the sump and add a bulkhead. It's progressing, at a (non-nassarius) snail's pace. Maybe not even a snail, more like a chiton. ;)

[ramsey]

http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/01/26/tu5e5uhy.jpg

http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/01/26/amu6aha5.jpg

[ramsey]

Got some rock and sand in the tank!

http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/02/10/ede9u3es.jpg

[Reefnub]

Great looking rock work.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2

[FireWater]

Looks good. I've got some stuff you might want. I'll PM you about it.

[ramsey]

Thanks guys! I actually bought a huge piece of tonga branch from lucky so me scape has changed a bit. I'll post some pics when my diatom bloom goes away.

[allan]

Holy moly, that sump would have been awesome for the 40b, but as is, that's one heck of a sweet set up.

What is under the tank that you've warded the kids from? I'm thinking it would have made an excellent hidy hole for the 'rats. ;-)

[ramsey]

Holy moly, that sump would have been awesome for the 40b, but as is, that's one heck of a sweet set up.

What is under the tank that you've warded the kids from? I'm thinking it would have made an excellent hidy hole for the 'rats. ;-)

LOL, yes the sump is a beast! I love it so far, especially in the garage. I do need more heaters than I thought I would.

I have plumbing under the tank and we actually have our cable modem, DVR and wireless access points under there. It's not a great place for them, but that's where they were when we moved the tank there. I made a little stand for them in case the tank leaks so they should be alright. Mostly though, I'm worried about my boy pulling the plumbing out. :P I'll try to get pictures of under the stand.

[aquasport24]

Looking good man..Do you use anything to anchor the 2 rocks beside the reef cement at the left hand umbrella? Am concerned it might fall over ..

[ramsey]

Looking good man..Do you use anything to anchor the 2 rocks beside the reef cement at the left hand umbrella? Am concerned it might fall over ..

I used a ton of Marco mortar. It wouldn't fall over if the base is attached. With the base it's very sturdy. I doubt the base would detach as well. I did some "testing" out of water to try and break it apart it it didn't fail. For example, I picked it up by the shelf piece and shook it to see if it'd come loose (out of the tank of course) and it wouldn't budge. That mortar mix doesn't mess around!

The aquascape has actually changed a bit. I really wanted to keep it minimal but I find myself adding more interesting structures. Mostly due to getting Lucky's GIANT piece of tonga branch he was selling. I blame him. :P

I'll try to get some pictures up once things settle and clear up. Right now I have a HUGE diatom bloom. I've never seen one like this. I'm starting to wonder if the Marco sand I used is leeching phosphates as the phosphate reading was like .45 or something when I checked a couple of weeks ago. I'm waiting for nitrate to show up in big quantities then I'm gonna reduce both. I'm really tempted to dose nitrate and a carbon source to see if I can get the phosphate levels down. I'd be a good time to experiment. :P

[allan]

The diatoms are normal. Let it ride. It looks like you went all sterile rock and sand, well, maybe the sand. I can't tell. :-)

When I started my frag tank, connected to the main system, I had a huge diatom bloom that lasted for a very long time. Good news is that it finally abated the month before I got rid of the system.

[ramsey]

Diatoms are dying down a bit. I still have high nitrite so I'm not done cycling. Actually, I've had high nitrite for over a week. In other tanks that was always the fastest to come down but not here. I'm just being patient and letting it sort out because this ain't my first rodeo. Once it's completely cycled, I'm going to try and get nitrates and phosphates down a bit and then get some Florida live rock. I'm hoping to have enough bacteria built up to handle any dead sponge that comes in on the LR. I think I'll be fine since I'm only getting like 40lbs to seed what I already have. I'm excited though, I've been wanting fresh Florida live rock for a few years now.

Here's some pictures of the new scape. Sorry, pictures are bad and glass is a bit dirty. I'm really happy with what I was able to do with tonga branch I bought from lucky. Thanks again lucky!

http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/03/08/6y4ubu8e.jpghttp://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/03/08/esa2uvum.jpg
http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/03/08/e9e2ygu6.jpg

[FireWater]

My cycle with dry rock and sand took forever.

[ramsey]

Yeah, the pictures don't show how much of an overhang there is from the tonga. I'll try to get better pictures sometime soon.

[ramsey]

My cycle with dry rock and sand took forever.

Yeah, I've done it before but used bacteria which only took days. I'm not in a rush though so didn't use any bacteria. Like everything with reefing, slow and steady.

[FireWater]

Exactly.

[ramsey]

http://youtu.be/Olx5gEVQsms

I bought two waveboxes with an apex cable dirt cheap. Just got a good size wave going.

[ramsey]

My tank finally finished cycling and diatoms died down. I started stocking the tank this week:

Various CUC snails
Pin cushion urchin
2 x skunk cleaner shrimp


Fiji yellow leather
Young bushling softie
Green polyp toadstool

10 x red spot cardinalfish
3 x engineer gobies

I really like the red spot cards. The info I found on them shows mixed success but I wanted to give it a go. They're all schooling/shoaling together and seem to be eating already (just got them today). I'll probably give them a week or two, then try to get another 10.

Pictures updated in start of thread.

[ramsey]

Since I'm a nerd when it comes to equipment and filtration, I took a quick video of my messy fish garage. I still have a lot to do. What I wanted to capture the most in the video is the cheato tumbling under the t5. It was tumbling already and I added a spare PH I had laying around and got it to tumble even more. Also, I finally got my skimmer up and it's a beast! I've never seen a skimmer make so much foam.

http://youtu.be/I4EAjeYVZw0

[ramsey]

What the heck, I'm in a video taking mood. Here are the new fish additions:

http://youtu.be/g-u8XOpD6mA

[koa25]

Ha ha. The tumble on the cheato was like perfect. Slow and even. I'm impressed man. Everything looks like a clean seatup. I wish I had a garage and wall to dedicate to something like that.

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[ramsey]

Ha ha. The tumble on the cheato was like perfect. Slow and even. I'm impressed man. Everything looks like a clean seatup. I wish I had a garage and wall to dedicate to something like that.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

Thanks man. I love having the sump in the garage but we'll see how the hot summer impacts things. I already have a chiller but it needs to be plumbed. It's a big mess right now. I still have a lot of work to do but it's fun stuff!

The cheato tumble was an accident. It just did it on it's own then I added the ph for a little extra tumble. Sometimes things turn out better than expected. :)

You can't be too jealous! You get to walk outside and your at a real reef! And you get to collect all kinds of cool live stock! ;)

[polarbear]

Man I love the whole schooling idea of the fish. I wanted to get schooling fish for my 90 gallon but I think its to small for them. Ill get you that coral this weekend. Maybe tonight even if I can get away for a little while.