Taqpol's 120 gallon All in Stand Reef Build

[Taqpol]

Hi all! I'm new to Reef Frontiers, but I have a pretty large build thread going on in a different forum. Since I'm starting to get more involved in local clubs and events I decided it would be good to start a thread where I could at least show off pictures of my tank and get to know all the great local people and clubs in the Pacific northwest.

Without further ado, my standard 120 gallon (4'x2'x2') mixed reef build:

A quick photo-documentary and lots of new pictures of my livestock and equipment to come soon.

 

[estanoche]

Hi all! I'm new to Reef Frontiers, but I have a pretty large build thread going on in a different forum. Since I'm starting to get more involved in local clubs and events I decided it would be good to start a thread where I could at least show off pictures of my tank and get to know all the great local people and clubs in the Pacific northwest.

Without further ado, my standard 120 gallon (4'x2'x2') mixed reef build:

A quick photo-documentary and lots of new pictures of my livestock and equipment to come soon.

Ohhhh do I see a coast 2 coast overflow on your tank I needs to see!! I've been thinking about one for my next tank...

So when will we be holding an SRS meeting at your house so we can all drool, we have been known to travel down south for a meeting or two :lol:

 

[Taqpol]

That is indeed a coast to coast overflow using a BeanAnimal Silent and Failsafe Overflow system. It truly is silent and I get amazing surface skimming using the "Calfo" method, if you don't mind losing a small amount of upper tank real estate, I'd say go for it! (Or even cooler, do an external coast to coast overflow)

 

[Taqpol]

From the Beginning

In January 2009 I got an amazing deal from a local reefer selling off his entire setup, which included a 120g AGA tank, stand, and canopy, a recirculating EuroReef skimmer, Calcium Reactor with two 5lb cans of CO2, and many different pumps and knick knacks. It sat at his place until April.....

As my senior year at WSU was winding down I drove home and with some help moved everything over to my parents garage in Tri cities. Here it is all cleaned up in the garage:

Here is the recirculating EuroReef CS3-8 next to the stand for comparison. The thing is a beast of a skimmer!

I didn't really like the way the hood opened, as I thought it would be hard to reach up and over the hood and place things on the sandbed...

So we modified it.

 

[Taqpol]

The tank was not Reef Ready, but that was fine by me as I wanted to install my own overflow based off of BeanAnimal's silent and failsafe configuration (linked above). That meant I had to drill holes in the tank.

After practicing on a broken 10 gallon i finally took the plunge....

And now I can honestly say drilling a 120 gallon is MUCH easier then drilling the super thin glass on 10 gallons! Three holes later and my coast to coast overflow siliconed in place:

Painted the back black with Krylon Fusion:

And installed the bulkheads and plumbing:

 

[Taqpol]

Made my own sump out of a 30 long (now I wish I had gone with a 40 breeder, but I had this stupid idea to have a 10 gallon refugium/frag/qt tank plumbed into the sump inside the stand):

We also added an electrical access door to the side:

Finally, once I got my new apartment in Pullman we rented a van and moved the whole thing. Yes, two people CAN move a 120g tank through tight corners and into its final resting place, but its not pretty.

 

[Taqpol]

Lighting: 8 T5HO bulbs with Icecap reflectors.

I also have LED moonlights stuck int he middle that are ran 24/7:

Light order from front to back is:
:front:
ATI Blue+
UVL Actinic White
ATI Blue+
ATI Aquablue Special
UVL Actinic White
ATI Blue+
ATI Aquablue Special
ATI Blue+
:back:

 

[Taqpol]

Time for at least one reef related horror story....

I wanted some truly random flow in this tank and finally decided that for about the same price as a closed loop, and cheaper then overpriced controllable tunzes, I could pick up a pair of Vortech MP40w's:

After a few days I had finally filled my tank with RO/DI water, got the salt all mixed up, and added most of my rock and sand. I had the vortechs running this entire time, but since I didn't know exactly where their controllers were going to go I had them just sitting on the floor of the stand. Now remember that 10 gallon frag tank I wanted to plumb into my sump. I wanted to use two separate upturned elbows as a failsafe but the height of my stand did not allow those elbows to go over the top of my 30 gallon sump and still allow room for my hand to get into the tank. Solution? Drill two pairs of aligned holes and allow the bulkhead to pass through both tanks:

I had the flange of the bulkhead with a rubber gasket on the wet side of the 10 gallon some padding between the two tanks and then the nut with another rubber gasket on the wet side of the 30 gallon holding the two tanks together. Unfortunately the wimpy glass of the 10 gallon could not handle this....

I came home from a final exam to find a very wet basement floor and a powerless fish tank. After getting the majority of the water shop vacced out, cleaning the power outlets, and resetting the GFCI's I found that one vortech wasn't working and one was just barely limping along. Who would have thought that electronics don't like saltwater?

That was one very expensive lesson.....

 

[Taqpol]

I was very happy with how my rockwork turned out. I think theres ~140lbs of live rock in there concentrated into two islands with lots of nooks, crannies, and caves. I can also pass a mag float between the rock and the glass everywhere in the entire tank which makes cleaning it much less of a chore.

My first ever FTS:

Left island:

Right island:

All of the above shots were taken on May 11th.

 

[Taqpol]

Random animal shots!

Occelaris pair:

and the burly, vicious female:

Rescue GBTA that doesn't know what it wants:

Emerald crab:

My not shy at all blood shrimp:

Scopas Tang:

Powder Blue Tang:

Yellow Watchmen Goby:

 

[Taqpol]

Selected coral shots!

Not really a forgspawn, not really a hammer. I call it a hammerspawn:

Neon green candy cane:

Duncans:

Purple and Gold Digitata:

Sarcphyton elegans:

ORA Birds of Paradise:

ORA Borealis:

ORA Pearlberry:

ORA Red Planet:

Purple Bonsai:

Squamosa clam:

Maxima clam:

 

[Taqpol]

And that is that, caught up to July 2009.

Just to show how much i love taking random pictures, heres my little helper:

 

[Taqpol]

Last update before I hit the road for the Spokane Reef Society meeting. Since this meetings topic is T5 lighting I thought I would post some pictures of my dawn/dusk cycle.

At first I just have the outermost two ATI Blue+ bulbs come on. This gives a very faint blue look that is just a little more blue then the daylight hitting the tank.

An hour later the last two ATI Blue+ bulbs come on. This is definitely a deep blue and what i consider the full actinic look.

Lastly, the final four bulbs come on (2x Aquablue Specials and 2x Actinic Whites). This finally starts bringing in the white and pink spectrums most noticeable on the sand and the corraline algae on the rocks.

My lighting composition was suggested by TheGrimReefer to be a crisp white with lots of PAR and coral pop, roughly a 14000K look to compare to MH bulbs. There is definitely very little yellow in the spectrum so I might be able to see the 14000K, but I personally think this combination visually looks a bit too bright and washes out the colors of the corals when the daylights are on. Once i get around to ordering some new bulbs for an old fixture I'll also pick up a few different bulbs for this setup and mix and match till I find something I like, which i feel is when of the true advantages of T5 setups.

 

[Sascha D]

Kitty!! :lol:

Congratz on your degree!

 

[BCT182]

I saw a STi in the background. What year? 04 or 05? I had an 04 but sold it by mistake.

 

[jake65]

Looks awesome Alex! Glad you could make it up to the meeting

 

[Taqpol]

Kitty!! :lol:

Congratz on your degree!

Thank you!

I saw a STi in the background. What year? 04 or 05? I had an 04 but sold it by mistake.

Thats an '04, but its my fathers car. I drive the 3000GT VR-4 you can barely see in one of the pictures. How do you accidentally sell a car?

Looks awesome Alex! Glad you could make it up to the meeting

Thanks! It was fun.

 

[Taqpol]

Its been awhile since an update, but I should have some pictures up by tonight!

This last weekend was MCMAC, the Mid Columbia Marine Aquarium Conference put on by the local Tri Cities Reef club and sponsored by my two favorite stores in Spokane. The whole event was basically a mini MACNA with a frag swap, coral silent auction, raffle and door prizes, local tank tour, and some absolutely excellent guest speakers, Jake Adams, James Fatheree, and Bob Fenner! Heres some key points I learned from their speeches:

Jake Adams (Fluid Dynamics):
Gyre flow is way better then random flow. This is because of the way corals are shaped, when a large body of water hits them it will break creating localized pockets of totally chaotic flow, much more random then we can ever get by using wavemakers/sea swirls/whatever. Secondly, a gyre takes much longer to start up in a system, but once its going the inertia of the water will keep moving it and the viscosity of water will drag along even more water molecules effectively moving the water body of the entire tank. The example he showed us was of a ten foot long tank, with eight vortechs all on one end pane. Only four of the vortechs would fire at a time, but they would go for 10-15 minutes and they had the water whipping around the tank!

James Fatheree (T5 and LED Light Testing):
Painting the back wall of your tank reduces your PAR, and lights produce more PAR when shone into a tank full of water. Counter-intuitive, but this guy has the tests to back it up. Both phenomena are due to the fact that that light bounces off the inside walls of the glass when water is in the tank (Total internal reflectivity, why some walls look like mirrors depending on the angle). Thing is, light can bounce of the inside edge of glass and the outside edge of glass, but when the back is painted or some material is applied to the back in an airtight fashion light can no longer reflect off the outside edge, halving the reflected light you would normally have. This actually causes a noticeable skewing of par near the back pane, dropping it close to 100 PAR compared to the front. The good news is that having some material that does not fit airtight covering the back still allows the full amount of reflection.

Bob Fenner (Pros and Cons of Hitchhikers):
Bob Fenner is crazy. Crazy in the funny way. He said no crabs are truly herbivorous and they are like him with vegetarian pizza, they might not like it but they'll eat it in a pinch. Also, a quote about a local members Powder Brown Tang: "Most Acanthurus japonicus are thin and skinny, but this has to be the healthiest specimen I've ever seen. It is thick and robust, just like me"

 

[small alien]

Thanks for sharing. Your rock work does look really great. Best, small

 

[Taqpol]

I had promised people I would get pictures of MCMAC up on this thread, but my vacation to SC snuck up on me. We flew into Atlanta and I got to go to the Georgia aquarium! Dial up beware, I took a lot of pictures!

I think I'm going to start off with the reef section. Overall I think the corals were kind of disappointing because I am so spoiled by the quality of the reef tanks I see on this website, but the fish were still amazing. So much color and life...

I think everyone takes a picture of the "garden eels" when they come here, these guys are so neat!

Its also cool to see some of the fish we see everyday:

And some fish we don't see everyday:

More jelly fish pictures!