Long, Slow 100 Gallon Build

[sirvine24]

I hope to upgrade my 36 gallon to a 100gallon in the late summer/early fall. Here is the current 36 Acrylic Bow-front.

In this location, a 4 ft tank will go from the white trim to the white trim.

I’ve all but settled on the SCA aquariums 100 gal model.

I like the eurobrace, herbie pre-drilled overflow and decent price. I was hoping to get a 120 gal tank but space constraints means that extra 4” of depth won’t work.

The wheels are officially in motion with the order of a custom stand from a local furniture store.

Keeping with the distressed look of the previous stand, the new stand will pretty much look like this but without drawers (no room). They are made in India so it’ll take at least 4 months to arrive, which is fine since I won’t have time for it until then anyway.

In the meantime, however, I’ll be slowly accumulating equipment, supplies. So far, I’ve got:

• EcoTech Vectra M1 pump
• Simplicity 240DC Skimmer
• Some dry rock
• An old 30gal long and a new 40gal breeder one will become the sump
• Maxspect Gyre 130, Hydor Koralias

Wish List:

• Lights: Leaning toward 2 x Maxspect Ethereals, but now eyeing the Maxspect Recurve. Other considerations are the longer Razor (my current one with the wifi upgrade works well), Ai Hydras, others?
• More Pukani dry rock
• Flow: Larger gyre, other powerheads
• Controller, if I don’t decide to DIY one

I’ll be doing a bunch of DIY projects to prepare:

Completed DIYs:

• Automatic water change
• Automated RO membrane flush and TDS creep flush. I hope to post this soon.

Upcoming:

• Sump
• Algae Scrubber or more likely Algae Reactor possibly if I go that route
• Floating canopy if I go that route
• Moonshot: DIY aquarium controller
• A couple other crazy ideas

 

[Nixperience]

Let's get this show on the road. I need to see this.

 

[Chris A.]

Someone's been planning a diobolic master plan

 

[CAPSLOCK]

Cool looking stand! That's a nice upgrade.

 

[gurumasta]

The SC tanks are nice but just know that the teeth in the overflow are cut pretty low so you gotta have a high level herbie or a lot of turnover to make your drain work harder and increase the water level. Other than that they are a great choice IMO.

 

[sirvine24]

Preliminary Aquascaping

I got a bunch of rock from other members, some live, some dried. I also bought some dry pukani as well. I let everything dry out so that I'd start with only dried rock. The rock in my current system should be plenty to seed the new tank. Also, I have a set of Marinepure balls in use, a marinepure block waiting, as well as a marinepure plate waiting (thanks Fragtastic raffle!!), so volume of rock isn't a concern since I hope I'm covered in terms of bio-filtration.

In order to get an idea of what I wanted, I set a timer for 5 min and tried to come up with many aquascapes quickly without much thought (thumbnails).


The main challenge is that I want to use much I the rock in my current 36gal system (below). So, this scape will have to incorporate those rocks as well, which is hard to visualize.

 

[sirvine24]

Rock Cleaning:

I chose to bleach the rocks in order to prep them for more the curing process. First I hosed these off to remove large debris (there wasn’t much).

Then I got a 30 roughneck trashcan which was pretty cheap.

I bleached the rocks.


From reading this seemed to remove most of the nasty organic stuff without having to deal with the hassles of acid bathing.

• Soaked (10:1 RODI to bleach) for a week
• Soaked them in RODI with de-chlorinator for a few days
• Let them dry out
• Back to pre aquascaping

 

[sirvine24]

More Pre Aquascaping:

Once they completely dried, I went back to aquascaping. I got more advanced with the grid.


Although I got a lot of great rocks, I decided to mostly go with the Pukani that I bought. (Soon to come, some cured rock for sale in the marketplace!). The rocks are pretty large, and they make the display look dense to me. So, I went to town on them with a hammer and chisel.


Gel superglue was my best friend to salvage all the accidental breaks. Afterward I reinforced the breaks (shatters) with reef cement.



From my current rock I’ll add an island in the front right corner, the large “condo” pukani rock toward the left/center and another structure or two.

 

[sirvine24]

Rock Curing

Back to the trashcan, curing the rocks in saltwater. My spare return pump is on the bottom, connected to the black hose. I added another powerhead halfway up along with a heater.

The return pump hose makes it easy to drain the trashcan for water changes.

To test the water, I’m only testing Nitrite and Nitrate. I figure, if those are present then ammonia was also present and probably gone. During the first week I had some nitrites. After about a week and a half, there were no nitrates, and only a small level of nitrates, which rose to above 20, then settled somewhere below 10. This seems pretty fast to fully cure rock.

So I'm not sure if the full cycle occurred. I didn’t add any fish food or anything to add ammonia, but I won’t be relying on this for biological filtration.

A couple weeks later it shows almost no nitrates. This is using test strips not my normal testing kits.

 

[sirvine24]

The Stand

My stand finally came in so this thing is gonna kick up a notch, as it's about time to order the tank. I checked out the stand and they just need to putting in the finishing touches (holes for outlets/piping, vents, etc.). I got it from a furniture store in Peabody called Manzel. I bought some pieces from them before and they hooked me up. It's really solid (heavy) all wood, custom finishes, and pretty reasonable at under $500 all in. Of course real test comes with how does it look in the living room underneath about 100 gallons of water.

I'm height constrained so it's only 28" high, so It's gonna require a little voodoo with the plumbing job to fit everything in there.

 

[sirvine24]

Equipment and Supplies

I've gotten just about all the equipment. Here's the list:


Supply List

Display
2 x Maxspect Ethereal LEDs w/ controller
40lbs Fiji Pink Caribsea Sand (to add to existing Fiji Pink Sand)
Icecap 3k Gyre (to add to the existing Maxspect Gyre 130)
Cooling fans (sump and display)
DIY net top (BRS netting)

Sump
40 gal breeder for DIY sump build
¼” plate glass for baffles (free from local glass shop)
¼” acrylic sheet for baffles/sock holder
Simplicity 240DC Skimmer
Ecotech Vectra M1 return pump
Kessil A80 Tuna Blue light (frag section of sump)
Black binder/folder plastic for light blocking
1” Gate valve (herbie drain)
1” Ball valve (return back pressure)
4 x 1/2” barbed to thread ball valves
1” black PVC
Sch. 80 PVC fittings (manifold, some plumbing)
1” black vinyl tubing (drains) and hose clips
1" soft silicone tubing (return to manifold)
½” black vinyl tubing (runs off manifold)
2 Eheim Jager 125w heaters (heater controller in use)
Black egg crate for frag rack
Misc led cabinet light
4” filter socks
Marine pure block
Next reef shorty reactor (carbon and/or GFO)
Nextreef MR-1 reactor (algae reactor)
Dosing tube holder

 

[Abrooks12376]

Like that stand! Attention to detail is strong here

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G891A using Tapatalk

 

[sirvine24]

I just ordered the 100 gallon today, but told them to delay shipping since I can't receive it until the 20th. Any advice on moving it up to a 3rd floor walkup? I assume get a bunch of strong friends.

The SC tanks are nice but just know that the teeth in the overflow are cut pretty low so you gotta have a high level herbie or a lot of turnover to make your drain work harder and increase the water level. Other than that they are a great choice IMO.

@gurumasta, I saw that you have an SC Aquarium. I spoke with Steve there about the background, and he said that it was removable vinyl. My past experience was with a vinyl background is not great (Petco stuff). How does yours hold up? Anyone else with an SC Aquarium? Is it better to just paint it?

Thanks!

 

[gurumasta]

I just ordered the 100 gallon today, but told them to delay shipping since I can't receive it until the 20th. Any advice on moving it up to a 3rd floor walkup? I assume get a bunch of strong friends.




@gurumasta, I saw that you have an SC Aquarium. I spoke with Steve there about the background, and he said that it was removable vinyl. My past experience was with a vinyl background is not great (Petco stuff). How does yours hold up? Anyone else with an SC Aquarium? Is it better to just paint it?

Thanks!

I didn't realize it was removable. Mine looked great from the start and still does. I love the tank and I am sure you will also.

 

[sirvine24]

Now, I'm on a time table to get this done. I can't have this thing sitting in the middle of the living room too long. It actually wasn't as horrible as it looks with two (big) people to carry it up to the 3rd floor (still tough though).

 

[sirvine24]

This has been up and running for almost a month, so it's long overdue on an update. It was a mixture of many diy/mini-builds:

• Automated RODI/ salt mixing station
• DIY Acrylic Sump
• Chaeto Reactor
• Temperature controlled sump ventilation fan
• Manifold

Starting with the Stand:

The stand came in and looked great. It’s very solid and I believe made out of teak.

Still, I wanted to reinforce it for extra piece of mind. I used oak to go for a stronger wood since it had to be smaller piece. This includes this removable center support.

Test fit the sump and equipment, before adding supports.

The inside has cutouts for the outlet on the right. The old telephone jack is now my hole that connects to the fish closet behind the wall (ATO, carbon, power bricks, etc.). The vertical slits are for ventilation. I had a computer fan laying around, so that will also help with ventilation. Also, I put in pvc or plastic shelf liner on the bottom. It runs up about 4-5” so will contain spills and any minor floods.

The top was a little uneven so I needed decent foam to for the tank to sit on. I got the pink insulation, but painted the outside black.

Finally, the test fit.

 

[sirvine24]

Plumbing:
The SCA has a center overflow with 3 holes pre-drilled, so I went with a herbie overflow. I have some pretty serious height constraints with the location I chose. The stand is only 28” tall, so once accounting for the extra bracing, there was only 23-24” of height to work with in the interior. Plumbing goal

• Herbie Style
• Manifold to run reactors, future equipment etc.
• Efficient use of space, minimize horizontal runs
• Must be silent

I combined hard and soft plumbing. The hard plumbing so that everything stays in place and is strong. The soft plumbing so that it doesn’t have to be exact.

Here the plumbing is all glued

• Gate valve on the main drain.
• Ball valve on the return to create back pressure force more flow through the manifold.

Manifold: 3 - ½” outlets, 1 – ¾” outlet.

Bulkheads in place

Test fit into sump

Here it is installed:

The emergency overflow needed some mods to keep the water level in the overflow high enough. I wanted it halfway up the overflow teeth. This gray pipe made it taller.

It was pretty noisy though if not perfectly tuned. So, I added a downturn which silenced it.

I was sure to get the overflow cover to prevent anything from going down there.

 

[sirvine24]

Tank Swap:

First a dry fit

Fresh water leak test

Drained and added the cured rock that I previously aquascaped along with live sand.

I also had to add a lot of shims to get everything level

To transfer the from the old tank. I started by essentially doing a series of 10g water swaps/changes over the course of a few days.

When the time came the parameters were the same so I directly transferred the livestock and the rocks I wanted directly to the new tank. I ended up using just over half my old rocks (about 20lbs). I also reused the almost 40lbs of sand.

The end of the 36 gallon Bowfront…

 

[sirvine24]

Up and running:

It’s been up and running since November, the week before Thanksgiving. No casualties that I know of. Fish and corals are accounted for, as well as most inverts although there’s an emerald crag I haven’t seen in months. I’m sure some snails or hermits didn’t make it. There was a small mini cycle, but that lasted a day or two and there weren’t any major parameter swings.


I kept a few of the rocks I liked but couldn’t use or if they had a lot of life on them, I threw them in the frag section, along with some of my corals that I couldn’t immediately find a spot for. That’s why I made that section.

View from the couch

View from the dining table

 

[sirvine24]

For stocking:

Existing stocking list

• Black & White and regular ocellaris clown pair
• Yellow Coris Wrasse
• Starry Blenny
• Randall’s goby
• Pistol shrimp
• Cleaner Shrimp
• Fire Shrimp

New additions so far:
Trio of Carberryi Anthias

Naoko’s Fairy Wrasse:

Leopard Wrasse:

That’s 10 fish so far. I’m thinking that I’ll add 1-3 more, open to suggestions:

• Kole Tang or White Tail Bristletooth tang (definitely)
• Foxface (likely)
• Sandsifter, a blenny that hangs in the rocks, or another fairy wrasse (not as likely)