180 gallon with fish room build - Waterbox 220.6

[Fred2482]

Would love to see an update!

I will try and post one this weekend

 

[jcdeng]

wow, just wow...

If my setup is like this, my wife wouldn't be complaining about my reef hobby, with everything so neat and tidy and hidden away in the basement lol.

 

[vetteguy53081]

About two months into the new build and currently waiting on items to be shipped so why not use this down time to update the build thread! Rewind a few months ago I decided to upgrade my current 80 gallon (48"x20"x20") reef tank to around a 500 gallon in my basement. Unfortunately, my wife and I can not decide on how we would like to finish the basement. We have been going back and forth for a while and decided to move on to other projects. I could have still installed the tank, however no finished basement would result in no attention..... My answer was to get a new 180 for my office as I work from home the majority of the time and it would get plenty of attention. After getting some quotes from custom aquariums, planet aquariums and looking into Red Sea I was convinced on the Red Sea 900 3XL. That thing is BEAUTIFUL, and I hate euro-bracing. My issue was the tank is literally a few inches too big for my office plans, which I had to change anyways . I read some articles about waterbox here on R2R and ultimately decided to give them a try. So far, no regrets. As you will see through out this thread, I did not go with their pre plumbing assembly which looked absolutely awesome! There where times I really wished I would have as I could of had it running in a day. Due to the ultimate goal of the bigger tank I decided to centralize the filtration in the basement which will hopefully be directly behind the larger tank.

Before I go any further, I would like to disclaim, I am NOT the "handy man" type, this was really outside my comfort zone and I spent hours (understatement) reading forums, watching videos and researching almost every aspect of this especially the construction phase.

Below is what I have completed thus far, I ordered the Aquarium on Feb 20th.
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I have tried my best to keep up with this project in the best detailed manner possible for me. I have all receipts in case anyone has any questions in the future such as actual part numbers.
I will attach pictures below in the same order of the list above. From now on I will try to update as items are complete to maintain some sort of organization and try not to miss any of the details.

Fish room before any construction, the wall shown is the hopeful home of the new tank!
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Created wall:

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Raised floor

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Plumbing from Display tank in Office on first floor (don't mind the purple primer, I HATE it. I ordered clear primer, however Amazon decided to send me some sort of water flavoring that my kids actual end up loving)

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Plumbing the return
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Plumbing the drains

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Aquabus cable from fish room to Display tank

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Below is the electric wiring, aquabus cable wiring and Humidity vent. Just as an FYI, both receptacles by the return pump and salt mixing pump have an on off switch that control the outlet, all outlets in the fish room have a pull string from one to another in the case I want to daisy chain devices in the future.

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Plywood Walls, as a note I did add insulation behind the walls.

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Painted floor with epoxy shield and everything else with flex seal

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Drilled holes in Waterbox sump

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Progress... This will change

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Headache of trying to aquascape, dont worry it changed...

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Tank up

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Used E Marco 400, great stuff however definitely a learning curve. Most of my first attempts fell apart and this is what I got finally. I ordered some glue to stick a few of the last rocks that I dont want moving around.

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I utilized 100 lbs of reef saver rock, 4 reef saver base rocks and 8 - 20 lb bags of CaribSea Arag-Alive Fiji Pink sand. Added bacteria to help ammonia/Nitrite cycle.

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Now I am getting my shelves, and cable management boards prepped.

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Wire management board so far consists of Microsoft surface book for apex dashboard, echo dot for voice commands, BRS heater controller, Reef octopus Varios controller, and templates for DOS, Energy bar, Apex, and 2 Neptune modules.

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Still a long way to go. As I am waiting on some items to be shipped I am trying to figure out flow. I am really leaning toward a Gyre, but need lots more research. I hope everyone enjoys the build and I am open to any suggestions, constructive feedback or questions! I will be updating as I progress. If I missed something I do apologize, I tried to sum this up in the best way I could.

All this for a tank???
ITS SO WORTH IT !!!

 

[alabella1]

I will try and post one this weekend

This is amazing. I'm actually making my own cable mgmt controller board and those paper templates would be an amazing help in mapping it all out. Also I have an old surface kicking around that I didn't even consider as a dashboard, but maybe I'll throw it on there anyway. Shoot me anything you got handy that might help me map this out. Thanks in advance and keep up the awesome work!!

 

[alabella1]

This weekend I was able to get the shelves up above the sink, the Protein skimmer and the cable management board installed. I adjusted the plumbing for the sump to the stock tank. The Apex is up and running, only utilizing the temp probe currently as I am waiting for probe holder in the mail. After arrival I will clean up the remainder cords. Next weekend will be plumbing the UV and GFO/Carbon reactors with some help received from a separate thread: ( https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/uv-installation.712703/ ). If there is time, I will start plumbing the water storage tanks.

Update on cycling the tank, as stated above I used Turbo start with some Algae Barn NitroCycle. In one week I watched the Ammonia raise up, go down as the Nitrites raised and now the Nitrites have lowered and the Nitrates raised. WOW! I have never witnessed this happen so fast! I will be waiting a few days and then throw a frozen shrimp in to see if the bacteria can handle it! No plans on rushing to add fish, just thought I would share the crazy turn around time with this product.

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This is absolutely brilliant and I'd love to try to replicate it on my setup.

 

[Fred2482]

This is amazing. I'm actually making my own cable mgmt controller board and those paper templates would be an amazing help in mapping it all out. Also I have an old surface kicking around that I didn't even consider as a dashboard, but maybe I'll throw it on there anyway. Shoot me anything you got handy that might help me map this out. Thanks in advance and keep up the awesome work!!

Thanks, best of luck.

All the neptune templates can be found here. Toward the bottom there are a list of the mounting templates.

https://www.neptunesystems.com/support/docs/

 

[Fred2482]

This is absolutely brilliant and I'd love to try to replicate it on my setup.

Thanks, let me know if I can answer any questions.

 

[alabella1]

Thanks, let me know if I can answer any questions.

Is it completely custom? ATM I have about a 3 x 3 piece of plywood. I am planning to put it kinda under kinda behind my tank stand. The cabinets are open to the back to I was going to just stand it on the floor in the 3.5" gap from wall to stand, but if I could possible mount it to the wall and have it flip up into and through the opening in the cabinet that would be pretty insane. I'm doing some plumbing tomorrow to move my sump from one side to the other and decrease the crazy amount of pipes running all over.

 

[Fred2482]

Is it completely custom? ATM I have about a 3 x 3 piece of plywood. I am planning to put it kinda under kinda behind my tank stand. The cabinets are open to the back to I was going to just stand it on the floor in the 3.5" gap from wall to stand, but if I could possible mount it to the wall and have it flip up into and through the opening in the cabinet that would be pretty insane. I'm doing some plumbing tomorrow to move my sump from one side to the other and decrease the crazy amount of pipes running all over.

Sounds fun! It was just plywood and 2x4s coated with the flex seal

 

[alabella1]

Sounds fun! It was just plywood and 2x4s coated with the flex seal

Ah ****. I didn't even think about flex seal. I got a bunch of cans of rustoleum spray paint. I'm going to go look up some flexseal.

 

[alabella1]

Lots of flex seal options on amazon. Which did you use and how much?

 

[Fred2482]

Lots of flex seal options on amazon. Which did you use and how much?

I used multiple gallons, however I painted the entire fish room.