40 gallon rimless: canister/ reverse UGF

[40g]

Hello, my name is Dan, I’ve been in the reef keeping hobby for 4 months.

In October 2023 I tore down a fresh water rimless, bought a running 20g AIO (livestock included), and transferred the live rock, several coral, a pair of clowns and a few hermit crabs into my 45cm cube.

Before:

After:

I had rescaped the rock, added some of my own, and bought an octospawn (which isn’t doing to well actually) and macroalgae.

Personally, visible heaters, intakes and probes etc. are not acceptable lol. This is a significant compromise to using a canister vs a sump (among others). Coming from fresh water however, and already possessing a canister, I chose the benefit of a closed system, rather than an open sump which subjects the entire cabinet to salt creep (completely unacceptable!)

This is the story of how I got from here to a 40gallon rimless, running a canister filter and reverse under gravel system, home to 60+ species of marine life.

The current state of things is, well, controlled chaos:

Next up:
- ph controlled kalkwasser
- custom diy acrylic surface skimmer
- using a bathroom vanity as an aquarium stand
- eKoral doser / auto water change / supplements
- whatever else comes to mind

Thank you so much for this opportunity to share and learn from this community I hope to at least post sporadically.

Happy reefing,
Dan

 

[musel101]

Welcome aboard, Dan!
Sky is the limit as long as you have the money. I also have freshwater tanks. I have both I can’t seem to give up freshwater because it’s where I started. And if you need any advice on acrylic, DIY subs, I’m your guy.

 

[40g]

Nice, looking forward to comparing notes!

 

[AquaReefsTV]

Hello, my name is Dan, I’ve been in the reef keeping hobby for 4 months.

In October 2023 I tore down a fresh water rimless, bought a running 20g AIO (livestock included), and transferred the live rock, several coral, a pair of clowns and a few hermit crabs into my 45cm cube.

Before:

After:

I had rescaped the rock, added some of my own, and bought an octospawn (which isn’t doing to well actually) and macroalgae.

Personally, visible heaters, intakes and probes etc. are not acceptable lol. This is a significant compromise to using a canister vs a sump (among others). Coming from fresh water however, and already possessing a canister, I chose the benefit of a closed system, rather than an open sump which subjects the entire cabinet to salt creep (completely unacceptable!)

This is the story of how I got from here to a 40gallon rimless, running a canister filter and reverse under gravel system, home to 60+ species of marine life.

The current state of things is, well, controlled chaos:

Next up:
- ph controlled kalkwasser
- custom diy acrylic surface skimmer
- using a bathroom vanity as an aquarium stand
- eKoral doser / auto water change / supplements
- whatever else comes to mind

Thank you so much for this opportunity to share and learn from this community I hope to at least post sporadically.

Happy reefing,
Dan

Welcome to the reefing community! The first piece of advice I always like to provide to newer reefers is that "Patience is everything, and never rush no matter how excited you are." We all have our losses whether it's fish, coral, or even inverts. But the most important thing is to keep your head up and reef on! because you will only get better as you continue in the hobby.

As for your setup on your build thread here, I think you did a good job with it! looks like a great first tank, especially for saltwater. I'm guilty of having tons of spaghetti (wires) in the back of my tanks on previous builds but on my new WaterBox system, I finally decided to get into cable management! Amazon is a good site to shop for affordable cable management stuff. If you would like to check out some examples of handy cable management accessories I'll attach a link to my latest YouTube upload which provides a tour of my build and in the description you'll find all the links from Amazon of the stuff I purchased for cable management! Happy Reefing! Here's an inside look at my build

 

[40g]

Watched your vid, fun times!

 

[AquaReefsTV]

Watched your vid, fun times!

Setting up a new tank never gets old! Always a lot of fun. Appreciate the view! Feel free to reach out if you ever have any reefing questions.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Following along!

 

[40g]

4 weeks into the build it occurred to me that a canister intake pipe could provide the flow for a "mini sump" or "AIO box". This box would allow me to

1. hide the intake and outflow pipes, probes, dosing lines etc.
2. provide a media chamber
3. skim the surface film

This is what I built:

The intake pipe draws water through the baffles like an AIO, and the outflow is hidden inside too and just shoots out the side of the box as you can see. The middle chamber makes adding a bag of carbon easy peasy (negating a significant downside of running a canister).

I used acrylic I had lying around from another project, but since this was a prototype I thought the transparency would help demonstrate what was behind the box. I ended up cladding it in black cause well, "looks".

Here it is installed:

(By the way, I hated that the light was mounted onto the tank. I experimented with a microphone boon, and the thread fit as is. I mounted it on the wall a bit high, but the look was decent, and I liked the cable management (on the light arm, downside is the mess it makes on the wall - I did end up hiding those wires - but later switched to dual 160's on proper kessil mounts)

And with the lid on:

Not great pics, I wasn't thinking I would ever share this at the time.

Here's a before and after:

I had the additional heater in there for redundancy, but you get the idea. At this point I was not confident the flow into the vent would stay consistent (and using an inline heater, hence the redundancy).

At times the intake would drain the chamber (not enough water flowing into the box), but it just meant I had to raise the water level or reduce flow via the quick-connect valves. When the level was too high however, the skimming function would stop working, as the flow into the box would not break the surface tension.

I am now on the second iteration of this box, installed on the 40 gallon. And I still struggle with the balance of flow. It has to do with the size of the baffles but also the width of the vent and size of the slits in the vent. There is probably some math that can be done here. Anyone know any physics formulas that apply!?!

Version two is bigger, has a chamber for a protein skimmer, and as I alluded to before, the outflow connects to an undergravel filter, will show you how that looks in the next one!

Peace,
Dan

 

[AquaReefsTV]

4 weeks into the build it occurred to me that a canister intake pipe could provide the flow for a "mini sump" or "AIO box". This box would allow me to

1. hide the intake and outflow pipes, probes, dosing lines etc.
2. provide a media chamber
3. skim the surface film

This is what I built:

The intake pipe draws water through the baffles like an AIO, and the outflow is hidden inside too and just shoots out the side of the box as you can see. The middle chamber makes adding a bag of carbon easy peasy (negating a significant downside of running a canister).

I used acrylic I had lying around from another project, but since this was a prototype I thought the transparency would help demonstrate what was behind the box. I ended up cladding it in black cause well, "looks".

Here it is installed:

(By the way, I hated that the light was mounted onto the tank. I experimented with a microphone boon, and the thread fit as is. I mounted it on the wall a bit high, but the look was decent, and I liked the cable management (on the light arm, downside is the mess it makes on the wall - I did end up hiding those wires - but later switched to dual 160's on proper kessil mounts)

And with the lid on:

Not great pics, I wasn't thinking I would ever share this at the time.

Here's a before and after:

I had the additional heater in there for redundancy, but you get the idea. At this point I was not confident the flow into the vent would stay consistent (and using an inline heater, hence the redundancy).

At times the intake would drain the chamber (not enough water flowing into the box), but it just meant I had to raise the water level or reduce flow via the quick-connect valves. When the level was too high however, the skimming function would stop working, as the flow into the box would not break the surface tension.

I am now on the second iteration of this box, installed on the 40 gallon. And I still struggle with the balance of flow. It has to do with the size of the baffles but also the width of the vent and size of the slits in the vent. There is probably some math that can be done here. Anyone know any physics formulas that apply!?!

Version two is bigger, has a chamber for a protein skimmer, and as I alluded to before, the outflow connects to an undergravel filter, will show you how that looks in the next one!

Peace,
Dan

This came out awesome Dan! It cleaned up the display nicely and definitely allows you to focus more on the marine life and corals you have in the tank better too. Great work!

 

[40g]

This came out awesome Dan! It cleaned up the display nicely and definitely allows you to focus more on the marine life and corals you have in the tank better too. Great work!

Thanks!