Broadfield's Red Sea Reefer 450 Build - OCD Inspired... Going Back To a Reef

[revhtree]

Had a good friend come over tonight to help teach me how to take proper images with my Canon 50D. He also quick schooled my on processing RAW images and some basic Photoshop skills to make sure my images look like they do in real life.

IMG_4434 by Toby Broadfield, on Flickr

IMG_4278 by Toby Broadfield, on Flickr

IMG_4421 by Toby Broadfield, on Flickr

IMG_4402 by Toby Broadfield, on Flickr

One of my favorite tanks!

 

[Broadfield]

One of my favorite tanks!

Thanks David! The whole Facebook thing was funny... neither one of us realizing who the other one was lol.

I can't attend MACNA this year, but I'll be sure to introduce myself at MACNA 2017.

 

[Stevenbulbus]

Wow you wouldn't want a TV

 

[Danny1496]

Stunning.

 

[Broadfield]

Don't mind me randomly posting images without descriptions.... I'm trying to get this photography thing down.

IMG_5768 (1) by Toby Broadfield, on Flickr

 

[Robink]

Wow!! Your tank looks amazing!! So are your pictures!!

 

[Robink]

Don't mind me randomly posting images without descriptions.... I'm trying to get this photography thing down.

IMG_5768 (1) by Toby Broadfield, on Flickr

Looks like you have it down pat!!!

 

[palmantsai]

Nice pics!

 

[Jimbo662]

I say post away! Great looking pics and tank.

 

[Swaefa]

Quick question for you on your plumbing. The Red Sea Reefer out of the box has a barbed fitting for the return. I noticed in your pics you replaced that fitting and it is now all hard plumbed. I tried the same thing, replacing the threaded barbed fitting with a 3/4 threaded coupler. My problem is the Red Sea fitting is metric. The 3/4 fitting doesn't exactly fit right. I have tried applying mass amounts of Teflon tape and still have minor leaks. How did you address this problem?

 

[Sharvey103]

Very nice setup and writeup. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Broadfield]

Quick question for you on your plumbing. The Red Sea Reefer out of the box has a barbed fitting for the return. I noticed in your pics you replaced that fitting and it is now all hard plumbed. I tried the same thing, replacing the threaded barbed fitting with a 3/4 threaded coupler. My problem is the Red Sea fitting is metric. The 3/4 fitting doesn't exactly fit right. I have tried applying mass amounts of Teflon tape and still have minor leaks. How did you address this problem?

I used standard NPT thread and it worked perfectly fine with enough Teflon tape. I just found out though that CoralVue sells the metric threaded adapter.

http://www.coralvue.com/metric-male-coupling

Very nice setup and writeup. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for looking!

 

[Broadfield]

IMG_5925 by Toby Broadfield, on Flickr

 

[Neil Fox]

Tank looks great. Great pics too!

 

[Futuretotm]

Looking good!
I really like the fact that you stripped the backing off the tank. Quick question: how do you keep the overflow clean? Is it removable?

 

[Broadfield]

Quick question: how do you keep the overflow clean? Is it removable?

The overflow is a tinted glass, so I can easily scrape it just like the rest of the tank. However, now that I have pealed the black film off, I'm actually going to let it get covered in coralline algae. I think it will blend in quite well with the wall behind it. As you can see on my power heads and the very top of the overflow(which is plastic), coralline has started to take over and is much less apparent than black.

 

[Futuretotm]

The overflow is a tinted glass, so I can easily scrape it just like the rest of the tank. However, now that I have pealed the black film off, I'm actually going to let it get covered in coralline algae. I think it will blend in quite well with the wall behind it. As you can see on my power heads and the very top of the overflow(which is plastic), coralline has started to take over and is much less apparent than black.

1st reaction: noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
pause
2nd reaction: ok cool, lets see how it turns out (coraline on rear clear-glass)

 

[Broadfield]

1st reaction: noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
pause
2nd reaction: ok cool, lets see how it turns out (coraline on rear clear-glass)

No, no, no... coralline on the black overflow... not clear glass.

 

[Palerider]

Hey Toby, are those aquamaxx reactors both the gfo/carbon reactors or the biopellet reactors? If they're the gfo/carbon reactors are you running biopellets in one of them? One of your pics looked like that was the case, just curious.

 

[Broadfield]

Hey Toby, are those aquamaxx reactors both the gfo/carbon reactors or the biopellet reactors? If they're the gfo/carbon reactors are you running biopellets in one of them? One of your pics looked like that was the case, just curious.

They are both the standard reactors. I originally didn't plan to run bio pellets... just GFO and GAC. However, I decided to give bio pellets a spin. It works absolutely just fine for pellets. I run GFO in the 2nd one.