Going BIG when buying small! My Fluval 22 gallon Dual Display Mangrove Frag Tank!

[KellyCorals]

Very cool and detailed build. I will be following your progress.

Thanks! I’m happy with how it’s turned out so far...glad to have you follow along!

 

[KellyCorals]

Who are or were you using for water? Do you need a mixing station? I’ve got this one I’m going to be posting here soon.

I was buying my water from aqua mart. I’m in the process of setting up my mixing station. Hopefully I’ll get sometime to work on it this weekend!

 

[KellyCorals]

Doing some research last night to see what kind of power this set up will draw and when!

 

[Ricksreeefs]

Awesome build! Following.

 

[KellyCorals]

Awesome build! Following.

Thanks Rick for following along!

 

[blstravler]

Really well done! Can’t wait to see this keep going and become a reef!

 

[KellyCorals]

Really well done! Can’t wait to see this keep going and become a reef!

Thanks me too! I’m trying to be patient on this build but I gotta admit I’ve been tempted to bring it inside and get some life going in it already! I’m going to take my time and do it right this time...I’ve always rushed it!

 

[KellyCorals]

Got a couple things done on the tank last night. I started by adding a 3rd plant light - I wasn’t sure if 2 was going to be enough to see good mangrove growth but 3 should definitely do the job.

I mounted my reef brite controller and my other transformers and spent a good portion of the night doing cord management. I made some cord labels like I have on my other tank because when there is this much going I want to be able to unplug a device without guessing.
Here’s the before and afters-

Im sure at this point I’m not fitting a single other thing on the back of this stand, but everything is off the ground and tucked away so I’m happy. The whole back of the tank will be hidden from view and like the man behind the curtain, will hide all the magic (wink)

I installed a cord grommet made by Neat Aquatics in my control panel which completes finished look -

Well that was enough fun for one night, I need to get back to building my mixing station so that’s next on my list!

 

[KellyCorals]

Oh and during testing last night I found that my mangrove basket holder had tendency to fall into the sump. To fix this I needed the holder to press tighter against the sump lip. I cut a added a spare piece of clear PVC as a support brace to fix that problem.

 

[Jj0622]

The brother in law lol jay your doing good man I wanted to stay there all night and just stare at it

 

[KellyCorals]

My brother came over last night and snapped some pics on his phone (his phone camera is way better than mine)

 

[KellyCorals]

Assembled and installed my Plank Auto Feeder from Avast Marine last night. The guy who made this is obviously smarter than I am because it took me longer than it should have to put together. It looks like it’s going to work great - the black tube has a small pump inside that creates a little vortex to suck food down instead of letting it float on top of the water.

Can’t wait to see how it feeds!

 

[Smirkish]

It looks sooooo good! Is it weird that the cords going out of the cabinet remind me of mangrove roots now? They blend into the background so well! Was that planned?

 

[KellyCorals]

It looks sooooo good! Is it weird that the cords going out of the cabinet remind me of mangrove roots now? They blend into the background so well! Was that planned?

Thanks! I’m really happy with it too...my brother hasn’t seen it until last night and he really likes it too, which put a smile on my face. Actually I noticed that too about the cords but that wasn’t planned at all...it’s funny how things just turn out sometimes! Thanks for checking out my build!

 

[KellyCorals]

It’s been a busy weekend but I managed to squeeze in an hour or so to work on the mixing station. I have a block house so first step for me was to cut a couple 2x4’s and Tapcon them to the wall and then mount a piece of plywood on them so I could have an area to mount everything else - then I painted it white

For my RO system I chose the 4 stage “Value Plus” from BRS. I liked it because it already had a “in and out” TDS meter preinstalled and a pressure gauge. I marked the holes and mounted it up -

Then I mounted up my Hydros 2 controller. I wanted to be able to automate some of the filling / mixing and keep the mixed saltwater at the perfect temp. In retrospect if I had purchased the Hydros 4 I could have automated the entire process but I couldn’t justify the price for now. Good news is I can always upgrade it later. Here it is all mounted up -

I mounted up the power strip and DC solenoid valve that will shut off water coming out of the RO when it senses the barrel is full -

Well that’s all I got done today, not as much as I had hoped, next chance I get I’ll start plumbing the barrels!

 

[KellyCorals]

So I was like a kid on Christmas when UPS showed up today. I ordered my custom frag rack from Zen reef and it just showed up. I’m super excited because I pitched the idea of this type of frag rack to the owner and he was on board with building it - he said he’s never made one like this before. I knew I wanted a custom size frag rack to fill a 13” x 15” space in my tank - so here it is!

So this thing is going to hold A TON of frag plugs...up to 244 to be exact if I really packed them in there

All the frag racks Zen Reef makes have these food grade silicone inserts that keep the frag plugs from falling out when snails and hermit crabs go messing with them - but that’s not what this frag rack special.

What makes it special is that it has magnets on the front and back of it so I can adjust the height of the frag rack in my tank! I was worried if the measurements were not spot on that the magnets wouldn’t hold it solid if they were too far from each other, so he made the magnets on the frag rack itself built onto slotted brackets so they can slide to adjust to the exact width of the inside tank walls -

So there it is! I’m super happy with how it turned out! God I can’t wait to get some life in this tank!

 

[KellyCorals]

So I finally got around to putting on the front door. I’ve been putting it off because for me, drilling a new piece of acrylic is a bit nerve racking because you only get one chance to get it right or risk having to have the piece remade. Anyways here is how went -

I had a piece of acrylic cut to size and then had the corners rounded.

Marked my holes and then drilled them to attach the hinges

Then I took stainless machine screws and nuts and mounted the first hinge. Then aligned all the screw heads so my OCD brain would be happy

Then did it all again for the other side -

Then mounted the door to the stand - sounds easy but was tricky to get just right

Now I needed a way to keep the door shut and fingers out of the sump area. So I found an old tank lid bracket and cut it in half and drilled some holes in it -

Then I drilled a hole for the lock (which was much smaller than I thought it would be....ahhhh the joys of buying things online) and mounted it into the door and mounted the homemade striker. There you have it! I now have a door! I wanted it to have a gap all the way around to help with air flow. No big deal but I’m trying to make my build thread a running log of what I did and when. I really need to get back to making my mixing station...just haven’t been motivated to work on it lately.

 

[Smirkish]

Log shmog, we like updates! Just sitting over here coveting that frag rack and admiring how clean the entire setup looks. Really enjoying watching this build. I look forward to being able to doing another one from scratch that I can take my time with, like you have. Be proud of everything you are doing, it looks great.

I noticed you ended up adding more of the tubing as bracing for your mangrove holder. Are they siliconed in? It might work better to use acrylic dividers that would brace the entire holder instead of just at the bottom, so you are keeping pressure on the top of it near the rim, too. Not sure if that would hinder you too much taking the baskets out, though.

 

[KellyCorals]

Log shmog, we like updates! Just sitting over here coveting that frag rack and admiring how clean the entire setup looks. Really enjoying watching this build. I look forward to being able to doing another one from scratch that I can take my time with, like you have. Be proud of everything you are doing, it looks great.

I noticed you ended up adding more of the tubing as bracing for your mangrove holder. Are they siliconed in? It might work better to use acrylic dividers that would brace the entire holder instead of just at the bottom, so you are keeping pressure on the top of it near the rim, too. Not sure if that would hinder you too much taking the baskets out, though.

Thank you soooo much! I’ll take the compliment and I really need/love the encouragement from time to time. I’ve had this tank since January and it’s killing me that it’s almost end of May and hasn’t even seen a drop of salt yet! I’m trying to be super patient tho and do it 100% right with the right equipment from jump instead of what I always do and get it running and then have to switch and try this and that. I just got done checking out your build this morning and your tank looks awesome I’m totally impressed with the amount of life you have going in that tank in such a short period of time and it all looks great!

I’ll keep posting progress of the build...I can tell I’m almost there! And I’ll keep an eye on yours so I can stay jealous lol

As far as the basket holder goes, the first problem was that the basket would fall into the sump easily, so I used a cut piece of clear PVC to brace it. But then I noticed that when you shut the main pump off (power outage) the sump level rises and the baskets kinda float up and almost out of the holder so I used 2 more pieces of pipe to hold the baskets down. The pipes are just press-fit in there, not siliconed in. All that being said I’m not 100% happy with the look so I’m always open to some design ideas! It is functional tho because I can take the pipes in and out when and if I need to tend to the mangroves.

 

[Smirkish]

Thank you soooo much! I’ll take the compliment and I really need/love the encouragement from time to time. I’ve had this tank since January and it’s killing me that it’s almost end of May and hasn’t even seen a drop of salt yet! I’m trying to be super patient tho and do it 100% right with the right equipment from jump instead of what I always do and get it running and then have to switch and try this and that. I just got done checking out your build this morning and your tank looks awesome I’m totally impressed with the amount of life you have going in that tank in such a short period of time and it all looks great!

I’ll keep posting progress of the build...I can tell I’m almost there! And I’ll keep an eye on yours so I can stay jealous lol

As far as the basket holder goes, the first problem was that the basket would fall into the sump easily, so I used a cut piece of clear PVC to brace it. But then I noticed that when you shut the main pump off (power outage) the sump level rises and the baskets kinda float up and almost out of the holder so I used 2 more pieces of pipe to hold the baskets down. The pipes are just press-fit in there, not siliconed in. All that being said I’m not 100% happy with the look so I’m always open to some design ideas! It is functional tho because I can take the pipes in and out when and if I need to tend to the mangroves.

You’re welcome! I’m ready for you to get some salt in there too! It’s been a ton of fun watching you go through all the details, though. I think we could all do with a little encouragement and positive feedback. Never hurts to have someone to bounce ideas off of either.

I’m glad you liked my build, and I hope you’ll stop in and offer insight from time to time, too. I’ve got a lot to do still, and like you said, going back and changing/fixing things is a paiiiiin.

I sketched out the inside of your sump earlier to see if I could figure out anything that would help keep the baskets in place while also bracing the holder itself, but I’m still pondering over it. It might be a non-issue, honestly, when you put the mangroves in, as their weight may hold it down. If I come up with anything I’ll let you know! And thanks again for checking out my tank.