Red Sea reefer 900 build

[njoyreef]

Hi fellow reefers,
I am documenting my build in this thread.
As I posted in introduction, I am an old FW aquarist and starting my large reef..

I will sketch out my vision, plans, and how I am building my reefer.

Vision: create a mixed reef with good amount of SPS corals, focusing on Angels, and complementing schooling fish.

Now that's a vision, let's see how it comes

Well, I have been doing FW for some time and had a SW cube in past, so I had few guiding principles and some housekeeping to keep me organized.

1) Have a large water body to minimize fluctuations.. my FW nature show tank is 200gallons. So I am shooting for similar size for SW.

2) Base water is very critical. So have plenty of RODI.. I have a 200 gallon RODI reservoir which I plan to use both for FW and SW. Its always ready with full load.. Picture attached of my RODI system with 200 gallon black reservoir.

3) Focus on stability of system rather than shooting for numbers. I plan to do 7-10 gallon AWC. For that I have a 100 gallon SW reservoir. The white reservoir in Pic. I will use doser to accomplish this. I plan to use system wide control which I will explain in following thread.

4) I want to QT everything for long period. So i built a dedicated QT system. It's in my garage. Pic attached.

5) Since I am dealing with SW and FW I need good management skills. So i built a 6 ft tall cabinet to keep things organized.

6) reefer 900 is big ( 79"×26"×26"). Since our house is on crawl space, I reinforced my floor. It can take 9' -10' long tank if needed.

7) since I did not want to dispose large quatity of SW everywhere, had to build a drain connection in my garage for SW. QT drains into the same drain.

Still no tank or gears...weird uhhh

8) I ordered and got the tank. Picture attached.

9) lastly, the most important, I read and research a lot everyday and journal everything.

More to come in my next thread...

 

[Dcal]

Lookin good

 

[njoyreef]

Hello reefers,
Continuing on the build from where I left.
I did some long term planning as to how I will operate, QT, maintain and go about this system.

So here are the system details

1) Tank - Redsea reefer 3XL 900 ( 79" × 26"×26"). I like the ratio of depth to height and length is good for swimmers.. it fits the golden ratio of high points..

2) I went with 2 Reefwave 45 gyre pumps. For start its good, but I am thinking of adding 2 more MP60's over time..

3) For lights I did x3 Reefled 160s as a start. I like their program, intensity, and shimmer. From FW times I am a big fan of shimmer. I will scale to a combo of T5 and LED after a year once I start getting SPS. Let's see or maybe explore more LED options...

4) for T, I went with x2 500W titanium on inkbird control. 2 heaters for redundancy.

5) I put a 40W pentair UV on closed loop. It has a GHL flow controller.

6) Went with Red sea skimmer 900.. I could not believe it's so simple..really..just 5 screws..and the cup is massive with cleaning wiper and drain. Also it has Sicce pump...

7) I am using x2 Sicce SDC 9.0 as return. One pump is running at 95% to dual return in reefer 900, and one pump is driving the UV at 20%. It's for redundancy. When Main pump is down I can switch the UV pump.

8) For control system I went with full blown GHL with KH and ion director and additional slave doser. I read a lot about GHL and Apex, and finally settled on GHL. I liked their ion director concept where they measure nitrate, phosphate, Calcium, Magnisium.. They don't use reagent and use ion detection probe... it was cool...I am in que for ion director..it's 3 months wait...am waiting for maxi doser for AWC as well which is not released yet

9) Got adaptive reef cabinet for GHL. With left over faceplates and some DIY I built an electrical cabinet to isolate all electrical next to the tank. The GHL power bar is also in that cabinet. I have enough room to add more controllers...

10) For redundancy I run the return pump, gyres, and light on independent power source. Did not want to connect to GHL to prevent single point failure. I might change that in future, but GHL is primarily for water chemistry control right now. Also these pumps have separate feed mode and other advance features which I can always use.

11) Coming from Nature Aquarium background (Takashi Amano follower, some of you might know who he was) I am an aquascaping fan. When I got my hands on dry rock and some marco cement, I could not stop and made some structures with negative space. I used a mock setup with PVC and made these structures in modules that I can lift. The modules are made to fit seamlessly inside the tank..I added a video..let me know what you all think..... I know I overdid it, but could not stop myself with new medium of work...I used around 200lb of dry marco rock..later on I can remove some modules, but now it is cool to bring stability... I used around 80lb of Argonite special grade sand...

Attached are some pictures and video of aquascape...
Don't judge me too harshly on my aquascape... change is the only stable thing...

 

[njoyreef]

Hi reefers,
Came back after 2 months, during which the tank was cycling without fish..I had lights ON at 20%..rearranged the rock scape. Added the video so that you can see the depth..the scape comes in and out of view and have lot of negative space...
Added red sea DIY net cover..

Added first batch of fully QT fish in DT. Fishes are enjoying the space and are finding lot of hiding places..

First batch of fish: 4 clown, 1 purple tang, 1 scopas tang (juvenile), 2 biota yellow tang, 1 blue hippo tang ( small baby). The purple tang was very shy so added him first so that he can establish himself before the tang gang comes in next..

Also adding picture of My QT. The QT has one 40 gallon breeder ( for tangs), four 20 gallon and two 10 gallon tank. The system is connected to 100 gallon SW reservoir and drains, so WC is literally done within 5 min or less..

In my 2 batch of QT on top shelf I have ( achiles tang, gem tang, powder brown, tomini tang and 2 biota yellow tang) I will have 7 tang species in all that are all below 9" size..also have some reef sea blue chromis, green chromis, orange anthias and 2 bellus angel...these guys have completed copper and are in prazi now..Will be ready by next week..

In my 3rd batch of QT, I have some more green chromis and carberryi anthias...they are being prepped for copper..

I have a large space on top and like schooling fish darting through rockwork..

I am pretty much done with my fish stocking..May add some wrasses and blennies ( will let the sand mature before adding blenny)
I have no cleaning crew yet..

Today, also added some red algae and sea lettuce from Algae barn in the refugium..to balance the nitrate...

P.S: one thing I must share..my tank was cycling without fish for 2 months, so I was seeing some algae on sand..and my purple, scopas tang from 1st batch cleaned it up in less than 10 min...I could not believe my eyes...it was work in action...

Also GHL is registering all parameters, redox is slowing going up..things are stabilizing..did not start KH director yet, as I have no corals..
Waiting for my ion director..

One month back connected my RODI reservoir (200 gallon) to my sump for ATO..it's gravity fed with float valve and solenoid.. I got the GHL level sensors, Need to program it...

I am now planning for coral addition...was planning on Bayer's dip..let's see..pls. share your experience with Bayer's dip...