The Tiki Room Build(180g total)

[tcarstens4]

Hello all, this is my first build thread on here and I figured I should document the whole process of my two 75 gallon tanks that I will be plumbing together for my display tanks in our tiki bar room. The whole idea started because my fiancé and I bought a home that has a split finished basement, so naturally in the bar area room he wanted to go all in on the tiki theme because of how much we love Florida and just the general vibe of tiki bars. So, two used tank purchases later, 75g marine land with a corner overflow and 2 drilled holes, then a Red Sea reefer 350(I think that’s the right one?) it’s the 74 gallon one, I am now getting to the part where I am deciding important things such as plumbing. My question to start off this long journey is about my 75 gallon marine land tank.
This tank only has 2 drilled holes in its corner overflow- but I want a emergency drain and a siphon drain, as well as a return line. Should I have my LFS drill two holes in the back of the tank and have two return ports or just do one? This tank will eventually have sps when it’s more mature. Thanks all happy reefing! I’ll post more pictures and add more as time goes on but I’d love for advice on the marine land tank.
Just why am I calling this a tiki build?
Well, our basement in our home is finished with one side meant for the couch living area, and the other is a wet bar. Originally the wet bar side of the basement was carpeted, but with reef tanks we figured it would be easier to have a waterproof vinyl tile planking for the reef tanks. We are so in love with the tiki bar vibe that we always get to have when we visit Florida my fiancé had the idea to make it a tiki bar. So, we will be repainting the walls a dark green, putting in a dark wood-looking floor and putting a bamboo wainscoting on the bottom half of the wall. I think this will look amazing in the end! I also have marks on the floor where the tanks are going.

Just a bit about me and tank background:
I am 22 and am in my last year of college, I have a absolutely wonderful Fiancé who supports my addiction to all things reefing. I am going to be graduating with a bachelors in Fine Arts with and emphasis in ceramics and a minor in business. My reefing journey started about 1 year ago with a 20 gallon tank run on a canister filter, I’ll put pictures of that tank below. Eventually a 20 gallon was too small since my parents got a 120 I have been wanting to upgrade my tank. After that my fiancé and I got our first home and that gave me the room I needed for my upgrade. So, I purchased a used 75 gallon marine land with a stand, trigger crystal sump, ai hydra lights(2), ecotech mp40, ecotech mp10, Neptune apex el, energy bar, apex Fuge light,RODI system, return pumps and skimmer. I then built the aqua scape for the marineland tank and got it cleaned up, and now it’s getting drilled for a couple of returns. Then comes the amazing deal, Red Sea 350, with a canopy and a BRS carbon reactor, all I had to do was move it out of an apartment and it was mine for a steal. So after long consideration on where these tanks were going my fiancé decided we wanted a tiki bar room. So enter: the reef tank wall! these two tanks I will plumb together and run two species tanks sps and some lps, and then a lps softy tank. And for the second tanks lighting I won a g6 Radeon that will work great for the lps softy tank.

The used Red Sea tank

The aquascape for the tank

The marine land tank stand

The light for my Red Sea tank that I won at RAP Dallas this weekend

Edited 11pm Oct 10 to add photos and more info

 

[Lost in the Sauce]

What orientation is your LFS drilling? If you had two holes already, you only really need one more for an emergency drain on the marineland.

Does your reefer 350 have stock plumbing? If so, they are plumbed in metric sizes to tying them together may require bulkhead swap and all standard plumbing, or a metric to standard coupler for the existing bulk head.

 

[tcarstens4]

What orientation is your LFS drilling? If you had two holes already, you only really need one more for an emergency drain on the marineland.

Does your reefer 350 have stock plumbing? If so, they are plumbed in metric sizes to tying them together may require bulkhead swap and all standard plumbing, or a metric to standard coupler for the existing bulk head.

So my marine land has two holes in the corner overflow- I decided I’m going to put two 3/4” holes evenly spaced apart so I can take advantage of more flow for sps, the Red Sea does have the stock plumbing however I could replace it and switch it to us measurements

 

[Lost in the Sauce]

Where are you having the two additional holes drilled? Was there room in the overflow?

 

[tcarstens4]

Where are you having the two additional holes drilled? Was there room in the overflow?

They are going to be on the back wall similar to some planet aquariums I’ve seen in my LFS, there wasn’t much room in the overflow section without major risk of breaking the glass if more holes were added. So the rounded overflow hits about 8 inches into the tank, and my tank is 48 inches long total so the holes are both ten inches in from the overflow and edge of the tank and are going to be about 4 inches down from the rim of the tank

 

[tcarstens4]

Progress!!! Next is adding the shoe along the trim and finishing the transitions to the carpet, then onto painting the walls and getting the bamboo wainscoting up!

 

[tcarstens4]

Progress people progress, I put some liquid flex seal in the bottom of this tank since it will be housing the sump, had the tank resealed and drilled for return lines along the back wall- now all that is left to do is cut a hole in the other tank stand for the piping to run through and decide how my plumbing will work and plumb the tanks. I am debating blacking out the left side though, but for now it’s time to paint the walls of the basement then contact adaptive reef for a custom controller board to fit the vibe of the room

 

[tcarstens4]

So a lot of progress has been made on the tiki time reef. My fiancé and I painted the walls, got both tanks down to the basement and I also cut the holes I need so I can plumb the tanks together

 

[am3gross]

looking good!!!!!!

 

[tcarstens4]

So bit of an update, I got both my tanks plumbed, just need to do some more tightening of things and I got saltwater put in them, added the ammonia last night and now the cycle is up and running!! The light over the tank is not it’s permanent home, it will be going over the Red Sea tank as soon as I figure out how I’ll mount it into the canopy. Two ai hydras are going to go over the marine land tank (left side one)

 

[tcarstens4]

Added some more live rock to the system from my other tanks, got one of my lights finally mounted over the tank, and am slowly coming around to absolutely hating filter socks, so I may just switch out for some mechanical filtration my my sumps baffle before the return pump.

 

[tcarstens4]

Ok big update here- we moved both pairs of our clownfish into both displays, the green clown goby went into the left display, a yasha and yellow citron clown goby went into the right tank. We finished painting all of the walls their base coat green, got the QT tank up not cycling yet as we ran out of salt-( that was fast!) and most of my corals have been moved into both tanks, the left tanks clowns are hosting an anemone and anemone crab is hosting the other, the clowns in the right tank are stubborn and won’t host quite yet. Here’s some pics!

 

[tcarstens4]

Updates: I have discovered I dispose filter socks and prefer fleece rollers, but oh well this is a used setup on both tanks that is working great so far. Anemone went on a walk, had a major tank disaster(caused by my dumb self for not shutting the unlimited RODI line off to the sump) the salinity over night dropped to 29 and now that all the water on the floor got cleaned up and mass panic and I slowly brought the salinity back up to 35, fish couldn’t have cared less but the corals were very unhappy for a day. Now everything is back to normal and I added a bunch of copepods to my tanks from algae barn as well as some clean chaeto. A lot of my corals have vastly improved since putting them into the two big tanks, next on the to do list is try and find a good protein skimmer to run on both of these tanks that is somewhat compact so I can possibly add a algae scrubber as well or any other equipment I may need.

 

[Lost in the Sauce]

Looking good. The bubble Magnus curve line is pretty compact. It's a pain to break in as most are but holds a setting wonderfully.

 

[tcarstens4]

New update- so we’ve had a bad month here where I live and the lemons just keep coming. First we lost power for 19 hours and we had to run around trying to have a generator for the fish tanks to keep them up. During that storm we also lost half of our front yard tree- which then had to be cut down. Then two weeks after that storm we got a couple good thunderstorms two days in a row- which our sump pump failed and our basement was in two inches of water. Fried almost all of my electronics on my saltwater tanks, echo tech L2 circuit board and power block, ai hydra power block, Kessil power block, mp40 circuit board and power block, and Radeon G5 power block. The flood also made my Red Sea tank stand structurally unstable. Which today I have to take all the fish and coral out to take our tanks down. So unfortunate to have lost so much in the past few weeks. :/

 

[Northern Flicker]

This is awful, I feel your pain. Water is so dang destructive, we’ve had two major leaks which almost gutted us for good.

Will you be exiting the hobby or will you be getting new stands? Sounds like you are selling everything.

It’s painful but everything in life is temporary and you still have each other.

 

[tcarstens4]

Well, it isn’t all for nothing, I’ll probably be getting a custom 6ft glass cages tank and just have one tank. Most likely going to end up being 180 gallons. I have lost two fish in the process but they were just two tomini tangs, and I transferred all of my live rock to another 75 gallon tank I had laying around. Moved all clean up crew into it along with 3 berghia nudibranch that were living in my sump Fuge chamber. I don’t know yet if I will start fresh with no live rock and cycle for a long time or have some of the live rock from my old tanks in the new one. Will most likely have to upgrade my L2 return pump to push the amount of water I want it to