The Wet Quintet

[tREEFarm]

Welcome, reefing friends, to my humble attempt at creating more space at home for my growing collection of corals.


The project began back in December 2023 - I set up a 40B attached to a 100g Rubbermaid stock tank with plans to slowly add to the system over time. Since then, the plan changed direction multiple times as I built out the system and had new ideas or discovered barriers to my initial intentions.


Over eight months later, here’s what we’re working with now —


System Overview:

• Two Rubbermaid stock tanks (100g, 150g)
  • 100g holds live rock
  • 150g holds equipment
• Three 60B tanks
• One 40B tank
• One Glasscages 48x48x18 acrylic tank (picking up Aug 30th)

Tanks are laid out as seen below - this is not to scale but should help you get an idea of how everything is pieced together –

The system is plumbed together with 1" returns and 2" drain lines.


Equipment:

• Main return pump - Abyzz A400
• Anemone tank return pump - Vectra M2 w/ battery backup
• Bubble Magus B9 skimmer
• Radion XR15 G4 Pro (x2)
• Radion XR15 G6 Pro (x2)
• Radion XR30 G6 Pro (x4)
• Kessil A360XE (x2)
• Kessil AP9X
• Sicce Xstream powerheads w/ battery backups (x2)
• Vortech MP10s w/ battery backup (x2)
• Tunze Stream 3 w/ battery backup
• PhosBan Reactor for carbon
• Tunze Osmolator (old version) w/ new high jet pump
• 55g barrel for the ATO reservoir
• Inkbird Heater Controller (x2)
• Finnex Titanium Heater 800w (x2)

Total system volume will be right around 550g once the new tank arrives next week.


Short Backstory:

Corals are mostly softies right now. About two years ago the house we were renting suffered an AC outage and the corporate landlords were content to let us sit in an over 90 degree home for more than a week, with our new-born son, before pretending to fix it, but not fix it, for about another month or so.. I’m legally not allowed to discuss it further. hah

Back to the point - with the crazy temps in the house two years ago all my SPS died off. I lost thousands in corals and thousands of hours of investment. But such is life in this hobby sometimes.

Between the day job, wife, son, dog, etc and doing regular maintenance on top of continuing to build out the system - I’ve unfortunately been terrible at documenting the journey thus far. I’m picking up the new Glasscages tank next week and will be adding it into the system over Labor Day weekend. It’ll be about 14 weeks from ordering the tank to pick-up. Needless to say I’m very excited to get it on the stand and plumbed up!

I will be taking some pics this weekend to add to the thread to get you acquainted with the current setup and stocking.

Stay tuned!

 

[tREEFarm]

I'm a spatial learner, so selfishly, I'm going to try and make this as visual as possible.

Let's go around the room, tank-by-tank, and get introduced to the system. First up...


~ Tank #1 ~ Anemone Tank

The tank has been highlighted on the map below with a red border.

Current Stock:

• Fish
  • Pair of Clarkii clownfish
  • Six line wrasse
• Anemone
  • Rainbow BTA
  • Rose BTA
  • RFAs
  • Condy
• Coral
  • Pulsing xenia
• CUC
  • Florida fighting conch
  • Lighting dove snails
  • Trochus snails
  • Zig zag periwinkle snails
  • Florida cerith & dwarf cerith snails
  • Nassarius snails
  • Pitho crabs
  • Derasa clam (not technically CUC, but not sure where else to place it hah)
  • Random freebie clam from TBS - no idea what it is but it's still alive
• TBS Rock - 45 lbs & Marco Dry Rock - 25 lbs
• Mixture of Miracle Mud, crushed coral and sand substrate to about 3ish inches
  • This is the only tank in the system that isn't bare bottom

Equipment:

• Lights - Kessil A360XE (x2)
• Vectra M2 w/ battery backup

The Anemone tank has only been running for about five months but technically pulls water from the same 150g sump as the other tanks in the 'main' system. The return and drain lines for this tank are also separate from the 'main' system.

The tank is run by a Vectra M2 with a battery backup and serves as the only means of water movement within the tank. No powerheads. In the event the Vectra goes down for an extended period of time and my backup pump is also unavailable, I have an emergency valve separating the anemone and 'main' systems I can turn and boost up the Abyzz pump to compensate for the minimal, additional head pressure.



The drain is gravity-fed 1.5" pvc that is T'd within the tank with two 1.5" strainers to prevent/minimize any overflow issues in the event an anemone, or something else, decides to get personal and attempt to clog up one side. All my tanks run this style of drain, for redundancy, to be safe if one side gets clogged up.




The new Kessil A360XE are nice but not as much of an upgrade to overall power as I would have liked to see (still have to run them at/above 60% to get meaningful light, in my configuration).


Photos: (no filters - just lenses)

Next up - The control panel and sumps (aka stock tanks). Stay tuned!

 

[phillyb614]

Rainbow BTAs look amazing! I mean, as does everything else of course. I mean, you get it

 

[tREEFarm]

Rainbow BTAs look amazing! I mean, as does everything else of course. I mean, you get it

Thank you!! The six you were kind enough to sell me have turned into at least 10.. sometimes I'm pretty sure I count 12 total hah.

Your new build is looking awesome!

 

[tREEFarm]

Let's knock out what most people will consider the boring corner of the room..

Control Panel:

The Control Panel is the brains of the whole operation.

The main power strip is mounted here, along with the pump drivers for the Abyzz and Vectra pumps, the Vectra’s battery backup, both Inkbird controllers and the ATO controller. I made the panel a bit larger with more holes than I currently need which hopefully makes it a little more future-proof than my last version.

There is a small shelf for the battery packs. The battery packs are secured to the shelf with velcro - my concern if they were mounted on the panel with everything else is that one will come undone and fall into the sump. I didn't want to pay for the mounts from EcoTech, so better to be overly cautious I suppose..

All the cords are labeled and color coded (I’m crazy like a fox, that’s why my friends call me whiskers).


100g Rubbermaid Stock Tank:

Rocks! This one is about as exciting as you’d expect - The ‘main’ system drains into this 100g stock tank filled with approximately 100lbs of seasoned Marco rock.

The water from the 100g then drains through a 2” bulkhead, passing through a DIY filter floss strainer, and then into the 150g stock tank below.

150g Rubbermaid Stock Tank:

Equipment! Both the ‘main’ and anemone system utilize this tank as their sump. Both return pumps, the heaters and temp sensors, ATO sensors, grounding probe, carbon reactor, and skimmer are housed in this tank.

Here's the drain from the anemone tank into the 150g, also using the DIY filter floss strainer:

Next up - we'll return to the fun stuff - Tanks with corals!!

 

[phillyb614]

Thank you!! The six you were kind enough to sell me have turned into at least 10.. sometimes I'm pretty sure I count 12 total hah.

Your new build is looking awesome!

Thanks man! Cycle is taking longer than expected. Hopefully adding some livestock any day now.

Enjoying your build as well!

 

[tREEFarm]

Getting prepped for next weekend!


Power bricks installed and labeled - check

Lights mounted up and ready to be hung - check

Just waiting on some paint to dry and we'll have liftoff! Stay tuned!