Whip’s Red Sea Reefer XXL 750 Hybrid Bare Bottom Build

[Blutspitze]

Looking very impressive! Love the innovation on hooking the ozone to the skimmer. Very cool and glad to see it's working so well!

 

[Whip]

Making frag plugs...

Cut 1/4” acrylic rod down to size:

Sand top and bottom of rubble:

Drill 1/4” hole:

Shape plug:

Glue:

 

[Whip]

Underwater drilling with 1/4”x18” hammer drill bit...

Now I can move my frags around to make sure they are located in the best spot possible!

Resulted in dropping in 37 SPS frags!

 

[Marc88]

Man!!!! Good idea as always!

 

[Marc88]

I'm in the process is creating a NSA I might predrill a bunch of holes for this purpose.

 

[Whip]

I'm in the process is creating a NSA I might predrill a bunch of holes for this purpose.

You really should do it. Some extra work in the beginning will save you so much time throughout the life of your tank. Also, considering the price of coral, being able to move them if they are doing poorly or if they need more flow (or are blocking flow) is the only way to go. You can barely see the holes and they are actually really hard to find, so drill a lot.

I might suggest to drill the holes vertical. If you drill some horizontal holes (to make coral overhangs) the coral has to be perfectly balanced or it will spin in the hole. This makes you want to glue the plug in the hole... defeating the purpose of the hole in the first place. To get the overhang with a vertical hole, just glue the coral on the side of the plug (perpendicular to the hole) and not the top.

I have the same coral fragged in multiple spots in my tank. I am guessing the colors may differ nicely. We shall see.

 

[LBReefer]

Underwater drilling with 1/4”x18” hammer drill bit...

View attachment 1882884

Now I can move my frags around to make sure they are located in the best spot possible!

View attachment 1882887

Resulted in dropping in 37 SPS frags!

View attachment 1882888

This was a really nifty idea. I'm curing some rock right now and I will try this.

 

[miahpage]

I am fairly lazy/busy (not good in this hobby) and I absolutely hate going down to the LFS and getting buckets of RODI water. I figured acknowledging my laziness is the first step in making an effort to combat it. In doing so, I needed to design and construct a saltwater mixing station.

View attachment 924776

This system accomplishes the following:

• Upper Tank RODI Fill
• Upper to Lower Tank RODI Gravity Transfer
• Lower Tank Saltwater In-Tank Recirculation
• Upper Tank RODI Gavity Bucket Fill
• Lower Tank Saltwater Gravity Bucket Fill
• Upper Tank RODI Pump to Tank via Hose
• Lower Saltwater Pump to Tank via Hose

All of this is powered by a Pan World 50X.

Now (because my laziness knows no bounds) the next step is to run tubing from the garage (where the mixing station is located) to the den (where the tank is located). This is about 60 feet. I plan to set up a Neptune DOS and run black tubing (old saltwater removal/disposal) and white tubing (new saltwater feed). Since I’m in the attic, I’ll run some blue tubing (RODI feed), but I don’t plan on hooking that up yet as I’m nervous about live-feeding RODI top off.

I already have holes in the wall from my wall-mounted TV, so I’ll just repurpose them for the tubing feeds.

Great build thread!

I'm building a very similar water station with a panworld 50x. I noticed that the head on your pump seems to be rotated. Is this as easy as just unscrewing the head and rotating to the desired position?

BTW I found your great thread on the Reno Reef club page. I'm down in Carson.

 

[Quastermayne]

That is a sweet setup man!!!

 

[tautog83]

You ever get high aluminum in icp tests with all those spheres and bricks ?

 

[Whip]

Great build thread!

I'm building a very similar water station with a panworld 50x. I noticed that the head on your pump seems to be rotated. Is this as easy as just unscrewing the head and rotating to the desired position?

BTW I found your great thread on the Reno Reef club page. I'm down in Carson.

So cool you are local! Awesome!

YES... you can unscrew the volute and index it to your desired position.

 

[fluidimagery]

Great idea with those plugs that you created!

 

[Whip]

That is a sweet setup man!!!

Thank you. I am glad you are checking out my build thread. I tried to keep it interesting by posting lots of photos. I also made a point to share my learnings. I hope you enjoy.

You ever get high aluminum in icp tests with all those spheres and bricks ?

I had read that this was a perception back in the day and I could never find out if any claims were substantiated or not. I plan of doing my first ICP test soon and I will post the results.

 

[Whip]

Great idea with those plugs that you created!

I will be one to say it may have been one of the single smartest things I have done since getting serious about reefing. Being able to watch a coral’s health and adjust it’s location to improve its health is awesome! The key now is to limit moving them!

 

[Cole.mormon]

here try this, two emerald crabs 4 mexican turbo snails 15 astrea snails. also try microbacter clean it has been my little helper against dinos

 

[Whip]

Previously, I had my CO2 scrubber about four feet away away from my skimmer. Though I was getting all of the pH benifits, it seemed to be reducing skimmer performance. I shortened the distance between the two and now I am getting better skimmer performance.

 

[Cole.mormon]

cool

 

[InvaderJim]

Sorry if I missed it but what co2 scrubber are you running?

 

[Whip]

Sorry if I missed it but what co2 scrubber are you running?

Good catch. I am usually pretty good about putting what I use in the thread, but I missed this one...

Large CO2 Scrubber (4.4lb Capacity) - IceCap

Take control of your aquarium’s pH with an IceCap CO2 Scrubber If you’re struggling to maintain pH or if your aquarium suffers from chronically low pH despite your alkalinity being spot-on, connecting an IceCap CO2 scrubber to the air intake of your protein skimmer is a great way to raise and...

www.bulkreefsupply.com

 

[Whip]

You ever get high aluminum in icp tests with all those spheres and bricks ?

I just conducted my first ICP test and it was reported that Aluminum was present, but well within range. I am pretty happy with that as I have A LOT of MarinePure (blocks and spheres) in my system.