therootcause's Waterbox Reef 180.5 and Fish Room Build

[therootcause]

I welcome your comments, excitement, criticism, and assistance! 

I recently moved to Pennsylvania from Baltimore in summer 2022 which required breaking down my tanks and starting with no livestock in my new house.
 
I set up my frag system in the fall along with the accompanying frameless cubes for clown pairs. Here’s what that system looks like.

 
This build thread will be about my new fish room which includes the frag system, but more importantly the Reef 180.5 that I picked up from Trevor (WAMAS member) in February 2023.
 
Simply put, my new house is too nice for me to put a saltwater system in the upstairs living space. I know that I will ruin the flooring through some mistake at some point, so everything is staying in the basement.
 
With the help from Trevor and a few friends with borrowed suction cups we drove down to Maryland and picked up the system, which included:
 
Waterbox Reef 180.5
Stand
Plumbing and Sump
Apex A2
KH Guardian
MP40
2x Heaters with inkbird
Duetto ATO
 
Getting it into the truck required stand disassembly and creative thinking but we made it back, reassembled the stand, and set the tank in place. We also moved an even heavier Innovative Marine NUVO 170 EXT on the same day which I almost dropped. Luckily almost dropping it doesn’t count and all ended well.
 
Here’s the tank:

 
 
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Edited February 28, 2023 by therootcause

[therootcause]

Let’s build a wall.

I started by calling the township to figure out some rules for building rooms in my basement. No bedroom, no rules. So here goes!

Here is a simple 2x4 wall construction with a door to split the basement in half. I started by using construction adhesive to attached a 2x6 to the beam, then hung a plumb bob and snapped a few chalk lines. I need to get a laser level…




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[ArmyVetReefer]

H-E-double hockey sticks ya man! Excited to see this build. Glad the tank went to you! 

[therootcause]

Let’s add water!


I was amazed that the glass seamlessly disappeared as the tank filled. See thumb. Ha.


Did I mention that there is currently no plumbing assembled because Waterbox is Metric? In order to plumb the remote sump I purchased bulkheads to convert to standard plumbing. They are currently stuck in Memphis at FedEx for the last three days (Today is 2-28-2023).




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[therootcause]

H-E-double hockey sticks ya man! Excited to see this build. Glad the tank went to you! 

Woohoo! Thank you!


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[ArmyVetReefer]

1 minute ago, therootcause said:

Woohoo! Thank you!


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of course man! Cant wait to see the rest of the build! 

[YHSublime]

Looks good. Do you plan to drywall once you get the tank running? Do you intend to drywall over the front/top of the tank, or put doors? 

[therootcause]

Let’s add heat, salt, rocks, live sand, and bacteria. Still no plumbing.

Don’t you love this Silent Hill…into the fog look? I do.




Just a reminder, water level is low due to lack of plumbing as parts are stuck with FedEx. I forgot to mention that this incredible scape also came from Trevor along with lots of other things. What do you think of it? Looks professional level to me. I stacked it on some Marco base rock that I had in my system.





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[therootcause]

1 minute ago, YHSublime said:

Looks good. Do you plan to drywall once you get the tank running? Do you intend to drywall over the front/top of the tank, or put doors? 

 

The front and a single side will be visible from the "finished" side of the basement.  The back and the opposite side will be visible from the fish room side of the basement.

 

I am planning to use Purple XP mold resistant drywall to skin the side of the walls where I am standing in the photos.  The fish room side of the walls near the tank will be covered with 1/2" PVC or left unfinished.  I can rip strips of 1/2" PVC of any width from a 4x8 sheet (about $100). I may trim around the tank on the inside of the fish room with those PVC strips. We hired a contractor to finish the rest of the basement but he's booked out until August.  What do you think of that plan?

[therootcause]

Let’s talk sump and filtration. Here it is! Ha.


I am plumbing the sump outside of the cabinet for the health of the fish and my family, especially small children that stick their hands in everything and then in their mouth.

Extra bonus, limitless skimmer size! I’m currently shopping for a skimmer so if you have a Curve 7 or something similar, message me.


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[YHSublime]

5 minutes ago, therootcause said:

I am planning to use Purple XP mold resistant drywall to skin the side of the walls where I am standing in the photos.  The fish room side of the walls near the tank will be covered with 1/2" PVC or left unfinished.  I can rip strips of 1/2" PVC of any width from a 4x8 sheet (about $100). I may trim around the tank on the inside of the fish room with those PVC strips. We hired a contractor to finish the rest of the basement but he's booked out until August.  What do you think of that plan?

 

I've never had, or built an in wall tank, but there are a few old heads around that have. Sounds like a solid plan to me. 

 

I also think I want to become a contractor, you're not the first person I've heard say a lot of good ones are booked out 6 months to a year. 

[therootcause]

Let’s talk electrical.

I am not an electrician and this is not advice.

I have a few spare 20 amp circuits on my panel so I ran some 12/2 in PVC conduit down the wall to a few boxes and installed a duplex outlet in a waterproof box INSIDE of the adaptive reef cabinet.

Here’s what that looks like in-progress. There is one outlet on the wall and one outlet in the cabinet.

Trevor also included an EB832 and EB8, so plenty of power that can plug into the outlet in the adaptive reef cabinet.


But what about a GFCI you ask? Once again, this is not electrical advice. I learn from YouTube and online schematics.

I wired a GFCI outlet as outlet number one in a Line/Load configuration so that all outlets are protected from the GFCI. All outlets are wired in parallel, sourced from the load side of the 20 AMP GFCI. Thoughts?


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[therootcause]

Illumination! I bought a 2-bulb T5 from David (WAMAS member) and he threw in a 55 gallon drum and a calcium reactor! What a guy!

I love LED’s but I’m addicted to the even blanketing spread of T5…none of which is pictured here haha.

For this tank I have 2 x 300 Watt Viparspectra lights. In my opinion they are the best of the black boxes and will smoke your acros overnight if you aren’t careful. Yes, I know about the lens mods, no I don’t plan to crack them open. Pictured is a single fixture at 100% for both channels.

Same light with Orphek lens filter on my phone.


And lastly, the T5 from David (pictured top left) that will also be over this tank but is currently nourishing a couple rose BTA’s in the clown cubes. (Orphek lens filter used).



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Edited February 28, 2023 by therootcause

[therootcause]

The tank will be visible from front and left side but not accessible at all from the "viewing" side of the basement.  In the fish room I will have access to the sump, equipment, back of the tank, and opposite side.  This will make more sense when drywall is up.  The intent is for the water line on the tank to be covered by the drywall and for the waterbox cabinet to be used for kids toys etc.

 

At present (2/28/2023) I am waiting on plumbing parts from Coralvue to complete the drain and return plumbing.  Once that is installed and I can get a good measure of the water line I will begin the drywall work.

 

There is still time to fix or prevent mistakes!  If you have an in-wall tank or have suggestions, please let me know. 

 

Current WTB List:

Skimmer (Curve 7 or similar)

Colt corals, Neptheas, Encrusting Sinularias, Koji Wada Pink Nepthea, Pulsing Sinularia, branching softies

Apex Salinity Probe

Apex or Pinpoint pH Probe

Edited February 28, 2023 by therootcause

[therootcause]

33 minutes ago, YHSublime said:

 

I've never had, or built an in wall tank, but there are a few old heads around that have. Sounds like a solid plan to me. 

 

I also think I want to become a contractor, you're not the first person I've heard say a lot of good ones are booked out 6 months to a year. 

Right on - thank you. The in-wall tank is an interesting concept. This tank will be floating within the finished wall - with no part of the tank or stand affixed to the wall.  If the tank is removed in the future I can just close up the wall.   I didn't mention it before but the stand is sitting on a sheet of 1" PVC.  This isn't necessary from a moisture perspective because the stand has feet but when carpet is installed on the viewing side of the basement the cabinet doors will be able to open outward and not get stuck on the carpet.

[howaboutme]

Looks great! Thanks for sticking w/ WAMAS and contributing from PA! I don't know Lebanon but seems like a decent change of scenery compared to this area. Good luck!

[therootcause]

Looks great! Thanks for sticking w/ WAMAS and contributing from PA! I don't know Lebanon but seems like a decent change of scenery compared to this area. Good luck!

Thank you. WAMAS is still the best club around! I’m outside of the “city” of Lebanon - mostly farms around me.


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[Origami]

I like your concept of floating the tank in the wall.

When I built out my basement, Phase 1 was my fish room. Priorities, you know.

I tied into a wall that I built, with intentional reinforcement of the 2x4 wall structure to bear part of the tank weight. This framing serves as a sill allowing the front glass panel to lay flush with the wall.

Someday, when breaking the system down, I'll have to pull some decorative trim on the room facing side and remove two 2x8's that jut out into the fish room (serving as side rails supporting the tank) before drywalling the opening closed. All of my equipment is in the room. None accessible from the front. However, I do leave openings in front above the tank to feed the fish from the front to make it easier to watch them eat. I plan to create doors for the openings but, years later, still haven't. My wife still occasionally asks me about it, though.

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[therootcause]

Thank you for the input. I’ll have to scroll back through your posts to see some photos of your build. If no stand was included I would have incorporated the stand into the wall. I really hope that i can get a seamless stand to wall transition with a small piece of trim.


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[therootcause]

Plumbing arrived yesterday. I was also hit with the dreaded stomach flu. It knocked me down so hard that I couldn’t care less about anything but being horizontal.

Today, much better.

I plumbed the drains and returns, filled the sump with water, and went to work. The PVC cement has a 2-hour cure but I’ve decided to give it a bit longer and will turn it on tonight.

The return is 1” and the drains are 1.25”. To switch from metric plumbing to standard I used 32mm to 1” and 40mm to 1.25” from Coralvue. So far so good and everything glued together with no extra tolerance. Not sure if that’s the correct verbiage, but tolerance it is.

The stand and sump are on PVC board. What are your thoughts on the diagonal return line? When looking at overhead photo, the skimmer chamber is in right center, refugium is in left center. The return plumbing will not interfere with skimmer placement or cup removal the way it is currently configured. The diagonal return configuration removed the need for additional elbows so I thought it best.

The lump of plumbing coming off of the COR20 Is due to the British Standard Pipe Threading that plagues Neptune pumps. Luckily Trevor Figured out how to switch that over to imperial before I bought the system.








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[therootcause]

All systems go!

I turned on the COR20 pump last night and let the system run overnight. No drips or concerns. I made adjustments to the gate valve so that water only slightly trickled into the emergency overflow, but then I remember that I can tweak the COR20 to adjust water level as well. More on that near the end.

I shook out a few handfuls of macroalgae into the sump to jumpstart the micro fauna population and have begun adding reef roids and easy reefs easy booster nano. It’s a smelly gel of a few different types of phytoplankton and saves me the trouble of culturing live foods for the time being. The gorgonian in my QT seems to enjoy it.



For anyone using a programmable neptune return pump along with an Apex, when I set the pump minimum and maximum, will the pump only operate within that range? For example if my pump minimum is set at 59% and my pump maximum at 60%, will this chart from 0-100% be operating entirely within that min and max value?








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[ArmyVetReefer]

2 hours ago, therootcause said:

All systems go!

I turned on the COR20 pump last night and let the system run overnight. No drips or concerns. I made adjustments to the gate valve so that water only slightly trickled into the emergency overflow, but then I remember that I can tweak the COR20 to adjust water level as well. More on that near the end.

I shook out a few handfuls of macroalgae into the sump to jumpstart the micro fauna population and have begun adding reef roids and easy reefs easy booster nano. It’s a smelly gel of a few different types of phytoplankton and saves me the trouble of culturing live foods for the time being. The gorgonian in my QT seems to enjoy it.



For anyone using a programmable neptune return pump along with an Apex, when I set the pump minimum and maximum, will the pump only operate within that range? For example if my pump minimum is set at 59% and my pump maximum at 60%, will this chart from 0-100% be operating entirely within that min and max value?








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looks good man! you are correct on the COR 20. It will only run the min and max levels that you set. It wont go above or below

[therootcause]

looks good man! you are correct on the COR 20. It will only run the min and max levels that you set. It wont go above or below

Thanks. That’s easy for me to keep it dialed in tight and not gurgling at the overflow.


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[therootcause]

I moved a few softies over from my other systems along with 20 marine pure block cubes and other media/rock.











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[therootcause]

Added the following fish from my quarantine system.

Ocellaris clown
Neon Blue Goby
Dwarf Pygmy Angel
…and a bottle of bacteria for good measure.

The clown is exploring. The other two fish I’ll never see again.




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