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Basement Fish Room and 200G DD


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A work in progress:

 

I just moved into a house from an apartment and the first project... A fish tank of course! Or better yet, a fish room! I currently have a 55g tank and was limited to what I could have by living in an apartment. Now that I've got a house, the sky (in reality square footage) is the limit! When I got the house I knew that I wanted to use one of the rooms in the basement for a bigger fish tank. So I began to come up with a plan.

 

The room is 10 ft. by 12 ft. with no windows and a door leading in from the other basement room. I knew I wanted to building the tank into the wall so that you could see it when you walk down the steps. This limited me to about 6 ft. the tank length could be realistically. Depth could go back as far as I wanted but needed to leave room for the 55g which will turn into a quarantine/frag tank along with two water storage containers that I plan to get for a mixing/RODI station. The tank size I had come up with would be something between a 250 or 300. What actually happened was that I ended up with a 200g which I'm happy with. It will allow for more free space in the room and will not be so cramped. I plan on putting in a stand with a 2 or 3 20g tanks so I'll have a bit more room for that as well.

 

The Execution: There's always something!

So I began to cut some of the Sheetrock out of the room in order to; rerun some electrical wire, make room for plumbing and cut out the whole for the display. What I found... water damage. Super! This had come up in the home inspection before. There was water damage near the electrical box (which is in the fish room, NOT Ideal, I know) and they "Fixed" the problem. In reality, they just pulled out everything around it and patched it back up. So what I was left with was mold in the isolation (yes, open cell aka "fluffy" isolation which isn't supposed to be in a basement due to the fact that it holds moisture) and on back of the Sheetrock along with partially rotted 2by4s. So what to do now? Everything must go! I pulled out everything along both exterior walls (interior walls were fine), got a dehumidifier to get rid of the moisture and painted the block walls with sealer. 

 

That brings us to the current status of the Fish room project. I do have the tank and stand in the room. The information below is about the tank and stand along with future plans. 

 

The Tank: A 200g DD that I got from JayH on the forum. 

 

The Stand: I built with 2x4s and plywood with PondArmor Waterproofing. I will paint the rest of the stand with a black all-surface-enamel and add stained wood trim pieces later on.  

 - It has two trough underneath serving as my sump

    - One will hold my filter socks and protein skimmer 

    I will drill two holes and use uni-seals to connect the two troughs at one end

    - Second will be a refugium, housing chaeto and bio blocks

 

Plumbing: I am back and forth with what to do. The tank has 4 1in. holes drilled in the bottom of the tank near the back with one 3/4in. hole for a drain. The overflow boxes have been pulled out (they were old and broken) and I'm not keen on putting them back in. Obviously the risk of not putting in overflows back in is that if the bulkheads leak... I'll have to drain the whole thing. I have considered drilling the side of the tank and using the low profile overflow boxes and running plumbing out the side. That way I am not having to have pipes run up the back of the tank and giving me more room in the tank. However, like everything in this hobby, that will cost more money and eat up more time.

 

Aquascape: Currently looking to put rock up along the left and right side of the tank with an island of rock in the center. 

 

To do List: (which seems like everything!)

Finish the room

 - Paint the walls (thinking about going with a medium blueish/gray)

 - Paint the floor (using a garage floor epoxy which is gray)

 - Finish the sheetrock, mud/tap/sand/paint 

 - Re-seal the Tank (the seams are fine, I'm just redoing the kalk on the inside of the tank just in case. Plus, the kalk used was black which I'm not a big fan of)

 - Plumb, I need to make up my mind but leaning towards leaving it the way it is with no overflows and assume some risk (fingers crossed?)

 - Fill and cycle tank, cyclying shouldn't take too long since everything in the 55g will be going into the 200g. 

 - Get water containers for RODI and mixing station (any ideas on this???). Also plumb this into the system. Ideally I'd like to make this whole thing "low maintenance" which I feel like is an oxymoron in this hobby.

 - Move the 55g to the fish room. It's currently in the dinning room with all the construction going on I didn't want it downstairs.

 

Thoughts, Comments, suggestions are all welcome! New to the forum and thought I'd share. Happy Reefing!

 

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This sounds like an awesome project! That's a bummer that there was water damage in the walls. Are you able to get some support from the previous owners or is that all cleared?

 

Good call with keeping the 55G away from the mess. It'll give you space to work.

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My tank had two corner overflows when I bought it (used), and the bottom was drilled for the plumbing. After long consideration, I removed the overflows, put bulkheads in the holes, and drilled the back of the tank for a low-profile overflow.

 

I am so, so happy I did this. It cost more and took longer, but the end result is so much better.

 

Use the heavy duty schedule 80 bulkheads for a build of this size. Don't use the cheap ABS bulkheads. 

 

The sump is a clever idea to save space. I would paint or seal the plywood on both sides to prevent water from damaging the wood and possibly compromising its waterproof integrity.

 

Keep posting updates on your build! You'll get lots of ideas and feedback here if you do. 

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Tagging along, this will be good!

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This sounds like an awesome project! That's a bummer that there was water damage in the walls. Are you able to get some support from the previous owners or is that all cleared?

 

Good call with keeping the 55G away from the mess. It'll give you space to work.

Closing and everything has already cleared so I'm on my own on this one. However, it wasn't too much to fix the problem and I know that it's being done right this time instead of them "fixing" it again. Thanks! 

 

 

 

 

My tank had two corner overflows when I bought it (used), and the bottom was drilled for the plumbing. After long consideration, I removed the overflows, put bulkheads in the holes, and drilled the back of the tank for a low-profile overflow.

 

I am so, so happy I did this. It cost more and took longer, but the end result is so much better.

 

Use the heavy duty schedule 80 bulkheads for a build of this size. Don't use the cheap ABS bulkheads. 

 

The sump is a clever idea to save space. I would paint or seal the plywood on both sides to prevent water from damaging the wood and possibly compromising its waterproof integrity.

 

Keep posting updates on your build! You'll get lots of ideas and feedback here if you do. 

Jon, thanks for the imput. Do you have any recommendations for a overflow? I saw your build thread and noticed that you ended up building your own. Not sure I'm quite up for that challange but will look into more. I'm looking for something that can handle around 1500gph but could go for something that's in between 2000gph high side, 1000gph low side. 

I will be painting the rest of the sump (I ran out) and I'm excited to see how turns out. Thanks!

 

 

Tagging along, this will be good!

Thanks for tagging along! Should have an update with pictures later this week.

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  • 2 weeks later...
(edited)

 Well the project is coming along but not as fast as I would like. This weekend I am getting a lot of the plumbing in from BRS. Also getting the new return pump, bio-block, and a power strip (the one that has switches that everyone has). Additionally picked up a doser from my former local fish store back in Knoxville, TN for super cheap. Also I bought a Pro-Max UV sterilizer from lifeguard when I was up at Reefapalooza for cheap so that just leaves be to get a protein skimmer and I will be set... Oh, and lights (not like that's a big deal).

 

Update:

Tank - nothing changed, still need to seal the thing

Sump - Pond Armor is complete, need to drill holes for the bulkheads to connect the two "troughs" 

Plumbing - waiting on it to show up

 

Paint! ... everything! Walls are going blue, the floor is a dark blue porch and floor enamel, trim will be black

 

The cut out in the wall will have a 2x10 piece of wood that will be stained and poly'ed to serve as a ledge

 

I should have an update this weekend when more of the painting is done, along with the plumbing

 

PS: (last photo flipped for some reason)

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Edited by ParkerGM
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  • 2 months later...

I used to wonder why it took people so long to do these tank builds ... now I know why, life gets in the way!

 

Attached are some pictures of the current status of the tank. I plan on writting up more of what I did later this week/weekend. Hope y'all enjoy!

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  • 1 year later...

Well over a year is a while to give an updates. Time flies when you are ...  super busy.

There is obviously a ton of updates here so there will be a couple of post to explain it all. Fortunately, I took pictures along the way so I will go back and do some retroactive posts. For now, below is the list of updates with a short explanation of each.

 

Changes:

Sump - this was an absolute nightmare and had to rip out the old wooden sump that I had sealed with pond armor. As you can probably guess, it wasn't sealed properly and the water was seeping into the wood. The whole sump had to be cut out. It wasn't the Pond armor, it was the design of the cross section that failed... like I said more on this later. It's a 40g for now.

Control station - not sure what to call this but it is were all the controls are and the power switches. I made a wooden frame, put drywall up, and painted it. It has the return pump, protein skimmer, and ATO all mounted to the front with the switches covering a lot more.

ATO reservoir - If you look at the pano photo you can see it on the floor on the left hand side near the back. It's just a 20g tank set up on some 2x4s with a table over top of it. Really want to change this sometime in the future mainly because I keep over filling this thing and can't put a float valve on it. 

Mixing Station - It's a single 65g Norwesco tank with a pretty simple mixing station design. I have the RO/DI hooked up to it with a float switch so when I forget to turn of the water (which happens about every single time) it doesn't flood the basement. If you noticed that there wasn't a pump, it's because there isn't one. I pulled the one of the mixing station to start the Frag tank. This will also be a later post.

Dosing Station - So BRS 2 part is the name of the game here. I just started dosing again (a little over a month ago) after making the rookie mistake of overdosing and burning out a return pump because of the build up.  Constantly monitoring it now and have been pretty good about getting my levels up to where they should be. Key is now keeping them there. I use Fritz blue box and thinking about switching to Red here soon but need to do some research on that one first. I don't really have that much SPS now but want some more and figured it might be a good option. Every time I do a water change I have to slowly bring my alk back up... anyways this probably should be another post too.

Test Station -  Speaking of testing, I made a little table mounted to the wall to due my water testing. It's all Red Sea's testing kits and I have to say that I am a big fan. I've been using them for about 6 months now (started using them after my sump nightmare happened). It's nice to have a separate place to keep all the chemicals and keep them away from the tanks.  

Frag Tank - aka my old tank and setup. This used to be my main display ... those were the days. In short I've done a lot of modifications to this set up and still not done but this will definitely be a separate post to include all of the details going into this project. This is probably one of the more exciting projects because I am going to start fagging stuff out of my own tank and putting it in here as grown out. 

 

Main Display - Well... everything. The Picture describes most of it. I'll make a separate post about the main display and what's all going on with it. The most current thing going on in the tank is that one of my green sinularia looks like it has a bunch of "stuff" on it and doesn't look happy at all so I've got to figure it out. Yaay me, and I'm about to head out of town of course. 

 

Super glad to be back on the forum and hope to share some more info soon. Certainly planning to update a little sooner than last time haha. That's all for now.

Tank Front.jpg

Fish Room Pano.JPG

Tank Controls.jpg

Lights and Dosing.jpg

Fish Room Door.JPG

200g - 40g Sump.jpg

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  • 4 months later...

Another update:

 

Since I've got some added time on my hands I decided I would give an update.

 

Not too much has changed other than adding an additional 60g water storage tank (seen in the picture below) which completes the water changing station. With only being in the saltwater hobby for 3 years, a water changing station is by far the greatest asset in terms of maintenance, other than maybe an automatic top off. If I were to go back in time I would have gotten this set up before getting a tank (even when I had my 55g). 

 

In the tank - Coral

 

Awhile back I set up an additional tank to frag out some of my leathers and eventually my euphyllia. However, I'm already running out of room because my two leathers (finger and toadstool) keep growing so fast. I also have two different types of ricordea that are starting to multiply heavily so room is starting to run out. I plan on heavily fragging the leathers and putting the ones in the frag tank up on the sell forum for cheap. Honestly have so many that if someone is getting into the hobby i'd probably just give them away. 

 

In the tank - Rescape 

 

So I've been thinking about it for some time now and may rescape the rock work some. I do really like how I scaped the tank originally but there are some problems with it that I realized later on. First and foremost is all the majority of the rock work is along the back wall touching the glass. There have been several videos I have watched that explicitly state to avoid this because it restricts flow and can create dead spots, both of which I can attest to. I realized this about a year in after fighting detritus building up back behind the rock work. In my attempt to mitigate this I placed two power heads on each side of the tank that face each other behind the rock work. The solution has worked thus far but the more I have thought about the problem it doesn't make much sense. I'm using two large power heads just to prevent detritus from building up... and not so much for overall flow (although it certainly adds to). I think the main reason I bring this up is that I have thought about getting more power heads in the tank to create a better flow but I'm wondering if it wouldn't just be better if I reworked the scape in order to maximize the powerheads I've already got. (currently have two OW-25s in the back and one Jebao SLW-20 which should give a 6000gph total water movement with the powerheads)

I'd love to get anyone's thoughts on this or if someone has experience with this type of thing. 

 

 

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Wheres the Ric garden?! I've been toying with the idea of starting my own lately. For some reason, I really like them. Might be interested in trading something for one+!

The water changing station looks nice. I need to modify my own and will likely do it when I put flooring in the utility room.

Anyhow, regarding your rockwork. You live and learn right?

Sent from my SM-G970U1 using Tapatalk

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Hey thanks! and yes living and learning is definitely a mantra in this hobby.

 

So unfortunately I don't have a huge ricordea garden, although that would be nice. I messed myself up and I was referring to my green hairy mushrooms growing so large and multiplying (also included a pciture).  

 

However, I do have multiples of the same ricordea scattered across my tank (as in like 8 or 9 of them) and would certainly trade 1 or 2. The larger ones I have are about the size, some bigger some smaller, than a quarter. 

 

I've attached pictures below. Let me know if you're interested and we can work something out. I'm not picky on what the trade would be, as long as it's something I don't already have.

Green hairy mushroom.jpg

ricordea side.jpg

Ricordea top.jpg

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  • 1 month later...

Following along! With those dimensions, I bet the level of depth is even better in person.  

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  • 10 months later...

Back again with another update

 

It seems as though once or twice a year I allow myself to reflect on the changes that have taken place with the tank and take the time to record them here. Nevertheless, here they are:

 

Changes:

Main Display - I had mentioned in my previous post that I wanted to change the aquascape around and so I finally pulled the trigger and did it! ... and that's when all the problems started. It's easy to look back now and see all the things I did wrong (below I have them listed and how I would do it differently). 

 

Things I did wrong:

 - I did a bunch of massive changes all at once. - for those who have been in the hobby awhile we know that this is never a good idea and yet ... we still do stupid stuff like this. I changed the rock structure completely, took out a ton of sand (I had originally placed way too much in there), and took out almost all of my softy corals because the kept growing so fast and thus taking up way too much room. The changing a lot all at once mantra continued when I reacted to high nutrients (see letting my nutrients bottom out).

 - Pull out all of the softies at when I changed the rock structure around. The problem with this is that all of the nutrients that these things were soaking up had nowhere to go and thus the nutrient spike that shortly followed. This was compounded by the fact that a ton of nutrients got kicked up from the sand bed when I changed the rock structure.

 - Not staying on top of testing especially when you do big changes to the tank. When I made all of the changes I really hadn't been testing all that much because my tank had been in an equilibrium. Of course, when you do an extreme makeover aquarium edition on your tank you can pretty much guarantee that equilibrium is gone. The result was that I didn't catch the nutrient raise and thus leading to the worse reaction of all, overreacting.

 - Letting my nutrients bottom out. For anyone who has had a tank longer than a year or so, particularly those who are up in the two-to-three-year mark, Never Ever let your nutrients bottom out because you are asking for trouble and trouble is what I got! The reason I got here was due to the over-reaction from the high nutrients that wouldn't seem to go down. In essence, it wasn't a typical "over-reaction" it was more of a, shall we say, forced reaction. Meaning, the nutrients that I had kicked up from the sand bed and the absence of a ton of softy corals to soak up nutrients created an environment for high nutrient levels to persist. Well for whatever reason I was absolutely determined that I wasn't going to be having any high nutrients on my watch and I would get them down one way or another. So a few back to back water changes, an oversized protein skimmer (which I actually love) operating at full blast, a freshly hooked up reactor full of GFO and carbon, and a reduction in feeding for both fish and coral and Viola! ... nutrients gone! All is well... until it wasn't. Enter Cyano and Dinos!!! Yaaay

 

It has been almost a year now with the fight against both Cyano and Dinos and I am happy to report that the tank is doing a lot better now. Have they both been completely eradicated? Who knows but they are both certainly not prevalent and the tank has returned to some sense of normalcy. If I could give any advice to those dealing with either Cyano and Dinos, the first thing I would do is watch BRS's videos on them. They are well informed and it will help you understand the problem better. The second is to expect coral casualties, especially for your sps. I am no SPS guy and only had a few in my tank but the acros I did have all died off, softies and LPS handled it a bit better. The other advice is more anecdotal but here it is nonetheless; get your nutrients up and keep them up (the irony of this is hilarious)! I won't go as far to say a number but zero or near zero isn't the answer, don't do big water changes, clean by hand as much as you can (this gets old quick and it is honestly more for keeping it off your corals), and lastly BE patient - you are going to be in it for a while. However, being on the other side of it now I am glad I didn't do a restart of the tank, I know several other people have. For me, a restart was giving up AND it honestly isn't a guarantee that it won't come back at some point. So I am glad I stuck it out and the tank is happy and healthy now.

 

I do really like the new aquascape and I am glad I did it. If I did it all over again I would still change the scape but just change how I went about doing it. The aquascape gave me more room for coral, made for better flow within the tank, and it make maintenance and cleaning within the take way easier. (see pictures below)

 

Sump - Ever since my nightmare experience with the plywood sump (its failure I admittingly take full responsibility for) I have been in search for a better solution. I knew that the 40g breeder tank was only a short term fix and that a better solution is out there. A better solution for me meant that the sump took up more of the usable space below while having shorter walls making maintenance easier. I am happy to report that I found the best solution and it is a Rubbermaid 50g stock tank - it fits like a glove underneath the tank (see picture below). I wish that I had this from the start and saved myself from all the trouble.  

ATO reservoir - In short, there hasn't been a change here other than the stand I had made (used for testing) is now moved over to where the dehumidifier is at.  This was done in order to avoid contaminating the ATO reservoir below. As mentioned in a previous post I still want to change this setup and make it better. 

Mixing Station - No change here. I still need to get a dedicated pump for it instead of having to use the return pump from the frag tank. However, this problem may be solved by getting rid of the frag tank all together - more on this down below.

Dosing Station - As mentioned in a previous post, I dose BRS 2 part and have been doing so for some time now. I really do think it is a great two part and do not plan on going away from it. With fighting a combination of Cyano and Dinos over the past year I haven't really changed much with the dosing because there were way too many other variable constantly changing. The one thing that I am currently looking at is adding minor and trace elements to my two part thanks to BRS - Tropic Marine K,A,&C mix. I have noticed that since I don't do water changes as much these days that my LPS seem to be happier a few days after a water change. My thought is that since I have fewer water changes that some of the minor and trace elements are possibly getting absorbed entirely between water changes. To test the theory I have ordered the kit and I will start adding it to the two part in small quantities to see if there is any difference over the long term. 

Test Station - As mentioned I moved it over to the other side to reduce the changes of contaminating the ATO reservoir.

Frag Tank - Quote from previous post - "This is probably one of the more exciting projects because I am going to start fagging stuff out of my own tank and putting it in here as grown out."  hahahaha ... oh the naivety! So it didn't exactly go that way since the last year of my tank can be characterized as a desperate basket case. Almost no fragging took place over the past year and so the tank has gotten little use other than housing my clarkii clownfish. I got him out of the main tank along with my valentini puffer when I did the big change in aquascape. He is in essence a bully in the tank, even to the tangs so I wanted him out. I also pulled the puffer because I couldn't keep any snails whatsoever in the tank because he would eat all of them! For being so small the little guy will eat so much. However, after pulling out the puffer I started to notice brissle worms in the tank. I knew they were in there because I had seen them on my glass cleaner but had never seen them anywhere else. Now it seems that the brissle worms had free reign with no opposition. So I put the little guy back in and to be honest, I kind of missed him in there. He honestly had the chillest fish I have in the tank even when I am cleaning. Sure enough the brissle worms are hiding again as soon as I put him back. 

 

Interestingly enough, the softies I once cleaned out have seemingly thrived and now it is time for me to frag them out. Both of my mushrooms have grown a ton and starting to take over again. I think I'll post them up to the form here soon to try and get rid of a few.

 

That's all for now and hopefully back on here sooner next time. Of course I also said that the last time so we shall see.

 

 

 

 

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