Steve G's 240g mixed reef peninsula with fishroom in DC

[Steve G]

What's up, WAMAS! After being in the club since about 2006 with some breaks here and there, many drives *way out to Virginia* for WAMAS meetings, and some awesome scuba diving trips with WAMAS members, I'm ready to post a thread dedicated to my third, and hopefully final for a long time, reef tank. The first two (38 gallon, then 75 gallon) were practice, where I got to make a lot of mistakes, cause many messes and floods, put my wife through a lot of H-E-double hockey sticks, and learn a lot about the hobby. This one is my dream tank. I'll still make mistakes, but hopefully less frequent or catastrophic. This one got going during the pandemic but hopefully in the future I'll be able to host tank tours again.

 

The tank:

• Miracles of Canada custom tank, 72 x 30 x 25 high, 3/4" Starphire low-iron glass
• Set up peninsula style, with coast to coast internal overflow on the left side, 3x1.5" drains in bean animal setup, 2 x 1" returns
• Viewable on 2 sides from display side, viewable through back glass from fish room (see below)
• Sump is a used acrylic 100gal reef ready tank I bought from @epleeds and took out the overflows, plugged the holes, and added baffles

Main equipment (so far)

• Return pumps: dual Mag12s
• Lighting: 61" Hybrid 4xT5 + 3 Kessil A360WE
• Flow: Tunze 6255 wavemaker mounted on the overflow wall
• Skimmer: Reef Octopus 250EXT Royale
• Heaters: 2 x 300 watt Eheim Jagers on an Inkbird wifi
• Controllers: Kasa power bar, connected to Amazon for voice control
• Tunze osmolator ATO inside a 4 gallon reservoir connected to airwaterice RO/DI with a float valve and extra manual shutoff
• Kalk stirrer (currently offline)
• Phosban reactor (currently offline)

Fish room

• QT: 30gal with HOB filter and Seio 1200 with 100 watt heater
• Second QT/Hospital: 20gal tank, currently empty, waiting in case of need
• Water mixing station: 2 x 55g drums sitting on a home depot wire shelving rated for 1000 lbs/shelf, plumbed to Blueline pump & quick disconnect for 15' flexible hose
• Another Kasa smart power bar to control QT and mixing station equipment
• 5' floor drain leading to a 2" collection pipe plumbed to whole house drain, with a cleanout
• Laundry sink with RO/DI
• Artemia hatchery
• Freezer for fish food and fridge for my cold beverages
• Amazon echo dot for tank voice control and music, podcasts
• Electrical panel in the room -- convenient, but I need to get a very good dehumidifier
• Blackout rollerblind shade to provide black background to tank when it's being viewed from family room

 

 

Inside the tank (as of December 2020)

• ~4-5" sand bed of oolitic sand with thin layer of coarser sand/gravel mix in key spots for weighing it down
• ~150 lbs of live rock
• 6 tank-raised Banggai cardinalfish (from Tropical lagoon, still in quarantine but about to move as soon a I put a cover on the DT)
• 5 lyretail anthias (ordered from Reef eScape, not here yet)

[roni]

Great start!  Looking forward to seeing this progress.  Those miracles tanks are beautiful!

[Steve G]

On 12/29/2020 at 3:11 PM, roni said:

Great start!  Looking forward to seeing this progress.  Those miracles tanks are beautiful!

Thanks so much! I'm pleased with the tank build. I had an issue but Derek took care of it. Very good folks to deal with.

[Steve G]

Just added some livestock. I got 5 female lyretail anthias from Reef eScape. I am very impressed with that shop! It's a bit far from me but worth the drive.

 

 

 

I also received a shipment of a peppermint shrimp and several different kinds of snails from Reef Cleaners, my first installment of the cleanup crew.

 

Just in time as the diatoms are starting to show up on the sand and rock.