Mike C's 420 Gallon System build - First salt water reef!

[LivingSeas]

So I made a bunch of progress collecting all the goodies to get this tank started..

The other tanks arrived:
Custom Acrylic Sump 64"x28"x18"
Custom Acrylic Frag Tank 20"x20"x 10"

John from Advanced Acryhlic did a great job putting these tanks together for me.
He was a couple weeks late from his delivery date.. but thats okay. He does great
work. Sump is a center return design with skimmer area on left and refug on right.
He threw in a couple sock holders, probe holder, camera box, and lid for the frag tank.

All this stuff arrived since I last posted. I gotta get some time to hook everything up.

2x Water Blaster 10k's for returns (DT, Frag tank) and feed the skimmer
Super Reef Octopus 5000 external skimmer with Neck Cleaner
3x 55 gallon barrels for ATO and AWC + Panworld 100px for mixing
7x LED aquarium lights from Evergow with built in dimming controller.
Custom 8020 light rack to bolt the tank LED lights to & raise/lower from.
1x Monster grow light for the sump. Should make for some crazy Cheato growth.
350 lbs of reef salt.. should last about a year.

I just bought ~1000 lbs of dry rock and sand from reefrocks.net. He gave me a great
deal.. should ship freight this week. I cant wait to start aquascaping the rock.
I'm going with a 4" DSB.

I'm hoping once the tank gets going I can buy a few pieces of live rock and a couple cups of
live sand for people here to kick off my cycle

I still need to spend a couple thousands more still to kick this off. I'm going to let the credit card cool down
for a month or so before wraping the buying spree up.

Need 4x 6105 tunze and a controller
Reef angel + and all the probes.

Thanks Mike

( Mods could you move this thread to the tale of tank section? Thanks!)

 

[LivingSeas]

More Pics

 

[mnat]

Thread moved.

I am still slowly building out my system but coming to the end. I did the same thing, bought things in little bunches and tried to get them through group buys and on sale. Did you get the skimmer collection unit from Reef Octopus as well with the auto shut off? Really is a great thing and will prevent floods.

 

[LivingSeas]

I was looking at the Davey Jones 5 gallon one tonight. I'll have to checkout the reef octopus one.

 

[mnat]

Mine is up and running and when you are learnining to tune the thing, having that auto shut off is clutch unless you like floods.

 

[LivingSeas]

Stinky floods are definitely not cool adding to my must buy list.

 

[jpelzer]

Go for the Davey Jones Skimmate Locker. Made in USA... Half my equipment is Avast Marine now. All top notch, and Justin ships QUICK.

 

[dnov99]

Go for the Davey Jones Skimmate Locker. Made in USA... Half my equipment is Avast Marine now. All top notch, and Justin ships QUICK.

+1 to this. Avast is an excellent company to deal with and has great products!

 

[Nickjr000]

Wow nice build! Welcome to the hobby

 

[MatteZ]

First is that it looks awesome!!! Second is what are the 11 arcade games you decided to keep? I'm a sucker for old arcade games! Growing up we got an empty arcade cabinet from TNT Amusements that we stuck a tv in and a computer that held tons of games. All you had to do was cycle the list of games you wanted to play. I miss that thing.

 

[LivingSeas]

I have Missile Command, space duel, black widow, asteroids, battle zone, berserk, joust, tempest, juno first, star wars, star castle, 2 multi games like you used to have and 4 pins: black hole, space station, Dr who, star wars.

I guess its more then 11. 90 % work great. Couple need some restoration.

I might get rid of couple more but most are staying. I spent a lot of time restoring most of them.

The scary thing is I used to have double this amount!

Reef keeping is just like arcade collecting.. crazy, expensive, other people look at you strange they learn what you spent, time consuming.

 

[natesreef]

That is an amazing build! Amazing Way to start off the hobby!

 

[LivingSeas]

Boy I havent updated this thread in a while huh...

In Oct. I ordered some rock and sand. I just got it last week. I'm not going to get into
why it took so long, not worth it. The important part is it arrived.

While waiting for it I got back into my arcade collecting hobby.. bought a ton of
vectors. Arcade is pretty much back up to full strength. 24 games total.

Now I gotta come up with a good arcade name that related to reefs or fish.. as the tank will
probably be the centerpiece of the arcade.

Anyway.. I started aquascaping the rocks outside that tank on a piece of cardboard
the same size as the tank. I think it looks decent. I just gotta figure out howto glue it all
together. I'm hoping to get it glue'd up this week and get them into the tank next weekend
wih the sand.

 

[MatteZ]

Is the end of the tank the end of the cardboard? Will you be able to view the tank from more than just the front? Make sure you have room to get a mag glass cleaner along the side glass. It is a big PIA if the rock come too close to the side and not be able to completely clean the glass.

 

[LivingSeas]

Is the end of the tank the end of the cardboard? Will you be able to view the tank from more than just the front? Make sure you have room to get a mag glass cleaner along the side glass. It is a big PIA if the rock come too close to the side and not be able to completely clean the glass.

Yes the cardboardr is the exact dimension of the tank. There is about 3"-4" worth of room around the tank.

 

[grink]

Amazing!
Can't wait for more pics and the finished product.