New 75g tank w/basement sump

[younglcy]

I always enjoy reading about everyone's new tanks and setups so I thought I'd share my new project. I'm setting up a 75g flat back hex in my home office with a sump and small fishroom under the basement stairs. This setup has been in the planning stage for about 1.5 yrs -- and now that I've finally gotten my basement remodel completed (all 1650 sq. ft. of it), I can finally turn my attention and $$$ to this project.

I purchased the tank, stand and hood (manufactured by Acrylic Creations) used for $500. I didn't want to drill the tank, because the back of the tank is a little thinner acrylic than I would have liked (I think its 3/8" and it already seems to bow a little bit from previous use), so I decided to run two Lifereef 700 g.p.h. overflows in lieu of drilling.



I was hoping that one overflow would enough to handle the entire output of the Uno Marlin pump I'm using, so the second overflow essentially would act as a spare. Wide open, however, the Marlin is putting out way too much volume for one overflow. Worried about a potential backup, I wired in a $12 float switch and transformer which trips the GFCI at the pump if the water in the tank gets to high (the orange plug in the second picture). So far, this solution works great. Once I add a refuge and skimmer, I'm hoping to get the flow rate down a bit more. On the upside, the Marlin pump works just as advertised. I have a 10' deep basement (so about 15' lift in total) and running wide open with a 2" input and 3/4" output the pump draws a consistent 300 watts.

I used 45' of 3/4" white spaflex tubing (thanks Savko) for the return line to cut down on the number of seams and elbows. The drain lines are 1 1/4" corrugated pool hoses (50' long - again no seams or elbows) attached to the overflows with rubber Fernco bushings, a little silicone, and clamps. I was worried about the noise but, the flexible tubing is completely silent!



Everything seems to be working okay, so I'm going to add some sand and salt this week. I'll probably start with a little live sand and live rock next week and let that run for a few weeks, while I'm working on the lighting and skimmer, and setting up a water replacement system.

[Racing1]

Looks great so far. the only thing I would have changed would be the output line. 3/4 in. is quite small. I would have gone with at least 1 1/2" to 2" return line. you are restricting the pump quite a bit. Also it would lower the wattage used.. If you go to their website they list what size piping to use and what wattage ratings when using different size piping...

[msuzuki126]

Good stuff so far. Lets see some more pics.

[younglcy]

Last weekend, I added the sandbed. I decided to go with a mixture of different size aragonite sand to add a little diversity for the critters and help prevent sandstorms. According to the RC sandbed calculator, I needed 133 lbs. of sand for a 3" deep sandbed in a 75 gal tank. I used 90 lbs. of Caribsea Aragamax Sugar Sized (Oolite) sand for a base, topped with a mixture of 15 lbs. Caribsea special grade and 18 lbs. Seaflor sea bed. (This was all my LFS had and I didn't want to pay shipping).

I washed and stirred all the sand in a 5 gal. bucket in 30 lb. batches until the water ran clear, but it still clouded up the tank. I'm glad I took this extra step as every bag had organic debris in it and each wash created a HUGE foam head that would have been impossible to remove from the tank.



After running a power head for a few hours, I siphoned off all the milky water and proceeded to order some base rock from Marcorocks.com.

I ordered a 50# box of base rock on Thanksgiving and then ordered some more the following day during their black friday blowout sale. Rock took 4 days to arrive. In total, I got about 100 lbs. of base rock, 50 lbs. of shelf rock, and some small boulders and rubble for around $2.00 a lb. plus shipping. The tank only took about 60-65 lbs. so I've got a lot of great pieces left to use for something else. As the pictures show, this marcorock is great stuff. It's white, very light and very porous. The rock is cleaner and larger than I expected and the shapes are very unique.













This is a huge 22" x 18" (20 lb.) piece of shelf rock!



I've been playing around with the landscape for a couple of days now, doing frequent water changes and running a power head constantly. The wet rock is giving off a little color and odor, but nothing terrible. At the rate it's progressing, I'll probably start adding salt, heat and live rock/live sand sometime early next week.

[sirgeez]

I like the aquascaping

[kar93]

the aquascape looks good, are you adding any live rock

[younglcy]

I think I'm going to start out with about 20 lbs. of GARF grunge and a few small pieces of live rock from my LFS's and see if that will seed the rock. I've got a few giant pieces of rock left too that I thought I'd put in the sump, along with maybe another bucket of sand for a deep sand bed. Then, depending on how things look, I might add some cultures to get the pods growing good before I put in the fish. At this point, the only thing I know I want are 5-7 small blue/green chromis.

[kar93]

i added a few pods at first and that gave it a good boost

[IndoorOcean]

Looking good! I'll be tagging along.

[IndoorOcean]

More pics please!

[mg426]

Nice work !!!

[younglcy]

Once the aquascaping was complete, I added the left over Marcorocks (about 100 lbs worth) to the sump and circulated everything for about a week in tap water with daily water changes. The first few days produced a bit of sand and debris and the water turned a little yellow/brown, and smelly by day's end, but after about 5 days, the water began to look and smell pretty clean. Over the weekend, I added a deep sand bed with 50 lbs. of rinsed playsand in a black 5 gal. bucket. I haven't plumbed the bucket into anything yet, but I wanted to get it into the sump to start seeding it and to prevent a sandstorm again later on.

On Saturday (12/8), I turned on the heaters (1-250w in the tank and 1-250w in the sump) and started adding IO salt. I checked the water for chlorine and it read zero on two test kits, but I decided to add some Sea Chem Prime anyway, just to be sure. On Sunday (12/9), I turned on the lights that came with the tank (2-36" white URI VHO bulbs off an Ice Cap 430 ballast) and polished the water overnight with a Magnum 350 canister.

By Monday afternoon (12/10), the tank was looking great, and crystal clear, with a SG of 1.026, Temp. of 79.8 degrees, PH of 8.2 and an ammonia level of 0.50. On Tuesday, my first batch of Garf Grunge arrived by U.S. Priority Mail. The weather's been very cold here in Michigan, but the Grunge was moist and 61 degrees on arrival and looked and smelled like expected.



14 additional lbs. of Grunge arrived today (I bought 25 lbs total, and Leroy included 4 lbs. extra for free), also in great shape. Stuff is unbelievable, but very messy (with a fair amount of black silt). I don't think I'd add it directly to an established reef tank.

Here's a picture from earlier today, after I added the second batch of Grunge:



After 6 hours the water was finally starting to clear and had turned from a muddy black to a cloudy white:



After 12 hours:



Tonight, I started work on a basic refugium to plumb in-line between the tank and the sump. I'm using the old wet/dry filter that came with the tank with a cheap clip-on 23w fluorescent from Lowes. The first compartment is a very high flow area for Cheato and the second compartment is a very low flow area for a layer of grunge and rubble for extra pod growth.

[scaryperson27]

Looks good so far. I like the rocks although I would try to expose as much of them as possible.

[IndoorOcean]

The marco rocks are great. I added some of them to my 75 when I set it up about 5 months ago. They're now covered with coraline algae and you can't tell the difference between them and the live rock that was added at the same time.

[younglcy]

I put the refugium online this week (about 12 gal) and ordered some Cheato, which should be here tomorrow.



My water is still a little cloudy (mainly silt), but my water parameters seem okay and the tank seems to be cycling about as expected. I changed out the VHO tubes and put in one new AquaSun bulb and one new Actinic, which provides a really nice glow.



My sump is getting pretty full, but I've got really good water flow, so I'm not too worried about that. Phosphate and Nitrate readings are little high (0.75 ppm) and (20 ppm), respectively, so I'm going to do a 30 gal. water change today.



I've been using RO/DI to manually top off the water level every day, but I decided to set up an ATO system that I could use both for water changes and daily makeup water. Right now, I'm running the RO/DI output directly into the sump with a timer and electric solenoid valve, with a float valve/pressure shut off backup. I made a PVC bracket for the float valve, so I can use the same setup to run water for water changes. I know there's some risk involved in using a direct setup like this, but I like the simplicity and it doesn't take up too much extra room in my already cramped fish room.







I'm starting to get some diatoms and small green outbreaks of algae, so I reduced the light schedule to about 3 hrs. a day and ordered some snails (80) and crabs (40).

[younglcy]

The tank still isn't fully cycled yet (the nitrites seem to be holding steady at 0.50-0.75), but I was starting to get a brownish algae bloom of some kind, so I decided to go ahead and add some reef janitors. I got the first batch from GARF and got ~110 small cerith and nerite snails, 6 small red legged hermits, 1 astrea snail, 1 turbo snail and a bunch of extra shells for the hermits.



GARF also sent me a free coral with my order, which is a very nice green polyped soft coral of some type.



The coral GARF sent me had a little (1/2" x 1/2" aptasia anenome on it that I tried to grab with my forceps, but it kept retreating deep into the middle of the frag. Since I couldn't get it myself without damaging the coral, I ordered a pair of peppermint shrimp from Liveaquaria and, within a half hour of being in the tank, the shrimp had already gobbled it up. I also got a few more big snails (6 turbos, 6 Margaritas and 6 Astreas) to put in my sump, along with 36 dwarf (micro) hermits for the tank.

Everything acclimated fine and is doing quite well. After three days of solid eating, my tank is spic and span. The janitors attacked the last little bit of algae today (that entire rock was covered with stuff):



My phosphates are still detectable (0.75), so I added a big ball of cheato to the fuge today (finally arrived - apparently holiday shipping delay).

[sm51498]

The coral is green star polyps. Pretty and grows fast, so fast that it is sometimes considered a nuisance. cool setup, I'm subscribing to watch this tank develop.

[Zestay]

yeah move those GSP ( green star polyps ) to thier own rock away from your rock work or get ready for a hostile take over

[Rustylugnuts]

Very nice I really like the look of the rockscape (suscribed!).

[younglcy]

My tank is finally cycled! It took a little over a month, but that's not too surprising considering I started with approx. 200 lbs. of dry rock and 200 lbs. of new sand. Ammonia, Nitrites and Nitrates are all zero; PO5 is still detectable (0.25-0.50), but declining. I'll probably order a chemical reactor and some phos-ban sometime this week.

I've done three 25 gal. water changes since the tank's been up and I 've been alternating carbon and the micron filter in my Mag350 cannister filter. It does a really good job of cleaning/polishing the water. My alk was running a little high at 13-14 dkh, but has finally come down to 10 dkh (I assume the rocks were leaching a bit of something).

I've been feeding my hermit crabs and shrimp about twice a day, just a pinch at a time, and they seem to be adjusting quite well. Everything likes Aquarian Marine Flake and I've been adding about 1/2 cube of frozen mysis shrimp every other day. Even my elusive (noctural) peppermint shrimp come out to feed.













I started a small air-injection protein skimmer (powered by MJ 1200 powerhead) and it seems to be doing a decent job of keeping up with the waste. I'm sure it won't keep up with a real bio-load, so I (pre)ordered an Octopus Extreme 200. No word yet on when the new skimmer will ship. My cheato seems to be greening up as well.

[jdellman]

That is a great set up. I am going to be following, as I plan on doing the same under stair basement sump, and I like the way you did yours. Thanks for the ideas.

[kidako]

very nice set up

[younglcy]

I saw a peppermint shrimp bite the head off one of my small hermit crabs today, and the other day I saw a pair of green hermit crab legs floating around (I was hoping it was only a molt). If this keeps up, bad shrimp is getting moved to the sump!