Angry Ang Mo's Shallow SPS

[brent]

After initially getting my hands wet with a used mixed reef RSM 120 earlier in the year, I recently decided to add a standalone SPS frag tank.

I’m sure like many reefers’ first builds, the project started quite small. My initial requirement was to create a frag tank where I could keep SPS without the excess nutrients of numerous fish. I decided to limit myself to two fish that would help maintain the coral. In my initial design, I started with a 2-foot frag tank with future plans for a sump.

I did a bit of research into various tank makers and quickly decided on ORA due their reputation for good customer service and their convenient location in the East.

In the end, I am very happy that I chose them. (I’m not sure that the feeling was mutual. ) Throughout the process, I made so many changes and they were always so helpful and understanding.

The original design consisted of a 600x300x250mm tank with an overflow in the back corner. Since I planned to position the tank in my home office on a bay window (alcove) that was made from concrete, I needed to have the tank drilled from the side.

I really liked Loc-line returns / nozzles and so I decided to special order them from the States.

This was back in the beginning of November. On a side note, I was expecting my first child in the middle of November….

[Eniram]

Pictures! Pictures!

[brent]

Patience young sky walker. I still have many stories to tell. Battles with Herbie. The Monster Sump ...

Here's a photo of my CREE DIY LED light set after I finished soldering.

[brent]

I originally planned to delay getting a sump since I wanted to start out simple. This didn’t last long since I had originally planned to use an existing Eheim Compact 1000 pump but it turns out that it only works in water and so I was forced to go pump shopping. Since I was already planning to buy a pump, then I just decided to go for the sump.

I’ve had good experiences with Eheim pumps but the difference in price between the 1260 and the 1262 was 50 SGD. I managed to find some info that if I replaced a $6 pump cover on the 1260 with the pump cover made for the 1262, it would provide the same performance as a 1262. I ordered the pump locally but bought the replacement pump cover from the States since I didn't have time to hunt around for a spare part. I haven’t tried measuring the difference in flow but it seems to work very well. An increase of 1000 lph (from 2400 to 3400) for only $6 seems like good value. If anyone wants to do the same, the Eheim part number is EH7443670.

Now that my pump was sorted, I decided to design my sump. Since I wanted to support SPS, I took this opportunity to get a large skimmer. After researching a bit, I went for the RO 1000-LS. I like Reef Octopus skimmers and this seemed like a good skimmer that would still leave enough room in my sump for a large refugium.

In comparison to my DT, my sump is massive and I wanted to include every bell and whistle. Here were some of the elements I wanted to include in my sump:

1. Refugium
   
2. Space for an oversized skimmer RO 1000-LS
   
3. Separate fresh-water top off chamber
   
4. Isolated dosing chambers
   
5. Return manifold so I didn’t need to use separate pumps for my return, chiller, and FR.
   
6. Area for filter wool
   
7. Bubble trap
   

I also wanted to add as additional water volume so the system would be relatively stable. After everything was said and done, the dimensions of my sump are 30” x 17” x 20”. Since I don't have a cabinet, I "hid" my sump between my desk and the bay window.

In the beginning I wanted to make it out of acrylic, but ORA was so helpful that I decided it made more sense to do both my tank and the sump with them.

After everything is said and done, I am quite happy with my sump. Here's the final product.

[brent]

Pictures! Pictures!

Hey bro, I need to get another frag of your dino monti. My frag was great until a worm got it. My green montis I got from you are doing great. One piece I positioned near the top has actually turned an amazing neon green color. I'll post a photo.

[Eniram]

Yea sure no problem. I'll pass you the Dino frag.

What's that in your sump compartment? Those 3 sections w green sticks?

[Eniram]

Oh nvm figured it out. Dozing chambers

[peacemaker]

Nice idea on the incorporated dosing chambers...

[brent]

Yea sure no problem. I'll pass you the Dino frag.

Thanks bro!

[brent]

Nice idea on the incorporated dosing chambers...

Thanks. Hopefully, they'll work out. My only concern is that it will be a bit difficult to clean them.

[Admiraltian]

Will be camping here to see your tank build.

[MarcoVan]

Thanks. Hopefully, they'll work out. My only concern is that it will be a bit difficult to clean them.

Agree. and you will worry about contamination or spilling your top up stuff into main tank directly.

[brent]

Here is a photo of my initial Herbie overflow.

For those of you who don't know this design, it works by creating a full siphon on the drain pointed down with an emergency overflow pointed up. When it works, it is absolutely dead silent. There is no noise from the water and as long as the overflow pipe in submerged in the sump there is also no splashing. This is really important for me because I don't have a cabinet to contain the sound.

In my case, I ran into some initial problems since my tank is so shallow that it was quite difficult to develop enough head pressure to start the siphon. In fact, I had let the water rise up to the top rim of the tank for at least 3 minutes to start the siphon. This was stressful and it made me quite concerned that I would flood the room if the power was ever interrupted.

I ended up fixing this by having the guys install new larger bulkheads that I ordered from the USA which included a speed elbow that can be rotated.

It was a major pain for the guys at ORA having to redrill my tank but they took it in stride with a smile. Ian was especially helpful in getting my issues resolved.

Here is the updated overflow which was fixed last week:

Luckily I was able to fit all of my live rock and almost all of my DT water in the sump so I didn't need to cycle everything again after they were finished modifying the tank. I still waited a week to make sure I didn't get a nutrient spike.

The new overflow is really sweet. The siphon starts automatically and I can make adjustments on the fly. The inner elbows are loosely held on by plumbing tape. The original fixed elbow design would have probably worked fine for a larger tank or a tank which was drilled through the bottom instead of the side.

Unfortunately, I had my first fatality when a basslet went into the overflow and into my skimmer. Poor guy. RIP. I added some 1/4 mesh over the main overflow to prevent any future losses.

MANIFOLD

The ORA guys also did a great job with my return manifold. This was also an idea I got off of the web. I'll look for the link to share with everyone.

I wanted to make sure that the nozzles were changeable in case I decided to switch out equipment and needed a different size nozzle. I also like that each nozzle can be individually tuned. They managed to find some high quality nozzles at a plumbing shop down in the Lavender area. I'll post a better photo of the manifold with everything connected up later on.

[Terryz_]

A 1000Litre for Manifold?? It is too little IMO... You wun have much left after going to all the equipments..

[Eniram]

A 1000Litre for Manifold?? It is too little IMO... You wun have much left after going to all the equipments..

Terry, it's an increase of 1000L from 2400 to 3400...spending too much time with leticia?

[brent]

Thanks everyone for your replies and interest.

Dosing

Agree. and you will worry about contamination or spilling your top up stuff into main tank directly.

This is a bit of a worry, but I would probably still do it again. In an area where I can't tolerate spills, the integrated dosing containers avoid having to worry about destroying the floor. If I did it again, I won't add glass dividers between the chambers in the sump and instead I will have a removable 3 chamber acrylic compartment.

Here's a photo of my manifold in action:

I really like these nozzles:

Tank builders

For some strange reason I kept mentioning ORA (the coral aquaculture company). I got the acronym wrong: the tank builders are CRA (Coral Reef Aquarium)

http://www.craquarium.com.sg

Sorry guys. Dan, Ian, and the rest of guys were really helpful & committed to customer satisfaction.

Display Tank

The display tank is a rimless 1200x300x300 in crystal low-lead glass with a clear overflow. There are two 1” overflows and one ¾” return. The water level is at 250mm, which hopefully gives me enough space to avoid excess salt creep. If not, I’ll need to add an acrylic lid to the top. I’m also testing fate by having a rimless tank with a wrasse. Hopefully, he will stay put but this might also force me to get a lid.

Lighting

I made everything quite difficult on myself since I decided to adopt two different types of lighting: LED & T5.

Originally I had planned to only do DIY LED since I had made a unit earlier to boost the output on my RSM 120. I ordered the LEDs from RapidLed along with three drivers. I was able to pick up a one-meter heat sink locally from a reefer on the forum: nettian.

The LED light consists of 40 LEDs on three drivers (two of which are dimmable):

Driver 1: Mean Well ELN-60-48D Dimmable, Running at 1.2A (Right side)

10 Royal Blue XT-E 5W

4 White XP-G 5W

Driver 2: Mean Well ELN-60-48D Dimmable, Running at 1.2A (Left side)

10 Royal Blue XT-E 5W

4 White XP-G 5W

Driver 3: Mean Well Mean Well LPC-35-700, 700 mA (Accent lights)

2 Red XP-E 3W

2 Green XP-E 3W

8 Violet 2W

I decided to use the Berquist Thermal Pads instead of thermal adhesive in case I needed to change out some of the LEDs in the future.

Total Wattage Approx. 168W

I am using the 1-10V dimming option and running it off of a manual dimmer, which I made from a RapidLed kit. After I get a reef

controller, I will use that controller to automate the dimming.

Hybrid Lighting

As you can see, my lighting is heavily biased towards blue. The reason for this is mainly because I am getting some natural light through the window and I want to balance the yellow in the natural light with the blue in the artificial light.

After doing some research about some other parts of the setup, I was surprised that a vast majority of the best SPS tanks use T5. This made me reconsider my choice. However, after making the LED, I didn’t want to leave it idle.

In the end, I decided to adopt a hybrid design of 2 T5s plus my LEDs. Thanks to the suggestions from fellow reefers on this site I modified a Maxspect Mazarra bracket from DE Lightings.

I was originally planning to do DIY on the T5s as well but I ran out of steam (and my wife ran out of patience). So, I bought a Retrofit Set from DE Lightings for the 2 x T5. I originally wanted to go for 2 x ATI Blue Plus bulbs but Razali suggested I use 1 x Coralplus & 1 x Blue Plus since I already had a lot of blue in the LEDS. It was a good suggestion.

Unfortunately, due to the hybrid nature of my lights, the fixture looks a bit messy and industrial. It looks great with either only the T5s or only the LEDS, but the combined look is chaotic.

I’m starting out with the T5s since the frags I got for my birthday gift from my wife were raised under T5s. I have a nice selection from the Bedok Doctor’s House of Wonders.

Here are some shots of the tank with the lights. I just finished getting everything mounted yesterday and I still need to wire the cooling fans for the heatsink. I’m using some Stealth fans to try to minimize noise.

Here are some photos of the various lighting options. Please ignore the messy rocks. I haven’t started aquascaping yet. In some of the photos you can also see my first inhabitants: Purple Tang, Long nose hawkfish, and a 6 line wrasse

T5 Only

LED and T5

LED Only

Please give me some feedback on the lighting since it isn’t too late to make changes.

Personally, I ‘m not a big fan of the LED only look. The combined LED and T5 look pretty nice but I’m thinking of changing out the red LEDs since they seem a bit too much.

Also, I’m already going to have challenges with algae growth considering that I have natural light. I shouldn’t really be tempting fate by adding red lights that I hear can supercharge algae growth.

T5 only also looks great and if I was starting from scratch I probably would have just gone for 4 x T5s.

I've maxed out my number of posts and so I'll reply after I build up some more.

[moscowites]

Very detailed thread with concise planning on the set-up. Looking forward to more updates!

[honkit]

Cool write-up.

Since you are cultivating SPS frags, what sort of cooling and water flow systems are you utilizing?

[Admiraltian]

The combined lighting of t5 and led looks great!! Can't wait for u to stock up all those sps to your tank.

[Terryz_]

Terry, it's an increase of 1000L from 2400 to 3400...spending too much time with leticia?

Oops... My bad...

[brent]

Thanks for the kind words everyone.

Since you are cultivating SPS frags, what sort of cooling and water flow systems are you utilizing?

FLOW

The total volume of my DT is about 108L with sump having an additional 167L for a total of 275L.

Actual water volume is 90L for the DT and 84L for the sump with a total of 174 L (approximately 46g).

In terms of flow, I have the supercharged Eheim pump which provides an estimated 3000L post-head loss with an estimated 2000L going to the return and 1000L going through the refugium, chiller, and FR. Since manufacturers typically overstate their pump performance, these numbers are probably very optimistic.

For the return, I picked a 3" Loc-Line nozzle to give a nice wide flow. It is positioned on the opposite side of the tank as my powerhead to increase turbulence.

For the powerhead, I decided to splurge on a Vortech MP40, which should give me from 1000 to 3200 gph of flow. (approx. 3800 – 12000 lph). Given the volume of my DT, I probably didn’t need the MP40 but the tank is 4 feet long and so I wanted to ensure that I maintained good flow throughout the tank.

In terms of flow turn-over, if I just consider the DT, here are the totals based on actual water volume:

2,000 lph return + (3,800. – 14,000 powerhead) = 5,800 – 14,000 lph Total

64X - 155X turn over

In terms of turn-over for the entire system including the sump, here are the totals:

6800 – 15,000 lph total

33 - 86 X

Right now I’m running the MP40 at about 25% and I’ll probably increase it up to 40% when I start adding the LEDs to help prevent bleaching. I'm sure I'll never run it at 100% since it would probably flood the area.

COOLING

Cooling is a bit of a headache for me now. When I bought the RSM120, it came with a primary Arctica 1/10 hp chiller and back-up Hailea chiller. (Which was one of the main reasons I bought the tank.)

In order to save some money, I had originally planned to use the Hailea chiller since I thought it was also a 1/10 hp. As it turned out, the Hailea chiller is actually 1/20 hp and so it doesn’t meet the requirements of the tank. I’m temporarily using it but it is underpowered so I’m only able to keep the temperature at 26.5 C which I believe is fine for SPS but it turns on regularly and is also quite loud. Although the chiller is relatively new, it rattles a bit which can be quite annoying since the tank is right under my work desk in my home office.

I’ve thought about buying another Arctica chiller. According to the chiller calculator, I can barely get away with a 1/10:

http://chiller.jbjli...hiller_size.asp

I would probably get a 1/5 hp to be safe but I’m not sure I want to fork out the $$ required to buy a new chiller.

One option would be to try swapping the Arctica on my RSM120 and the Hailea on the shallow tank to see if that works.

Does anyone have any suggestions for other chillers I should consider? Are the other models of Hailea quieter?

DOSING

On my other tank, I’ve been dosing two-part with some carbon dosing using the Bubble Magnus BM-T01 from Iwarna. With the exception of the clock being a bit slow and the plastic connectors breaking, I’ve had really good luck with the doser.

With this tank, there was a sale at BRS in the States and so I decided that I would like to try out two of their industrial dosing pumps that were almost 40% off.

In the end, it was a mistake. I assumed that like most of the other dosing pumps I’ve used they would be DC powered and all I would have to do is get a DC adapter. I was wrong and they are AC powered. In this case, I need to use a power transformer, but since they need to be on a timer I actually need to use a transformer for each one. Also, since I only bought two, I don’t have enough to dose two part and carbon.

When all is said and done I will probably just buy another BM-T01.

For the carbon dosing, I like to use a mixture of vodka and vinegar since I’ve had problems with cyano with vodka alone. I dilute 10/1 with RODI water so I can dose over the entire day. Since I am only dosing about 1.7ml per day of vodka, it wouldn't be able to do multiple doses without diluting it. For the vinegar, I use 10% acetic acid, which I dilute 2.5/1.

WATER PARAMETERS

I started adding frags today since the water seems to have stabilized.

The most recent tests are as follows:

CA 430 - Salifert

ALK 8.6 - Salifert

Ammonium / Nitrites 0 - API (I don't like API tests but I haven't bothered to buy new Ammonium / Nitrite tests since I use them so infrequently)

Nitrates 0.5 - Salifert

Phosphates 0.021 - Hanna UL Phosphate Checker

I track all of my parameters using aquaplanner pro on my ipad. I really like the program since it keeps track of all of my parameters over time and also reminds me to conduct maintenance.

ZOAS

I have a question for you more experienced reefers. I have a zoa that I would like to frag. The only problem is that it is on a small rock and the zoas cover all sides of the rock. Any suggestions to frag it without causing too much damage?

[honkit]

For cooling, I would suggest an Artica 1/4 hp chiller. Always overspec your chiller if you are referring to manufacturer specifications.

Stable tank temperatures are extremely important for the good health of your sps frags.

[brent]

For cooling, I would suggest an Artica 1/4 hp chiller. Always overspec your chiller if you are referring to manufacturer specifications.

Stable tank temperatures are extremely important for the good health of your sps frags.

I'm sure you are right bro. Arctica chillers are really solid. I know what I need to do. I'll just suck it up and cough up the cash.

[Eric Ng]

any pictures? im already excited by seeing your detailing of every part of setting up!

[honkit]

I'm sure you are right bro. Arctica chillers are really solid. I know what I need to do. I'll just suck it up and cough up the cash.

Cool. When you eventually upgrade to a larger tank, I would recommend a titanium drop-in coil cooling unit which utilizes an aircon compressor for heat exchange.