Drilling a 150 gallon-soon-to-be predator tank

[BryanF]

I finished up the plumbing on this build and ran fresh water for a few days to make sure there were no leaks.

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Here are a couple pictures of my PVC contraption which will be under my rubble bottom. I drilled a bunch of holes in the PVC and decided to use a mag 9.5 which I will burry with sponges (to avoid vibration noise) and then live rock.

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Put in my rock and rubble bottom. Really wanted to do something a little different with the substrate to set it apart from my other tank with sand. Im making about 50 gallons of water a day, its going to take me a week to finally get this thing filled. 200 Lbs of rock doesn’t look like much in a 150 high. Ill tweak my rock when all is said and done but my plan is to allow as much swimming room as possible.

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[Dr.DiSilicate]

Drilling a 150 gallon-soon-to-be predator tank

Are you saying you are going to bury that mag pump under foam sand a d rock? Lots of problems can occur here, nitrate factory... Maintenance... What about running it like a closed loop from an overflow or your sump?

 

[BryanF]

Are you saying you are going to bury that mag pump under foam sand a d rock? Lots of problems can occur here, nitrate factory... Maintenance... What about running it like a closed loop from an overflow or your sump?

Won't be buried in sand. Basically just sitting on a sponge with rock built around it to keep the fish from getting sucked up. Do you think the sponge will cause nitrate issues or something else?

 

[CRW Reef]

How is the tank working out with your plumbing idea Bryan? Any updates?

 

[BryanF]

Im cautiously optimist with my PVC contraption under the rubble bottom. It keeps about 80 percent of the detritus out of the rubble however it does tend to build up in a couple places. I skipped the sponges and still no vibration noise. Ive got some sand on stand-by and may switch it out depending on nitrate levels but Im going to try this for a bit.

This is what the rubble bottom ended up looking like:


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The Little Giant pump is plumbed to the returns, chiller, and NextReef biopellet reactor. Ended up running the skimmer internally with a Mag 9.5.

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Clown trigger and Niger trigger are in their new home. In the market for a cool eel if anyone knows of one.

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[BryanF]

I thought I would provide an update on this tank. While I was confident I could keep all the detritus out of the rubble bottom I now don’t think it can be done. I’ve given the rubble bottom about 7 months or so and detritus has been a big problem. The detritus las contributed to high nitrate and phosphate levels despite biopellets and GFO. With the high nutrients and lack of CUC I have been fighting a ton of hair algae and cyano. I though I could siphon all the gunk out of the rubble bottom during water changes but the rubble gets packed pretty tight and doesn’t move around much.

In my opinion, all the online forums that cautioned against rubble bottoms are correct. I plan to pull the rubble out and put medium grade sand in there.

Here is what things are looking like now.. You can see the Jeweled Moray I got from PlumCrazy. The eel swims in the open tank all the time!

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Fish are all doing well. I read porcupine puffers live in pairs in the ocean so I added two to this tank. They are inseparable which is cool watch. My harlequin grouper sometimes picks at the smaller puffer but the larger ones come to his defense and chases the grouper off.

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I hope to post an update soon with things in a little better shape.

 

[BryanF]

I thought I would provide an update on this tank. While I was confident I could keep all the detritus out of the rubble bottom I now don’t think it can be done. I’ve given the rubble bottom about 7 months or so and detritus has been a big problem. The detritus las contributed to high nitrate and phosphate levels despite biopellets and GFO. With the high nutrients and lack of CUC I have been fighting a ton of hair algae and cyano. I though I could siphon all the gunk out of the rubble bottom during water changes but the rubble gets packed pretty tight and doesn’t move around much.

In my opinion, all the online forums that cautioned against rubble bottoms are correct. I plan to pull the rubble out and put medium grade sand in there.

Here is what things are looking like now.. You can see the Jeweled Moray I got from PlumCrazy. The eel swims in the open tank all the time!

View attachment 17224



Fish are all doing well. I read porcupine puffers live in pairs in the ocean so I added two to this tank. They are inseparable which is cool watch. My harlequin grouper sometimes picks at the smaller puffer but the larger ones come to his defense and chases the grouper off.

View attachment 17225

I hope to post an update soon with things in a little better shape.