My 180 SPS build

[drdude05]

Hi all,

It has been long while since I posted on TRT. I have spend the better part of 18 months researching my current 180 gallon project and now that I have something to show I wanted to share it. It has been a long road in both time and money to get the tank this far, but I have enjoyed doing it. Thus, for your enjoyment here is my 180 build log.

First is a pic of the tank after getting it home. It was purchased from a fellow hobbyist who originally bought it from glasscages but then decided not to set it up and sold all the parts off brand new. I ended up buying the tank, stand, sump, and ASM skimmer.



I decided to install durso drains in the overflows. The tank has two glass overflow boxes, and two black acrylic covers that will be installed over the glass overflows to hide the plumbing. The overflows have a 1.5 inch hole for the drains, and 1 inch hole for the returns. Here is the assembled plumbing for one overflow:

[thekid55]

looking good so far

[Fly Guy]

Looks good...keep em coming and good luck

[drdude05]

The plumbing and guts of the system have been designed and redesigned more times than I care to admit. At the moment, the tank is setup with a 65 gallon acrylic sump that is fed from the two drains of each overflow. I used 1 1/4" schedule 26 (thin wall) pvc to build the Durso drains and the return lines (this was a design modification). Originally, I planned to use a Sequence Dart for the main return pump, but during a wet run it kept overflowing the tank and running the sump dry. I decided to scale back to a Little Giant 4MDQX-SC which seems to be working very well at the moment.

The stand and canopy of the tank was initially unfinished. I chose a cherry stain for these which turned out pretty nice. I also, wound up installing a retrofit from Hamilton Technology for my lighting. It consits of three 250W MH, two are 10K bulbs and one is a 14K bulb in addition to two 140W VHO actinics. I painted the entire inside of the canopy white to allow for better light reflection and installed for 4" fans to cool the lights.

Here are somemore pics.
This is the tank after getting to our downstairs rec room from the garage.

[drdude05]

Here are some pics of the canopy build.

The lighting installed:




Measuring for the fans:

[drdude05]

Cutting the holes for the fans and finally the fan installation:

[drdude05]

As for the remaining equipment, the skimmer is an ASM G4X that has been fitted with the gate valve mod and the recirculation mod. The tank has a calcium reactor built by Scott at Aquatic Systems Design, a tunze osmolator will serve to provide topoff water through an Aquamedic kalkwasser stirrer, supplimentary circulation is provided by two Tunze 6100's controlled with a multicontroller in addition to two SEIO 820's in the corners of the tank.

Here are some pic of the "guts" of the system.

Calcium reactor and 15 gallon tank for the autotop off tank.

[tiburon]

Sweet setup. I especially like how the skimmer has it's own seperate sump container also.