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Pod Your Reef

WestCoast Shallow Reef


cocojakes

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I just moved 3000km across the country to Vancouver on the west coast, and as such sold both my 5gal office tank, and 75gal custom home peninsula tank which I've had setup the past 5 years. My cat Zoey made the flight with me but trying to coordinate fish didn't seem worth the hassle. It appears 2 months was all I could handle without a tank though as I got restless last night and ordered a Fluval Evo 🤷‍♂️.

*edit* upgraded to an IM 25 lagoon tank

 

(This space reserved for most recent FTS)

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I plan on keeping this tank very low maintenance/hands off with minimal equipment, although I have my doubts I'll be able to resist fully automating this tank like I always do haha

*edit* added an Apex EL 😬

 

Current Equipment:
Tank: IM NUVO 25 lagoon

Flow: Stock pump with Vivid Creative Aquatic random flow generator

Light: Kessil A80 with controller

Filtration: Live Rock + filter floss in overflows

Control: Apex EL + breakout box and VDM

 

Current Residents:
Maximus Decimus Meridius (gladiator clownfish)

Zippy (Sunrise Dottyback)

 

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While I wait for the new tank to arrive, I thought I might give some context for my inability to leave things alone with a few of the sump iterations my 75G peninsula went through:

 

2016:

note the wide/tall/skinny ATO reservoir in front of the sump
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2018:

Added cube saltwater reservoir for automated water change, new sump design with diy filter roller, and new skimmer. Sketchy garbage can ato reservoir hiding on the right.

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2019:

Much larger saltwater water-change reservoir with built in smaller ATO reservoir, different skimmer again and v2 diy filter roller
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Through all the changes, Zoey enjoyed the view from her perch:
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Even when I had to setup a home office this year, she made sure she had a spot to see the fish:
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I will say my home office had a better fish view than my desk at work:
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I'm hoping I can keep this new tank simple like the work tank, but not neglect it as much since the 20G will give me more space for an interesting scape than the old specV from my office. I also want to keep the overall look very minimal and clean since its going to be in my living room beside the couch. I am very interested to see how Zoey interacts with an open top tank, as this will be the first time she's been around one, I might need to add a glass top. Either way, I have all the time in the world lately with the pandemic, and now that I'm setting up a nano-tank again you all will get to come along for the ride! I look forward to the first shipments arriving and getting my hands all salty again!

 

 

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7 hours ago, cocojakes said:

skinny ATO reservoir in front of the sump

Awesome idea

 

My Elos sump has an 'L' shaped reservoir.  Dog leg on the side(so you can refill it easily)with most of it along the back(where it's difficult to reach other sump parts)

 

 

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2 minutes ago, farkwar said:

Awesome idea

 

My Elos sump has an 'L' shaped reservoir.  Dog leg on the side(so you can refill it easily)with most of it along the back(where it's difficult to reach other sump parts)

 

 

Thats a really smart design to keep it all as one box of glass, and make use of the space thats hard to reach. I'm still in the process of figuring out what I'm going to do for an ATO reservoir on this new tank, since the plan is to place the tank on top of my liquor cabinet. My new apartment doesn't have a lot of space, and so the aquarium stand needs to do double duty, which means I'll need to get creative when it comes to hiding cords and equipment while still having everything accessible for maintenance or future changes.

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I'm lucky there is a skinny cabinet at the end of the kitchen counter, which currently only houses the cat food, so fish food and some supplies can go in there. The current thinking is I'll put a reservoir under the sink (in the cabinet beside the skinny cabinet) and run an RO line out the side and up the back behind the tank.

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While i'm waiting for waterbox to start shipping their Canadian orders, and all the rest of my equipment to arrive, I've started designing the stand. Like i mentioned before, this stand needs to have a spot for the liquor, but also somewhere to hide cables and aquarium monitors etc. The current working design is outlined below, built out of 3/4" baltic birch plywood, with a nice spot for the liquor, a cutout in the back for routing cables, and a lower area to put power bars and controllers behind a black faceplate.

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One thing i'm not sure about is how much space I need to account for between the tank and the wall to accommodate the AI Prime flex mount, right now I have the tank set 1" off the wall. I'm also curious how tight waterbox's tolerances are on the tanks, Online they quote 17.7" (45cm) square base, so the plan right now is 17.75" (45.1cm) which hopefully is just enough wiggle room. Anyone with a waterbox cube20 or the ai flex mount that could validate either of those would be much appreciated as I want the stand to but right up against the wall.

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So I changed my mind on the cube shape and want to go back to a peninsula like my 75gal tank back in Toronto. I tried changing my @Waterbox Aquariums order from a 20 cube to a 25 peninsula, but in the week since my original order, the prices have all gone up by an extra $100 and they weren't able to honour the pricing from when I made the original order, so I decided to downsize to a Fluval Evo for now. Maybe I'll upsize to a Waterbox when I grow out of it, but for now the 10 gallon difference isn't worth the extra $300 😅

 

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The stand design has changed a bit as well, The new design re-uses the glass door from the original ikea cabinet, and adds wine bottle storage along the side (with the added benefit of a support directly below the tank). Its a bit oversized for the evo since I designed it with the WaterBox Peninsula 25 in mind, but that just leaves room to grow in the future, and current counter space for resting drinks beside the couch.

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I also got my first shipment of fish supplies to my new apartment, will be installing and flushing the RO system tomorrow after work, very excited for my real reef rock to arrive so I can start playing with scape ideas.

 

 

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The new EVO tank arrived this Monday, almost the same time as the Real Reef Rocks, and the wood I'm using to build the stand. I've been working as fast as I can to get the stand built before my eye surgery next Tuesday, but some things like glue, stain, and varnish, you just can't rush. I am a little disappointed in my decision to get the 20lb Shapes box instead of the nano arches, since I'm really only able to fit 2 of the 4 rocks that I received in the tank at a time (I ordered the rocks back when the assumption was a 20gal cube not a 12gal Evo) but I'm pretty happy with the scape I've come up with so far.

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The stand construction is coming along nicely too, trying my best not to annoy the neighbours too much, but we had a beautiful day yesterday where I was able to get some more cutting done, now if only I had more clamps! haha

 

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The RODI system is fully installed but the valve connecting it under the sink isn't allowing any water to flow up to the sink, so I'm going to need to investigate that further soon, otherwise steady progress, most dry goods have arrived, once the stand is finished I think I'll be able to get it wet!

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Okay, so its been slow progress, but progress none the less! I finished building most of the stand (the shelf and bottom front cover that hides the fish power bar and stuff aren't done yet) but the main structure is assembled, stained, finished with poly, drilled for wires and RO plumbing, and ready for the tank!


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The old glass door fits perfect, and will hopefully give it a bit more of a professional look once the shelf is installed to hide all the wires and top off in the bottom portion. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out, although its a bit awkwardly tall as an end table beside the couch. On the plus side it leaves plenty of room for the inevitable upgrade once I outgrow the Evo. I'm doing everything in my power to delay that for as long as possible though haha I really want a fun little nano that doesn't have thousands of dollars of automation involved 😂

 

I have laser eye surgery tomorrow so I'm doubtful how much work will get done this week, but I have a bit more equipment on the way, and look forward to getting a fish in the tank to really feel like things are under way!

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Everyday that pass I am more amazed at capabilities and geniuses that reefers here show. I cannot imagine doing any of the work that you have done here in my wildest dreams.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well its been what, 10 days since my eye surgery? It still hurts to look at screens for too long, so this post will be made with lots of breaks, but it's pretty cool seeing without glasses. With all the time stuck at home recovering I was able to be a little productive, and finish the stand.

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As you can see, there is now a removable shelf for the liquor, and faceplate that hides all the cables, and auto top-off reservoir underneath. I plumbed a line direct from the RODI under the sink, to the reservoir, using an XP Aqua Flood Guardian to keep the reservoir topped off once per week. The top-off is powered by a tunze osmolator nano, which arrived along with the Sicce syncre 1.0 return pump upgrade. I also went out to the downtown fish store near me, dressed in double sunglasses, and picked out a nice little Gladiator Clown, and Sunrise Dottyback who both have become quite at home in the tank after a bottle of bacteria was added.

 

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Both are eating well, and seem very active, the dottyback in particular has dug himself a tunnel under the rockwork, and loves zipping around the arches and through small holes in the rocks. I'm planning a trip to canada corals to get some corals started as well. I have a kessil H80 on order, along with an intank chamber 1 basket so I can stop using the chamber 2 sponge to prop up some filter floss in chamber 1. I think I will mostly only be running floss and periodic chemi-pure. Despite my best efforts, this tank is quickly becoming more complex and automated. Doing my best to avoid dropping another grand on an apex though haha

 

I'll try to do another update soon better showing the hidden plumbing and wiring under/behind the stand, and when I get some more colour added with corals.

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It's been a while since I've had time to sit down and post on here, and a lot has changed. First up I made my first trip out to some other fish stores in the area and picked up some corals to add a bit more colour to the tank.

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After a long wait and right before having to go away for the week on a ski trip, my new Kessil A80 and InTank media caddy arrived, I really do love the beautiful colour mixing you get with Kessil, although I do somewhat miss the hybrid LED + t5 solution I had on my old 75gal. It would be nice to tone down the shimmer a bit, but unfortunately with the return outlet hole so close to the water surface, there's not much I can do.

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I don't expect there will be a whole lot of change now that things are starting to reach their final state as far as equipment setup, although there's this terrible nagging voice in my head already saying I should upsize to an IM nuvo 25 lagoon haha so who knows. Surprisingly even without the hood, the evaporation on the tank has been quite minimal, maybe 2 gallons a week which is nice. The ATO is having no problem keeping up, and every week or two I refill the reservoir with RO. I'm for sure overdue for a water change, just need to get some new buckets. I'll try to get some better photos, and will keep the original post updated with latest FTS.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Okay, so as predicted, I couldn't help myself. With the existing rockwork things just felt so cramped, and I overbuilt the original stand with an upgrade in mind so.. I originally wanted to build a custom tank to make the most use of the space, I think something 24x24x15 with a 4" rear chamber leaving 24x20x15 display space would have been my sweet spot, but building a custom tank has never worked out as visually clean as I envision, so when this nuvo 25 lagoon went on sale at my LFS I couldn't resist. At 24x20x12 (24x16x12 display space) its about as close to the perfect dimensions as I've been able to find pre-built. I did consider the waterbox 35 AIO but with a display space of 24x14x17 it just didn't seem right.

 

I'm a firm believer in height being the smallest dimension, you can't very easily stack anything taller than it is wide, especially after factoring in clearance from side glass, so I try to avoid tanks that are taller than they are wide. I also like relatively open scapes, so having the extra floor space is exactly what I was looking for. The transition was a bit of a dance, since the new tank is going exactly where the old tank was, so first I made 20 gallons of fresh RODI water (which took all day on my low water pressure) and then left it all night to heat and mix. In the morning I was able to start draining the old tank into buckets, and put in the existing rocks temporarily.

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After that, the old tank was light enough for me to lift it up onto the kitchen counter beside the stand, and get the new tank in position. I used a fresh 20lb bag of fiji pink sand and started adding fresh salt water from the tub.

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Despite my best efforts the water did end up cloudy, especially after messing around with a few different aquascape ideas. I had 2 extra pieces of real reef rock from my 20lb shapes box, that didn't get used in the original tank. A fat arch you can kinda see behind the sand bag, and a weird pride rock looking pile of rocks. I thought I would end up using both but the final scape only uses the weird pride rock pile as a footing to lift one of the existing arches up a bit more to give some variance in height. Things aren't quite settled but I'll update the FTS at the top of the thread once things settle down.

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For now I have a bunch of cleaning to do, wiping down the old evo for re-sale and just generally cleaning up my tiny apartment that has had fish stuff exploded on every surface during the process of upgrading. Also on sale were all apex products, which combined with it being tax refund season, resulted in me also picking up an apex EL which I'm already glad I did. The terrible mess of cables under the stand is finally cleaned up, and I can sleep easy knowing I have redundancy now instead of just trusting a bunch of individual controllers (cheap amazon temp controller, stand alone ATO, stand alone light controller). I know it wasn't strictly speaking necessary, but I'm an Engineer, and I just can't help myself haha

 

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I didn't think to take a "before" picture but rest assured it was a terrible mess of cables and timers on a power bar on the floor. Even just getting the power bar up onto the back wall is a huge improvement, the head unit is hidden behind the ATO reservoir there. I'm still waiting on some float sensors so that I can move the ATO logic onto the apex and replace the nano osmolator. Also waiting on the VDM module to be able to control the kessil light from the apex, for now I've just got it on an outlet timer. 

 

With all this extra space, I think it's about time to introduce some more tank mates. I'm thinking of doing a black and white clownfish, and blue/green chromis, aside from that i'm not sure, I kind of want something that will zip around through the arches and around the rocks, providing similar movement to my old yellow tang, but obviously not a tang since this is still only 24" of swimming space. I'm open to ideas, maybe a 6line 🤔

 

 

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