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    Thread: 130 Gallon Reef in the Babies Room!

    1. #1
      ajn81 is offline Registered User
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      Cool 130 Gallon Reef in the Baby's Room!

      Well, I have been with out a reef tank for over a year now, slowly building some stability back after a time of unemployment. About 3 months ago, I starting getting the itch to start another reef, but really had no idea where I would do it. My fish room got completely converted into a craft room over the last year and there is no way that my wife is letting me put a tank in there again. Our only other bedroom is turning into a nursery now that we have a kid on the way. With that in mind, I pretty much decided, well guess I can't do another reef until we move somewhere else. Then, in March, we went to Hawaii (one last get away before the kid arrives ). While there enjoying the hawaiian reef, as a joke I say, "wouldn't it be cool if we put a tank in the garage that was built into the wall of the nursery?" To my surprise, my wife says, "yeah, that would be awesome". Pretty sure she regrets that now because that is the only opening that I needed .

      Needless to say plans began to emerge. I decided that I would start with the dimensions 4' long x 2' high and at least 2' deep, so I began to look for something in the 120 - 150 gallon range. For filtration, I decided that I wanted a method that would really promote the availability of natural foods in the aquarium, micro fauna. I've been influenced by a few different sources including Eric Borneman's 7 part article on Reef Food. That in mind, I decided rather unconventionally to go without a protein skimmer/sump. For me, the filtration method came down to two choices, gravity returned ATS or gravity returned refugium. Ultimately I chose to go with a refugium because the ATS was just one more thing to have to clean and worry about, and for me, the simpler the better. After putting some thought into it, the initial designed looked as so:



      An early decision was to build an insulated room in the garage to house the tank. My garage can get up to 100 degrees in the summer and it is hard enough to keep a reef tank from overheating in the summer without a chiller. Only thing is that I didn't want to lose my parking spot in the garage to the fish room, so it needed to be rather small. While coming up with the design for the fish room, I noticed that Minh (GoTakuF1) was selling his entire 130 gallon (48x24x30) setup. I have to admit that his setup was one of the inspirations for the design that I came up with, so I couldn't pass it up.

      This setup has the same design principal 130 gallon tank with 30 gallon gravity fed refugium. The change in equipment required a slight change in design:

      Last edited by ajn81; 06-18-2011 at 09:22 PM.

    2. #2
      ajn81 is offline Registered User
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      Two weeks ago I began construction on the fish room (That's my father-in-law in the pictures, he used to be a contractor and was a huge help):






    3. #3
      ajn81 is offline Registered User
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      For the stand, I utilized the structure of the room by first building a frame tied to the walls using lag screws:



      Then spaced 2x4s 12" apart from center across the main frame and added 4x4 legs for extra strength:



      Topped with 3/4" plywood:



      After applying black stain:



      The room was completely painted with black for 2 reasons. One was to make the tank the complete center of attention and two because you will be able to see through the tank from the nursery and wanted the background to be completely black.

    4. #4
      ajn81 is offline Registered User
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      I'm working on the final preparations now with plans to move the tank in two weeks, more pictures to follow at that point!

    5. #5
      Mario is offline Member
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      man that could be one cool man cave!

    6. #6
      LotsaFishies is offline Registered User
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      Really really nice!

      Unique and interesting filtration - I'm excited to see this thread progress!

    7. #7
      ajn81 is offline Registered User
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      Some more pictures of the finished product.

      Here is the finished outside view of the room:



      And with the doors open:



      A couple of shots of the inside, I didn't mention before that I installed a 5000 BTU window air conditioner for climate control and air flow. This particular Frigidaire model was selected because it completely shuts off when the room reaches the desired temperature and also because it will come back on after brown outs:





      And here is the view from inside the nursery:


    8. #8
      rodbuster229 is offline Registered User
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      That's gonna be a nice setup, hurry up so we can se the whole thing finished!!!!!!!!!

    9. #9
      EuroDriver is offline Registered User
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      Wooow - now that's a project! Should be one happy baby.

    10. #10
      GoTakuF1 is offline Registered User
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      Super clean! Great construction work, Austin. Can't wait to see it all up and running!

    11. #11
      H4Rk3R is offline Registered User
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      very very nice. cant wait to see the setup all ready to go.

    12. #12
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      bbandu is offline SDMAS Staff Member
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      I am sure the baby will love it
      Its all about MTS
      Larry

      150g, 60 gal sump, G3 Protein Skimmer, 2 Koralia Evo 1400's,2 Koralia Evo 750's, 20g ATO, 3 - 120w LarryM Led's configured 35 - 16000K, 28 - 14000K, 28 453nm blue and 28, 468nm blue.
      http://www.sdreefs.com/forums/showthread.php?t=75141

      60g cube, 20g sump, Bubble Magus curve 5 skimmer with 2 mp10's and 120w led.
      http://www.sdreefs.com/forums/showth...00-60g-upgrade

    13. #13
      fishnsd is offline Registered User
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      I love build threads like this.I cant wait to see the finished product.

    14. #14
      adfb is offline Registered User
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      Looks really nice can't wait to see the final product

    15. #15
      tommyl is offline Registered User
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      That is epic! Looks great, very clean!

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