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125 Jake scape

7K views 44 replies 10 participants last post by  fermentedhiker 
#1 ·
As I'm getting closer to starting this build I decided to setup a build thread. Maybe that'll keep me motivated to follow through with all my plans.

I got a used 125 locally for a good price. Picked up a premade stand from Easy Aquariums. I just didn't want to deal with making one and trying to get it to look finished. I ended up having to reinforce it quite a bit though. The floor was 1/4" luan plywood(I mean come on) with only two supports underneath it. I can't imagine someone placing a large sump on that. I built it up with 1/2" PT plywood and ripped some strapping down for floor supports. Glued everything in place with tightbond3. I also added some addition bracing under the top(unnecessary since the weight is on the outside, but it gave me something to screw to for hanging a fuge light and wire management hooks) then I attached two lengths of strapping so I have some runners to attach things to.

I'm going to paint the back black with flat latex.

I got a used eshopps pf1200 overflow and I bought a deepwater aquatics BLDC5 for a return pump.

I've got three bags of black diamond from tractor supply for substrate.

Ordered an apex EB8,PM1,VDM,temp probe, and breakout box from BRS for their black friday sale to control the tank via my apex jr on my nearby nano reef.

I'll be ordering a BML regular version fish focus blue w/tank mounts tomorrow during their 10% and free shipping special for black Friday.

Now I just have to break down the 55 and clean up the wall behind it in prep for the 125.
 
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#3 ·
Nice, sounds like a good build start. If you're going the Apex and BML route and if you have a bit more funds, think about the Dutch MC and using the Apex to control the channels. You can achieve the fish focus blue coloring, or close to it, and much more using the apex.

I have 2 Dutch MC's over my tank using the apex, love the control.

Looking forward to seeing more of this build. :thumbsup:
 
#4 ·
If I was going to plant it more heavily or with more demanding plants I probably would've gone that route. As it is it'll probably just be anubias, java fern and maybe an amazon sword or two in the backround. I couldn't justify the extra cost of the MC fixtures for such a low/medium light setup.
 
#5 ·
That sounds like a big benefit. Over a foot more room available/w that tank.
I'm wondering if you know the sump can be arranged to work in a 100% natural way/w no maintenance ? Are Guppy grass and Floating Hortworth easily available to you ?
Putting a large center compartment in/w both of those as your particle filter and four 3W
LED lights over that part will result in natural particles being taken out before the water gets to/goes through the bio-media just before the pump section.
But what you described so far seems impressive and we hope to see build pictures soon.
 
#11 ·
Did some tinkering with the tank today. Took a couple of those plastic window boxes and cut them down to three inches. Filled them with MGOPS and capped that with Eco-complete. I'll plant the swords and crypts in them so they'll have some good soil for their roots but it won't make a mess in the rest of the tank.

 
#17 ·
I ended up using a 1 1/4" sink drain tube extension pipe. It was the closest I could find as Lowes didn't have any lighter weight PVC pipe. It was a tiny bit too small but a bead of silicone fixed that. Now the overflow is dead quiet without any water flowing through the emergency drain(the water level is setting just at the rim of the emergency drain).

Hooked up the finnex titanium heater to the apex. It's a single 300W tube. It took it two days to raise the temp from an ambient 70 up to the setpoint of 76. I will be adding a second heater soon, but it's nice to know if it gets stuck on I'll have a couple of days to notice it before it becomes a problem.

I still have to drill a siphon break in the return nozzle.

The tank is in full new tank syndrome mode with the water being a white cloud that you can't even really see through. Now that the pump is running there will be better gas exchange and things should being clearing up soon, as I'm hoping to be able to add the first fish in a month. Mostly fill the filter chamber with reef rubble but need to add the rest. Ordered some scuds from ebay to seed the tank/refugium. Now I just have to sit down and figure out how to neaten up the power cables so it looks clean under the stand.
 
#18 ·
Seems like a lot of new 125's going up lately. I have one in the planning phases at the moment so I look forward to keeping up with your build here.

I had a reef tank for a long time. What's the benefit of the sump with a freshwater tank? I'm steering away from that at all possible because most of my issues came from having a sump.

Thanks for sharing!
 
#19 ·
Added the siphon break hole and tested the pump at higher speeds. Looks like 3 is as high as I'd dare go. 4 puts the emergency drain nearly to full siphon(although that's with the ball valve still around 2 o'clock on the main drain.

Also added the 5 quart plastic painters bucket full of aragonite sand for a RDSB of sorts to the first chamber(with the heater and drains)

Bump: The benefits of a freshwater sump? I think they are largely the same. Extra water volume, a place to hide heaters etc... out of the display, and greatly increased volume of biomedia, etc...

They aren't without issues though as you know. The head pressure means you need a more powerful pump that uses more electricity than conventional filters. Issues with dialing in flow etc..., as well as possibly increased risk of a flood from a plumbing leak.

I'm curious what issues your reef had that were caused by your sump?
 
#20 ·
Bump: The benefits of a freshwater sump? I think they are largely the same. Extra water volume, a place to hide heaters etc... out of the display, and greatly increased volume of biomedia, etc...

They aren't without issues though as you know. The head pressure means you need a more powerful pump that uses more electricity than conventional filters. Issues with dialing in flow etc..., as well as possibly increased risk of a flood from a plumbing leak.

I'm curious what issues your reef had that were caused by your sump?
I think mine was more of a concern because my display tank wasn't drilled and had to use a siphon to get it over the back of the tank into the drain box.

I used my sump for a lot of macro-algaes to help keep up with nutrients which I thought you wouldn't need as much in a planted tank because your'e basically doing that with the plants. And, the inhabitants of a planted tank aren't as sensitive to nitrates as corals are... I definitely see the other benefits though like added volume and the extra surface area for bacteria and hiding equipment.

I also like the idea of having a dead silent tank. I know a lot of the drains are really quiet but none of sump setups are without any added noise.
 
#22 ·
Added some eggcrate as a plant screen in front of the pump. Placed a clamp lamp with a 32watt 2700K CFL over the "fuge" section and put it on a reverse light schedule(12 hours). Things are starting to come together. Hopefully the current bacterial bloom will subside quickly. I'll try and take some pictures tonight and also do some preliminary water testing.
 
#23 ·
As promised some pictures of questionable quality :)

The overflow plumbing


1st chamber with a fixed water level housing the drains, heater(soon to be plural), and RDSB(aragonite sand).


2nd chamber which flows from underneath an eggcrate table through reef rubble, with some subwassertang.


3rd chamber for a refugium with some hornwort.


4th chamber(sort of as it's only separated by eggcrate from the fuge, for the return pump(held in place with a couple concrete bricks and padded with a red silicone trivet.


I still need to secure all the cords and setup an ATO.
 
#27 ·
People often use it out of concern that having rock work rest on the glass creates a risk of damaging the glass. The idea is that egg crate distributes the weight. If I'm worried about that I prefer to just lay a thin sheet of acrylic underneath stop protect the glass without created all those pockets to trap detritus.
 
#29 ·
Added about 20 golden clams to the bucket of sand in the sump. It'll be interesting to see if they have a significant impact on the bacterial/algal bloom. The water has been slowly clearing on its own but it should mean that there is plenty of food for them. If it does I'll try to take a pick of them. They range in size from about a Nickel down to a little bigger than a BB.
 
#30 ·
Most of the clams have died. But the 6 or 8 that are left "seem" fine. Not sure what the specific issue is. I lost three after two days, which didn't worry me too much, but I came home last night to a large scale die off and found a couple more this evening. It's possible the bacterial bloom is consuming most of the O2. Also possible the the soil is generating enough sulfur dioxide to cause problems even though I can't smell any. Food shouldn't be an issue as the water is still cloudy with bacteria and algae.

Thinking I may need more in tank flow and may have to add a powerhead so that there is more surface agitation. Although with the overflow into the sump I would think there would be plenty of gas exchange even though the flow isn't torrential.

On the plus side, the amazon sword, madagascar lace, and crypts that I transplanted from another tank are all recovering nicely. The RRF seem to be doing OK as well. The hornwort in the sump is starting to grow reddish brown tips(the 32 Watt 2700K CFL might be overkill).

Hoping to get things sorted in the next couple of days as I have some wild type CRS coming to hopefully colonize the sump.
 
#31 ·
Put together an ATO with a two float kit from Autotopoff.com , a used ten gallon with glass top, a Tom's a qualifier and two leftover drip acclimation hoses. I plan on adding a float to the reservoir and setting up a low water level email alert through the apex.
 
#32 ·
Been awhile since I've done an update. Not too much to report. I'm slowly winning the battle with the fungus/slime/algae that formed on the driftwood. Green water has passed. ATO is working perfectly.

I wasn't happy with the rock pile so I rearranged it a bit.....still not satisfied :)

I was cleaning up around the fishroom/office and was trashing an old defunct fluval canister filter and decided to salvage the biomedia. Since the reef rubble was enough to fill my biomedia space I decided to just throw it in there. So a bunch of fluval rings, eheim subsrat pro, seachem matrix were added. If I had to do it over again after reading about the pumice alternative to matrix I probably would have just gone with that instead.

A couple of the clams made it through the initial tank troubles and seem healthy enough. Hornwort in the sump has taken off and I was able to harvest a bit yesterday.

I'm a bit surprised that the scuds and RCS(wild type) I added to the sump seem to have all ended up in the DT. I knew some of them would end up get sucked up by the return pump(that actually intentional) but I expected/hoped they would colonize the sump heavily and only loose a small percentage to the DT at a time. Not sure how I'm going to make that work better as I doubt they'll last long in the DT, let alone establish a breeding population.

Ordered some plants from Bartohog from my six gallon edge distraction and decided to add a few for this. Not sure if they'll make it because of the hard water but it pushed my order to the point of free shipping so they didn't actually cost me much. Some purple cabomba, inclinata red, sagitarria subulata. Time will tell.

Considering adding some microfauna to the system. Freshwater annelids(dero, stylaria, aeolosoma, blackworms), planaria, freshwater isopods etc....

Still no luck tracking down Lake Inle Danios. They were available from multiple vendors last year, but seem to have disappeared :(
 
#33 ·
Ended up with some excess glossy and marsilea minuta so I planted them in here as well. Inoculated the soil pots with a couple species of freshwater annelids and planaria. As well as more scuds etc... for some reason I just can't get the scuds to establish a population ? RCS are doing OK though?
 
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