Tank Pre-Build Breakdown

So I'm currently working out a build plan for a 180 I bought new in January. I'm hoping to get any ideas I may have missed or might not know about and what people think< maybe one of you will spot something that didn't work well for you in the past that I can avoid. As it sits now the tank should break down something like this:

I'll be using Fritz salt, pre mixed in a 60gal vertical holding tank and a mag 9.5

Water from the mixing vat will be plumbed to the main sump and the main sump will also be ball valved into a drain for easy water changes, the plan is to change 50gal every 2 weeks or more as needed.

The display tank will have a mixed bed of course heavy grained sand and pukka shells, the idea currently for rock is to use a mix of Tonga branch rocks and regular dry rock for a decent mix of caves and surface area for frags, shooting for a good mix of rock area and water area.

Main tank water flow will be created via 2 150 Gyres to start and 3 return lines, if the need increases for more randomized flow a few mp40's will be added

The main tank will have 4- 1 inch drains that lead into a skimmer/frag sump, the skimmer sump will be 6ft long 2 ft wide and 1 ft deep, it will have 2- 2inch bulkheads on one end that will drain into the main sump. the skimmer sump should allow for a stable water lever for the skimmer and enough area to stage new frags coming from the quarantine tanks so they can get use to the main tanks water parameters, and an easy place to put extra frags down the road.

Lighting is still up in the air, as an old school reefer my heart lies with halides, while my technical nerdy side says it wants the versatility the new wave of leds offers, the original plan was to run 3- 360 blue tuna kessils, i like the options and controlling aspects of these lights along with the long term life that comes with leds in general. My second consideration is to run 2- 36 inch 8 bulb ati t-5 setups, while not as versatile they have plenty of options for color variation. And lastly I considered running 3- 400 watt metal halide and 8 bulb t-5 combo unit (4 36" bulbs per side)

The skimmer will be a Reef Octopus 300intsss DC driven, rated at 700 gallons lightly stocked and 400 gallons heavily stocked, while i will be pushing close to 400 gallons after all is said and done I feel with the added filtration in the system over all I should be fine.

The main sump will house as much rock as i can stuff into it, the return power will be driven by a ReefFlo Dart, my idea behind this was to go seriously overkill on the return pump, the idea behind it is to minimize the amount of pumps in the system overall. I'll tee the main return off and use this return pump for the tank, carbon and gfo reactors, and to feed the 40 gallon refugium.

The refugium houses a deep sand bed and around 25 mangroves as of late, possibly more if needed down the road.

So....after all that if you guys see anything you know wont work well or if you have any insight I'd love to hear it

Thanks Jason

 

Thanks for all the feedback guys.

Craig, I guess i never thought about using a sea swirl, to be honest its been so many years since i'd seen one i guess i didn't figure they even made them anymore, but i did look into it and that may be a very easy way for me to input some random flow if needed.

Drewster, the frag plug idea sounds cool, as far as this tank in general im going for my "holy grail" trying to make everything look as natural as possible and hopefully beautiful at the same time, but i might consider doing that in my frag area so things arent growing onto the racks

Abower, i wont actually have any dividers in the skimmer sump, the water level will be set by 2 - 1 1/2 bulkheads so the water level will never vary, as far as porting the output into a different area, im not super concerned with keeping up, i figure with a skimmer rated at twice the water volume, a 40 gal sump full of mature mangroves and chemical filtration i would hope i can keep up, but thanks for the heads up, no input is ever bad input in my opinion.

Adam, first congrats on the wedding, glad to see things are going good for you both and good to hear from you, its been awhile. As far as lighting, it'll probably be in the air until the day i finally pull the plug and order something, i've been debating the halide thing for months now, my fear is that the leds wont have even juice to handle a 250 or 400 watt halide and the blue will get washed out, ( i only say this because im running 2- 175 halides on a holding tank with 2- 4ft t-5 actinics and the halides overpower the blue, i almost need 4 t-5's to balance it) i love the versatility of the leds over t-5's just because of the longterm use over cost aspect, but going with 6 160 kessils and halides is a hit in the pocketbook im not sure i want to take without knowing if it will pair out well.

I guess i should have mentioned that the entire tank setup is in the basement, the tank will sit in the family room with the tankroom directly behind it, so theres almost no headloss. And i'll do so looking into those dc pumps and see what i can find. I just want a moderately powerful pump at a decent price thats dependable, which i know is usually asking alot.

I havent ordered any of the rocks yet, my plan for that was to epoxy them together, i've done it with several tanks in the past and really liked the results, i liked the rods but i found that being able to move the rock around to get it just right and matching the holes and everything never worked out the best when i did it, the epoxy was pretty smooth, mixed it, put it in a frosting bag and piped it into the crannies and they stayed put pretty well. As far as a style, I like the open looks but at this point until i see they rock i order and play around with it some its hard to tell. I really want some space to put a bunch of random tonga branch rock and basically make a mound so the fish have a maze of rocks to swim into, give it somewhat of a natural reef look, maybe coat the branches with zoas and palys.

If you could explain the siphon on the drain line question for me please, kinda lost on me on that one.

Hart, thanks for the heads up about the shading, for now i guess its not a huge deal as ive been trying to work out how to adjust some of the lighting maybe more white in some areas of the tank and more blue in others to try and seem more 3d and give the tank a feel of random depth, if that makes any sense.