1000 gallon reef build pics

As some here may know, I work at a smaller public aquarium and I love my job. I get paid to work with all sorts of life, and the past year I have had a lot of opportunities to build some new exhibits in our ever-expanding facility. I wanted to share some pics of some of the fun projects I've headed up in the past year. Hopefully there are some fish-heads here that can appreciate this.

In June of 08 I was lucky enough to plan and build our new reef exhibit, a 1000 gallon main display, and 4 smaller exhibit tanks, each about 25 gallons. I have kept coral in holding tanks for years, but never built a tank from the ground up, so I felt a little overwhelmed, but very excited!

We ordered 1600 lbs of live rock, mostly aquacultured and branching Tongan which I cured for about 2 months pre-build. Plenty to be selective while building the structure.
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During this time we also acquired many coral frags from other public aquariums, and a few from wholesalers.
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After months of planning the new exhibit with a great group of people, we moved the 4 year old 180 gallon soft coral exhibit out, all electrical and tank stands started to go in.
Here's the old reef after being moved, and many nice pieces of live rock and coral pilfered for the new tank.
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The stretch of the back side of the wall dedicated to the new exhibit.
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Stands and sumps
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in place
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We had a relatively generous budget compared to some previous exhibits, and didn't have to use many old pieces of equipment other than 2, 70 gallon rubbermaid troughs, and one 250 gallon holding tub for sumps. Here's a pic of some equipment waiting for the tank, and a short list of some things we used:
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3, 3x250 watt 10,000 K halide/2x160 watt actinic VHO hamilton light fixtures
2, ASM G5 protien skimmers
2, dual-chamber octopus calcium reactors w/pH controller
2 oceans-motions 4-way wave makers
1, 3 HP dolphin 11,500 GPH pump for the main exhibit
2 Gen-X pumps for the smaller tanks.
JBJ arctica 24,000 BTU chiller
240 watt AQUA UV unit
We used all schedule 80 bulkheads, and true-union ball-valves

enough sand for a 6" bed, I think it was about 1500 lbs (lots and lots of sand washing, probably the lest fun part of this whole build)
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We were still waiting on the custom 8'x4'x4' 1000 gallon tank to arrive (never trust a tank builder to make a deadline.....). 9 days before the exhibit opening it showed up, about a month late.

3 days of plumbing later (forgot the camera on those days :rolleyes:...) this is what we had.

"Reef janitors" and "Camouflage" exhibit tanks, calcium reactors, and left sump
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"Symbiosis", and "Making a home" exhibit tanks, chiller, and right sumps. All sumps were connected with a 2" cross-connect line to keep levels even.
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The main pump runs through a few things before it feeds the tank, the UV, a custom DIY 4" granular ferric oxide up-flow reactor, the chiller, the 2 4-way wave makers, and a thief line to reduce back-pressure if needed.
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The first fill, NO LEAKS!
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We used a 2-part epoxy, Z-spar to build the live rock structure. This stuff is amazing, and a lot of fun to work with. Another aquarist and I spent about 12 hours one day, and 4 hours the next day carefully choosing and epoxying the reef wall together.

Shot from the back side. You can see the dark green Z-spar on the back side of all points of contact between rocks. Almost none is visible from the exhibit side, and coralline algae grows over it readily.
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From the exhibit side
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Getting closer to opening, only 3 days away now!
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I spent another long day in the now mostly full tank placing coral, again with Z-spar. Mostly stony up top with plenty of room to grow out, mostly 'shrooms, leathers and zooanthids down below.

Ready to dive?
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Fish went in the next day, and had two days to settle in before the unveiling. Here was the exhibit the day before opening.
Main tank
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"Camouflage" tank before the background was on, can you find the frogfish?
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There he is!
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"Making a home" and "Symbiosis" (clownfish and anemones) exhibit tanks.
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There is also a 3-D cutaway model of a stony coral polyp, and a video loop on the side wall.
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Overall, I was very happy with how things turned out given the short time that we had to actually put it all together. I registered a blip of a spike in NH3 and NO2 on our Hach DR/2500 spectrophotometer in the first couple days it was up, never got over 0.05 and 0.02 respectively. A few more coral pieces have been added since the first build, including a 22" plate of M. capricornius that is over 30" across with about a dozen tiers now, and the stony coral growth has been amazing in many species, especially the Montipora, Acropora, and Seriotopora. Writing this out makes me want to go take some updated photos!

Not bad for my first reef tank :D This project could not have come together without an amazing husbandry and exhibits staff however.

Thanks for looking!!

-Evan

WOW! Thats amazing, I wish I had the time and dedication for such a work of art. Great job. :salute:

Wow it looks great! Really nice looking!

That's an awesome end result! How long did you work on setting that up? Looks like a job well done!

BTW- I don't envy you the sand washing job! Haha!

I didn't realize so much pre work goes into setting up a large tank. Thanks for the education!

The end results are amazing

great build up! no leaks!!! thats unherd of!! great choice of equipment!

i was under the impression that leathers and sps cannot be kept in the same tank together.

Wow, very cool. Grats on finishing it.

Wow, now I know why you were so busy all the time! That looks like a lot of work; must be nice to take a step back and see it finally done. Good work.

Wow! I'd love to see more exhibits you guys have worked on at that aquarium. Super cool. :gj:

Wow:) Truely amazing!

Wow, that looks great! You did a wonderful job on it. Must have been a lot of hard work. That makes me want to have a salt water tank.

Wow!!! Great job!!!! :gj:

Thanks everybody, I've been very happy with how the tank has functioned in the past 10 months. Maintaining Ca/KH has been a little more work lately with the rate of coral growth, and we've had a little bit of hair algae growing in the bottom corners, but overall it is a treat to maintain versus the old reef. I need to take some new shots, but here are a couple I took back in December.

Most of the coral frags started at about 2-4" except this Montipora capricornis plate grown by a local hobbyist. I had saved a spot for it in the build front and center, and I think it looks great there.

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This birds nest colony started as five 3" frags, and has grown into one thickly branching colony about 10" across and 7" high.

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I'll post up some more once I take some new shots.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lucas339

great build up! no leaks!!! thats unherd of!! great choice of equipment!

i was under the impression that leathers and sps cannot be kept in the same tank together.

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SPS only and soft coral only tanks are easier. Mixed reefs have some trade offs, like many softies like dissolved organics and will suck them right out of the water, while most stonies don't, and will even stop growing if phosphates climb over 0.3 ppm (most hobbyist test kits aren't accurate enough to really test this low accurately). Stonies love high alkalinity, even as high as 15+ degrees KH, but most LPS will hate you if you go over 10 or 11 degrees KH.

All in all, having 1200 gallons (total system volume) makes keeping things stable that much easier.

-Evan

Quote:

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Originally Posted by blackcrystal22

Wow! I'd love to see more exhibits you guys have worked on at that aquarium. Super cool. :gj:

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I'll be posting up a thread here soon about my favorite FW tank in our new south america expansion. It is an 800 gallon planted, and was a lot of fun to plan and build as well. Stay tuned!

-Evan

yeah i guess 1200 gallons is a far cry from 75 gallons where shifts like that are more dramatic.

again, great build!! it looks awsome!!

Looks awesome! Makes my 12 gallon nano reef look like crap.. haha!

That is awesome! It's so cool that you had an opportunity to do that!

Very cool!! :D

that really is a sweet setup! i always loved saltwater setups but i couldnt ever spend the time to get one up and running. heck i have a hard time keeping up with my freshwater tanks

Holy crap batman, that must have cost a pretty penny. I dont think you would be able to get me out of there. My mouth literally dropped all the way down as i looked through your post! Ive keep some 55 gallon salt tanks and some smaller ones, i would kill to have that tank in my house! Do you have a list of all the fish you have in there?? I had an anglerfish in his own tank, that thing was by far the coolest creature i have ever owned. Great tank!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Very cool, Evan. We still need to make it down to check out the Aquarium.
Justin

that looks SO awesome! I can't wait until I get started on a much smaller saltwater tank project for my own leisure.
I doubt I could handle a reef though. I'm still just a newbie.

Once again, very nice work.