GARRY'S 12 ft BOMMIE STYLE UK REEF

[Achilles2008]

Let me introduce myself, my name is Garry but I’d much prefer you to call me Gaz, I live just on the outskirts of London UK. After a shopping visit with my wife to New York, to my wife’s surprise we stumbled across Manhattan Aquariums as you do and after chatting to a quite impressed Carlos Urena he suggested I share my tank with all the other reefers outside the UK. My current build and according to my wife the last started in January 2011 and has been documented on http://www.ultimatereef.net/forums/s...d.php?t=480285
After keeping the obligatory goldfish and guppies throughout my youth this crazy interest progressed from my scuba diving, I just wanted a little piece of the ocean in my living room. So I drove Russell at Home Marine in Enfield UK, mad for a year and in May 2004 I purchased my first tank a Perc 120 mixed reef based on the Berlin method, 120 gallons measuring 4ft x 2ft x 2.5 ft. with all the gear in a hidden section in the back.
2007 some 3 years later sometime in November again from Home Marine in Enfield UK I upgraded to a Seabray 8ft x 2ft x 3ft deep and promptly joined Ultimate Reef to get me through my troubles.
With help and advice from Ultimate Reef members things started to look up in the tank, I was over my teething issues and stupid mistakes, ridiculous impulse purchases, losses and deaths when Marine World wrote a nice article about me and my tank which appeared in the January 2009 issue.
In 2011 we moved house, and I took the opportunity with the wife’s blessing to purchase a bungalow with a double length garage so that I could have a tank built into the wall. The whole bungalow had to be modified around where the tank was going to sit. As my old tank was too deep and inaccessible, prone to flooding, I kept getting electric shocks, lifting 25 litre water change barrels up a ladder was dangerous and messy, it was doing my back in and it was so damn noisy (it made me want to go to the loo all the time) I was going to make sure that this tank would be everything the old one wasn’t.
So the day of the house move I set up a holding tank the other end of the garage, transferred all the rock, corals, water and fish and within 24 hours I had lost everything, the reason behind this was because I used to much new water mixed with old and the holding tank started to cycle.


Display: 144 x 42 x 32 inches (366 x 107 x 81cm)
Tank Volume: 3167 litres (697 UK gal)
System Volume: 4600 litres (1012 UK gal)

It took 6 months of planning and asking advice on Ultimate Reef, and a further 3 months personally building the foundation and supports for this beast, I decided on a 12 foot long by 3.5 foot wide by 32 inch deep tank, I wanted Optiwhite on the front and regular glass elsewhere, I didn’t want the interior of the tank cluttered with weirs and pipes so I ended up going for 2 external weirs and the back wall blacked out. In my opinion there was only one man for the job, our Vince of Aquarium Connections UK, as it was so big it had to be built on site and what a brilliant job he did, in fact he went above and beyond in sourcing all the second hand equipment I might need within my meagre budget.
The glass is 15mm all round and 30mm on the base, it all sits on 25mm marine ply with an 8 inch overhang around the back and sides that I can stand on for easy access to the interior of the whole tank. The 25mm ply sits on 2 x RSJs, a wooden beam measuring 12inch x 2inch, and of course 12inches of the hole in the exterior wall of the house, this all sits on 2 end brick tiers and one pillar holding the middle up and this all sits on 3 feet of reinforced concrete for the foundations which was all constructed by myself.
Under the tank there are 2 koi vats for the sumps measuring 50 inch x 30 inch x 15 inch that are connected either side of the supporting pillar by several 63mm tank connectors and pipe, both have 50mm overflow holes which are piped directly into the drain to save flooding out the fish room. There are 4 x 50mm down pipes in each of the 2 external weirs, 3 go into each of the 2 sumps and the extra one in each weir is in case the tank overflows which is piped directly to the drain. There is a further 3 sump tower on the other side of the fish room to be explained later.
I aquascaped my 2 previous tanks using the traditional reef wall method, my vision this time round was to copy something that I have seen on many diving trips and in my favourite tank of all time on Ultimate Reef, Thiru's Malaysian Reef, a wide open area with lots of swimming space with several bommies (a bommie being an independent freestanding rock structure), all different and all covered in corals with lots of small fish swarming around them.

I will add some pictures when Ive figured out how to do it.

[Achilles2008]

[Achilles2008]

well; this isnt going well i cant upload a single pic

[gordonheimer]

Here ya go, use the [IMG] tags.

[IMG]IMAGE URL HERE [/IMG]

excited to see more pics!

[dave.m]

It's better with RC to host your images elsewhere and then link them into your thread here using the yellow mountain icon in the Editor.

Dave.M

[Achilles2008]

[Achilles2008]

[Achilles2008]

[Achilles2008]

[Achilles2008]

[Achilles2008]

LIGHTING.
I have just upgraded my lighting to 6 X Ecotech Radion Gen 3 pros with wide angle lenses all connected to the Reef Link system, which saves on the electricity bill and imo looks stunning.


Circulation
The circulation is provided by 2x 1 horsepower Argonaut AV 150 pumps sitting either side of the centre support although I only use one at a time, alternating them monthly. Each pump sucks water in from both sumps at the same time and either one can then pump water up the back of the tank via 50mm piping where it splits at the top and goes left and right around the back and sides of the tank. The pipe is reduced down to 25mm where it enters the tank via 10 outlets, each with a ball valve. 8 of these just break the surface of the water and the 2 end ones go down into the tank hidden by the bommies and then divert under the sand coming up the central bommies and joining in the middle, (that was a good idea of yours Vince). Each bommie has 2 outlets plus the other 8 breaking the surface, a total of 18 water jets in all directions. In addition to this I have an MP60 which the antheas seem to enjoy all swimming towards and the regal tang tries to knock himself unconscious with but other than that it is totally unnecessary, its set to reef crest courtesy of DonTheRoof as I dont know how to change it.


Heating/Cooling
I have only had a couple of 200W heaters as the temperature stays at a pretty constant 26c probably due to the halides, however I have recently acquired just in case a 5000W titanium heater from Vince that he had knocking around in his garage. It's plumbed in but not switched on at the moment. The cooling is done with a Deltec DC4000 chiller which is situated in the garden in a cut down shed, a couple of extractors, a de-humidifier which is amazing (you won't believe the amount of water it collects) and a mobile aircon unit for those very rare British summer days.
Filtration methods
I have approximately 250 kilos of live rock from my previous tank and approximately another 50 kilos of nice flat pieces for the tops of the bommies and for creating shelves and caves. I have 6 wide mesh filter socks with a very fine micro fibre inside as I was sick of washing the 150micron socks every 2 days, however I do still use them if I know the tank is going to be viewed as it really takes the tiny particles out of the water. In the left hand sump Jeremy Gelber convinced me to make an algae scrubber which is starting to work nicely now, it has brought my PO4down to what it is today. The water is pumped from the right sump through a 6 X 55W TMC commercial UV light (once again that was hanging around in Vince’s garage) via the titanium heater and back into left sump. The water is also pumped from the left sump to the 3 sump tower and back into the right sump. The tower consists of 3 x 48 inch x 18 inch x 15 inch ex-LFS display tanks, starting at the top the return for the auto top up, the pump and return for the second 4 x 55W TMC commercial UV light from my old tank. This tank is also used as my hospital tank. The middle tank was supposed to be for my frags but I haven’t got any so its housing my old Deltec SC2560 skimmer with ozone running through at 300mg/every other hour ending up running through a 4 litre carbon reactor that sits on the sink area for easy access. The bottom tank houses the triffids (cheato) lit with an old 250W halide luminaire, which all returns to the right sump. Finally water is pumped from the left sump returned to the right sump via the main skimmer, an ATB deluxe super-size which is rated for tanks up to 8,000 litres by itself, once again this beast was hanging around in Vince’s garage. I have a 5 litre Rowaphos reactor sitting on the sink area for easy access all ready to commission; hopefully this should make a dent in my appalling PO4 and NO3 readings
Supplementation methods
Other than the Shuran 2 calcium reactor that I don’t really need as I don’t have any SPS, I just add 2 pipette drops per day of neat iodine I buy from the chemist and don’t supplement with anything else. I leave the rest to my 660 litre monthly water changes using H2O Ocean pro+ salt to freshen everything up.
Monitoring/Control Systems
I have my control center a little bank of switches one switch for every individual electrical item. It's either on or it's off.
As a complete technophobe, I dont have any computerised systems that I am unable to work or to go wrong, I use my eyes, my nose, and every D&D test kit weekly. The heating and cooling is taken care of itself by its internal thermostats that I’m just about capable of setting and that’s the way it’s all going to stay.

Feeding
As I have a lot of fish I go through a lot of food.
Each day they get 10 cubes of Mysis, 10 cubes of Brine, 10 cubes of Krill - the equivalent of one whole blister pack. I also feed 2 larger cubes of fish or lobster eggs especially for the antheas; I make up ice cubes of liquidised prawn, cockle and mussel meat which the fish and corals get 1 per day, in addition to this I give the tangs daily an A5 size nori sheet (the Japanese sushi version), a pinch of New Era flake and via two auto feeders Ocean Nutrition Formula Two marine pellet small size 10 times throughout the day. I love the pellets as they sink on contact with the water and every fish seems to enjoy them.
All the frozen cubes are counted out, put into individual small sealable pots and stored in the fish room freezer, I normally have around 30 pots at any one time and 6 blister packs of each plus 8 ice cube trays of my mix. Every morning before the wife goes to work she takes 1 pot out to defrost for my return.
Whilst at work my little beauties are fed the pellets by the auto feeder 10 times evenly spread throughout the day, the equivalent of a teaspoon per serving, and on my return I give them a tablespoon of flake just to say hello. At 6pm they get half the defrosted pot at one end of the tank and an hour later the other half of the pot at the other end of the tank followed by the nori sheet and at the weekend they get half a lettuce. Once a week all 7 nems get a couple of whitebait.
Finally as I have recently purchased a blue spotted ray, I am currently experimenting target feeding him a variety of things being fresh squid, scallop, prawn and clams.
That’s probably why my PO4 and NO3 are so high but I love my fish. A fat full fish is a happy fish.
Husbandry
So that maintenance is not forgotten I have on the wall a wipe board telling myself the dates of when things need to be done.
Strangely I love this part I really enjoy going into my fish room, which is my own little world of tranquillity and just tinker around.
As I have no tech everything relies on routine and observation. Daily I clean the front and side glass and add a couple of drops of iodine, and feed the fish and observe if anything else needs my attention.
Weekly I rake the sand and I manually test the water parameters, weirdly I really enjoy mixing water and counting out drops of reagents and looking on the colour charts. I also empty and clean both the skimmer cups. Both skimmers have float valves in the collection cup to switch off the whole skimmer to stop it overflowing.
Monthly I do a 660 litre water change. I have 3 x 220 litre water barrels joined together at various heights with 50mm tank connectors. The RO machine sits directly above it and fills the barrels until the float switch switches it off, The only real physical work is to pour a whole 25litre bucket of salt into the barrels and switch on the heater and circulation/mixing pump which is left for 24 hours. On the day of the water change all I have to do is turn open the ball valve at the bottom and switch on the Ocean Runner 3000 pump that’s in one of the barrels, the fresh salt water is pumped by 50mm hard pipe directly into the mouth of the return pump which sends it straight into the tank. Obviously all this extra water going in makes the sumps rise and deliberately overflow. The waste water now goes through the 2 x 50mm overflow/drainage holes in each sump and directly down the drain, the 660 litre water change takes just 15 minutes from start to finish.
The 3 water barrels prior to adding salt for the water change are also my auto top up supply, There is another pump in the last barrel that sends the RO water directly into the sump where another float valve is fitted to regulate the water delivery.
Also monthly I climb up on the shelf going around the tank and scrape the back wall of algae; this is the only job I don’t like as it hurts my back leaning in.
I also alternate the main return pumps monthly.
The carbon is changed every 3 months.
All the pumps servicing the tower sump, the skimmer, the water change barrels, the UV lights etc are dismantled and serviced every 6 months. All bulbs are changed every 9 months, The DI resin is replaced when the display readout gets to 3ppm and the rest is done when it’s done.

[johnike]

Very nice sir, more pics please.

[dave.m]

Originally Posted by Achilles2008

All bulbs are changed every 9 months

I suggest you discontinue this practise now that the Radions are installed.

Dave.M

[Achilles2008]

A few more pictures for you.


Heres one to show you the size, I must point out that this shot is over a year old and im holding back on any current pictures just to keep you interested.





water making and storage.


Sump room before the new lights were installed


other side of sump room.

[ATBUSA]

You have a very impressive system! I'll be checking in regularly.

[Malooda]

Awesome setup!!!!

[Malooda]

Have you used acrylic around the front of the tank for cladding?

[Achilles2008]

Originally Posted by ATBUSA

You have a very impressive system! I'll be checking in regularly.

Thank you.

Originally Posted by Malooda

Awesome setup!!!!

Thank you to you too

Originally Posted by Malooda

Have you used acrylic around the front of the tank for cladding?

Your very observant. I'm not very good at tiling so I though of using the 12foot X 4 foot sheets I had left over when I had to clad out my cold room at work.
I think it turned out ok. Gaza.

[Zacktosterone]

She doesnt look too happy haha

[Achilles2008]

Originally Posted by Zacktosterone

She doesnt look too happy haha

Amazing! your more interested in commenting on the expression on my wife's face rather than making a good or bad comment regarding the tank. Wow.

[THEREALTROUT]

wow nice tank!

[Achilles2008]

Originally Posted by THEREALTROUT

wow nice tank!

Thanks.

[Achilles2008]

A few current pictures for you

[dave.m]

Originally Posted by Achilles2008

Amazing! your more interested in commenting on the expression on my wife's face rather than making a good or bad comment regarding the tank. Wow.

It really comes down to personal tastes, and yours are the tastes that matter most as you have to live with it. For myself, I would have tied a couple of those piles together, however loosely, just to create a more coherent composition. But you probably disagree and that's okay, too.

Dave.M

[slief]

Very Very nice!!!