ZM's 200g build

[Reefsi]

Wow, I would be pretty ticked off as well. I did the opposite, did the waiting till I had the tank and then ordered all my stuff as I put things together over the course of a month. Actually takes longer than I thought to do all the plumbing/planing/wiring and setting up. Took me a good 4-5 hours a day for 3 weeks, with some beer of course

[zoomonster]

Originally Posted by Reefsi

Wow, I would be pretty ticked off as well. I did the opposite, did the waiting till I had the tank and then ordered all my stuff as I put things together over the course of a month. Actually takes longer than I thought to do all the plumbing/planing/wiring and setting up. Took me a good 4-5 hours a day for 3 weeks, with some beer of course

Well I did order most everything all together... DSA makes great tanks and I knew they were a bit on the slow side but never figured it to take quite this long. What really messed it up was Hagen not being able to handle the so called custom order. Its a standard DSA 200g reef tank/stand and all I wanted was the PVC stand liner and the black tank back. Just that required a custom tank drawing from DSA that had to be approved. If I had of gotten the PVC tank liner that would really have screwed them up lol.

Fortunately I work fulltime at home. So when the tank gets here, unless some major issue, I hope to at least get water flowing in a week and start on the subsystems. Hopefully Apex will just work... I think it was CaptAndrew who just recently said he had all sorts of firmware issues when he set his build up.

[ntrlsur]

Who would have think that a black tank back is considered a customer order...

It was CaptAndrew. His issues might have been fixed sooner but it seems all the Neptune guys were at the orlando show.

[zoomonster]

Well the rocks have been rattling around in my head and I finally made a lighting decision (actually pulled the trigger and ordered). It was truly a hard decision to make with all the options having tradeoffs. I came very close to going LED but just could not do it. Nothing to do with money as I was close to buying three hydra 52's + tank mounts + wxm for Apex. I've absorbed a load of info over the past few months but ultimately it was probably d2mini's thread that helped swing the scale back towards MH along with all the others abandoning LED.

I looked at a number of options but always came back to the Hamilton Cebu Sun which has ok aesthetics, raw power and 4x80w T5 HO's. Even some of the more expensive units only came in with two T5's. I've owned several Hamilton fixtures over the years and never had a complaint so that played into the decision. Liverockandreef had the best price by far. Considering its a ship from manufacturer item it amazing the price variance between shops is in the 100's.

72" Black Cebu Sun Fixture
3x250w SE 14k Hamilton bulbs
4x80w T5 Super Actinic
3x Electronic dimmable ballasts
Internal T5 ballasts
LED Moonlights
Tank legs
$1094.88 shipped

I've always used 10k's with actinics but decided to split the difference this time with 14k. I probably eventually will go to 20k's when the 14k's wear out but for a new tank 14k should give me a good balance of better growth and good coloration. Later I may also mix up the T5 mixture of bulbs. As far as ballasts magnetic may have been better for some bulbs but the electronic versions run cooler, use less energy, take up less space, are dimmable and will run virtually any bulb. The plus to the dimming is it will also overdrive. It would have been nice if the ballasts were switchable 250/400 but oh well. Granted they are manually switched but allow running a 250W bulb at 125W/190W/250W/275W. There won't be a whole lot of bells and whistles as far as Apex control goes but with an Apex schedule I'll get moonlight, 1 bank T5 on, 2 bank T5 on and probably staggered MH's on. I guess I will need to be ordering another power bar for the Apex.

An interesting calculation d2mini made was that this fixture only uses about $100 more a year in electric vs. the 4 x Radions he replaced (and he's using M80 magnetic ballasts). I'm fortunate to have what's supposed to be the cheapest electricity in the state so the difference should be trivial. As far as replacing bulbs the $1230 saving over the Hydra 52 setup I was going to go with buys a lot of bulbs. By the time I spend out the $1200+ the Hydra 52's would probably be well obsolete and suffering from significantly diminished PAR and/or requiring expensive new pucks. Sure there will be more heat but my house seldom varies from the 74-78F range during the day and the room is well ventilated so I should be able to get by w/o a chiller. If not then so be it... In a few years maybe LED's will reach full potential and prices will come down. Funny thing is I remember being at Champion Lighting in PA years ago (probably early 2000's) talking to the owner about LED's soon being available for reef lighting. Progress and cost effectiveness has still really not gotten there. I have put in almost all led lighting in my house but that's mostly to do with prices finally coming into reason like $9 for a 60w led light vs. $25+ very recently. I still want to go LED on the 14 or so Halogen can lights in my house but those prices are still up there. LED is the future of reef lighting but not yet as far as I'm concerned.

[zoomonster]

Well finally got into the garage (buried still from recent move) and pulled out what rock I had saved. Didn't bother to weigh but probably about 100 pounds. Not everything I used to have but better than nothing and glad I saved it with prices what they are today. Stuff has come and gone over the years but the bulk of what I originally bought was Marshall and Hawaiian with some Tonga and Fiji mixed in. I probably only have about 6 pieces of what could be called large left and the rest mostly medium and some small. Some of that smaller stuff will go in refugium and some for mounting frags the way they should be.

I've been looking around and not sure what rock I'm going to buy to seed the tank and dead rock. I'm kind of leaning towards Aquacon which ships from FL so UPS ground is overnight. Not decided yet but may get 50 pounds of mixed Pacific, Namoli, Bali Alor, Vanuatu to start. I'm going to try and do a better job of aquascaping this time around and deviate some from the old school mentality of stacking a tank with a huge rock wall. Of course rock is there for more than decoration and a place to park corals. Some of the aquascaping I have seen is just to sparse and decorative for a healthy tank long term (unless you have the luxury of a large remote sump for additional rock). Plus some of the stuff I have seen makes me wonder how long until it falls and breaks glass.

So this weekends project is cleaning this stuff. I just need to pickup some muriatic acid which my pool is also in need of. If my pool was a reef tank the PH would be right on the money.

[zoomonster]

I went ahead and ordered another Apex energy bar 8 today so I have more controllable power with all the added connections from the lighting I ordered. Since I wanted it anyway I grabbed the Apex leak detection module and sensor to make free shipping. So hopefully when the tank shows in the next couple weeks I'm set with everything on hand to assemble. Well except for a trip to Lowes/HD to pickup assorted plumbing stuff. That can wait for the tank to arrive so I can better visualize what I need.

[zoomonster]

I ended up having to run to Lowes yesterday afternoon so I picked up the rock cleaning stuff. Two pack of Kem-tek muriatic acid, 3 boxes of baking soda and some long nitrile gloves. The acid was in the pool section and $11.99 for two pack of "contractor" strength 31.45%. It only took a couple hours last night.

I used an old sterilite 45g container, an old Mag 7 and of course safety glasses and a garden hose outdoors in an open area staying up wind of the tub. I really just wanted a light etching on the rock and didn't want to over do it like I've seen in a lot of posts. There was some old algae left on some of the rock and probably should have bleached it but it hosed right off after the acid. That rock has been in storage at least 8 years and the hair algae that remained was still green and even looked alive after rehydration and acid!!

It took two container runs to get all the rock done and I just used 1 gallon of acid and about 1.5 boxes of baking soda per. I really think some over do it on the baking soda and that's why they end up with hard encrusted soda on the rock. As far as the acid goes there was no mm's of rock removed or other destruction some have experienced with certain types of rock and/or excess use of acid.

1) Tub with rock and pump filled with water
2) Acid added
3) I did occasionally knock the foam head off with light water spray to help carry away the worst of the grunge that the foam traps.
4) No real timing but just waited until the reaction stopped at < 1 hour.
5) Lightly sprinkle on about 1/2 a box of baking soda at a time and wait for reaction to stop. By the 3rd .5 box the reaction done.
6) Attached hose to Mag 7 and drained.
7) Refilled with fresh water and allowed to circulate a while with fresh water running in/overflowing.
8) Rocks removed and hosed down to remove any leftover green stuff. That and any grunge hoses right off.

I also picked up some new 20a GFCI outlets but feeling kinda lazy today. Maybe sometime this weekend...

[Mark...]

Any thoughts on he Reefbreeder/Evergrow leds? You can get two 32s for less that $800

I just hooked up a pair and very impressed.

Good luck with build...

[zoomonster]

Well aside from my issues with LED's I need on tank mounting and I'm not using a canopy. Most of the companies just build boxes and its up to you to figure out how to mount anything other than hanging (with some Chinese stuff that's not even a given). There might be some 3rd party stuff but Ecotech along with most other companies offer little. Aside from liking AI Hydra 52 in general they have pretty good on tank mounting options in the EXT rails/tank mounts. That's one reason I was considering them. Razor also has some ok mounts but that's another story. I'm not getting into the light ****ing threads and to each his own but to date LED's have failed to take the place of MH/T5 and produce consistently good results IMO. Like I said before the choice was not about cost but about performance. I'm just glad I started when I did and got the benefit of the experience of others before I tossed a wad of cash at technology I would have probably ended up not being happy with and replacing.

[zoomonster]

A while back I had gotten 2 Eheim Jager 300w heaters and realized they were way to long to go anywhere in sump. I ended up just keeping them vs. the hassle of returning them. I'll keep them around for backup, a frag/quarantine tank etc.

In the meantime I got a heater that should do the job and has a decent warranty. I ordered a Coralvue 800w titanium and controller which will still get backed up by Apex. Guess I was missing the sites that carried this one in the past. From what I could find they seemed to have pretty good reviews as compared to some others. Although like pretty much all titanium heaters there have been some issues but I'm going to give it a try. There's just little to nothing in the way of titanium heaters that have not rated a "don't buy" on more than one occasion.

Eventually if I need to add a chiller and/or fans I may get a Ranco controller to run it all.

[zoomonster]

What a mistake ordering the heater from reefspecialty. Two days and no response from the order and I tried calling only to get no answer with a full voicemail box. I did a little poking around and I would say they are known for selling items they do not have in stock and playing games/making excuses with actually shipping out product. I took a look at Paypal, which I paid with, and they have listed bogus contact info other than the website URL. I sent an email to several addresses they have listed and sometime later got a response from Colin Tran "I'm very sorry, we are in the process of moving our location. We will return your call shortly". At this point not interested as all indications are this place is a sham with terrible customer service so a demand for cancel and refund sent. This place seems to be known for making excuses so I'm not really buying the so sorry we're moving part. If that was the case delays should have been noted on the website or via email and they weren't. Sad part is RC has them back as a sponsor. What's really laughable is the add banner that is showing on RC now... "For the best in product knowledge, product support, customer service, count on ReefSpecialty"

They did issue a refund last night(on threat of PayPal) and I ordered from Aquacave. Never ordered there either so we'll see how that goes.

Looks like my light delivery got moved up a day to today so the lights and the additional Apex power and leak detection will all be here today. Actually FedEx just showed with the mother of all packages (short of a tank) so pics later.

[zoomonster]

Well the lighting arrived in one piece and undamaged. I just hooked it all up and gave it a test run. No small task unboxing, removing the 6ft piece of glass and getting the bulbs in. The second power bar and the leak detection also just showed up. Quite happy with the light but a few comments...

1) They changed from gloss black to flat black finish. My 4ft Hamilton is gloss black and just looked a little better.
2) The only real criticism is Hamilton assembly. There are a number of crinkles in the reflector from assembly of the fixture. Looks like someone was in a hurry with a power tool.
3) As far as noise the electronic ballasts are virtually silent with only a slight high pitched hum if you put your ear up to it. The two fans are actually quite good and was surprised to see they actually used Taiwanese made fans vs. Chinese. They sound about like a good quality air cleaner on low speed with no annoying whine.
4) I let the 14k bulbs run a while and being used to 10k was surprised just how blue they are. After a few days of running I'm sure that will level out.
5) Having some space constraints the ballasts are great at ~8x4x3 with mounting brackets. Nothing close to the variety of huge magnetic ballasts I have around.
6) The spacing of the MH bulbs is a bit odd and LED clusters too being they are mounted to the back of the sockets. Two are closer to one end rather than three evenly spaced fixtures. Even though a 72" fixture everything also seems be spaced off the 60" T5 bulbs.
7) As I have seen commented elsewhere the wiring coming out of the light is pretty substantial with a heavy cable for each of the MH's, 1 per 2 T5's, 1 for the fans and 1 tiny wire for the moonlights for 7 cables in all. At least they are all close together and it should not be too big a deal to bundle them up for the sake of appearance.
8) The moonlights look pretty good with 3 units at 6 LED's per. Blue of course and not the white LED's I have had in other older fixtures.

[zoomonster]

Needless to say the UV glass was in place and I wore my heavy duty Oakley Ballistic M Frames with dark lenses when I was testing. Quite bright and even with the glasses everything looked very yellow when I took them off.

[zoomonster]

One thing I did not snap to, until now, on the light is the place I ordered from must have gotten the order to Hamilton wrong or Hamilton screwed up. I had asked for all 420nm super actinic and got all 460nm Actinic Royal Blue. No matter not worth the hassle and I'll wait and see how they look on tank. I'll probably just buy a couple 420's locally and run a mix and have two spare bulbs. Thought those bulbs looked more blue than purple.

[Lilmatty5dimes]

Awesome light. Your the second person I've seen using these. Its making me want to use a mh/t5 fixture on my next build. Can't wait to see the aquascape you put together with all that rock.

[zoomonster]

Originally Posted by Lilmatty5dimes

Awesome light. Your the second person I've seen using these. Its making me want to use a mh/t5 fixture on my next build. Can't wait to see the aquascape you put together with all that rock.

Thanks... we'll see on the aquascaping part. I do ok but that's never really been my forte. There certainly won't be any McDonald's arches in tank This is a standalone DT with just in stand sump so the bulk of the rock needs to be in tank. I never really cared for the minimalist thing anyway whether in a house or in a tank.

[zoomonster]

The Coral-Vue 800w heater/controller showed up today... It remains to be seen how long or how well the controller works but it seemed to be one of the better options or at least one with fewer complaints. Compared to some I have seen the heating element is heavy and the wiring is all around heavy duty. Appearance wise it seems to be good quality.

Nice unexpected surprise was a package BRS sent me today with some free sample products. Korallen-zucht Coral-Snow and Pohl's Coral Vitalizer.

I've been getting a little ****y about the tank and overall lack of communication. The dealer had sent a status email last week and never got a response so I called DSA myself. Of course I got a whole spiel about who had not paid what invoice generally blaming the distributor Hagen. So basically what I got is the tank has been sitting there invoiced but not paid. Funny thing is when I later called the dealer they had just gotten a phone call that the tank is shipping today so we'll see. If I had it all to do over again I would take a different path.

[zoomonster]

Good god who would have thought finding and buying sand could be such a pain in the ***. Whether live or dry bagged or fresh collected prices are all over the place even for same item. So many places play games with shipping on top of that like free shipping that turns to 100+ when you get to checkout. Sad part is being able to get it shipped cheaper per bag than I have seen anywhere locally. Might not have been the absolute best deal but I ended up going with foster and smith where shipping is included in price. I may end up adding some more later between tank and refugium but started with 240 pounds at about $1 per pound. 4 bags of Caribsea special grade reef sand and 2 of CaribSea Caribbean live sand original grade for at least a small layer of fine sand under the special grade. Plus I wanted at least some so called "live sand" to start. Terrible shame Southdown went out of business and you can't get anything like it at HD or Lowes anymore.

[zoomonster]

There's a pretty good sale going on at Salty 20% off and an extra 10% for Memorial day. I could not pass that up (even with 6% sales tax) and bought a bunch of misc. stuff I've been putting off. Free shipping and overnight delivery to boot (for my address anyway).

Despite having a refractometer and salinity probe a good old fashioned hydrometer is indispensable for quick checks on the fly like mixing. My old style rectangular one lasted for years and was always pretty damn close. Sadly it seems to have disappeared along with my Tunze algae magnet so I bought a cheaper magnet for now. My tank has 3 overflows and sump has two socks so I got an extra holder and some additional socks for swapping out during cleaning. The 3rd durso drain will get converted to an emergency drain into the sock holder sitting in return section. The rest mostly the sort of stuff I would have around for day to day use.

Bubble Magus Tube Holder
Coral RX PRO Coral Dip 1oz
Brightwell Aquatics Lugol's Solution 30ml/1oz
Red Sea Aiptasia-X 60mL
Red Sea Phosphate Pro PO4 SW Test Kit
Seachem Reef Advantage Magnesium 1.2kg
Instant Ocean Hydrometer
Aqueon - Algae Cleaning Magnet Large
Seaside Aquatics 4 Inch Sock Holder
Filter Sock 200 micron poly with Plastic Oring 4x14 Inch
Fauna Marin Marine Base Granule for saltwaterfish 250ml
Continuum Aquatics BacterGen-M, Marine Microbe Culture 500ml
Seachem Nutri Diet Marine Flakes 30gm/1oz
Continuum Aquatics AquaBlade-M Scraper Short w/Stainless Steel Blade

[Reefsi]

How long until arrival?

[zoomonster]

Yeah just called the shop today and best answer is this week. That may work out well since wife is going out of town on Thursday for 1.5 weeks. Lots of uninterrupted time to get this build going

I've been trying to wrap some last minute stuff like trying to find CO2 anywhere close. Turns out it was right under my nose in the last place expected... Ace Hardware. Being right next to Lowes I guess they have had to diversify to stay in business. Not the cheapest at $32.95 for 10# but right around the corner.

[zoomonster]

LOL UPS was hating me today... Aside from 255 pounds Foster and Smith sent the 40 pound bags of sand in 6 separate boxes and they threw each bag in a box probably big enough for 3 bags. Needless to say a crumpled mess of cardboard delivered. The bags must all be over because each box weighed 42.5.

[Reefsi]

Nice ya Co2 was a pain in the *** for me to find. I had a Co2 tank but no place would fill it unless I had purchased it from them. Turns out after 1 day of driving and calling places, it was 2 minutes from my house I found a place that sold nothing but stuff to brew beer, which had Co2 lol

[MontyRay]

Following along! I am starting my own DSA200 build. It is a great tank! Since I live in the Houston area....just down the street from DSA (Dallas)...I did not suffer with the delivery issues you faced. My LFS called his distributor and had the tank in his shop the very next day....delivery next Wednesday .

I am building my own stand and canopy....copying a lot of ideas taken right off this forum....so my build will take a bit longer.

I have been using a Reef Octopus skimmer on the current tank (extremely pleased) and plan to use exactly the same skimmer you bought.

However, I will be going a bit different direction on the lighting. I have been using Chinese LED's for the last 5 months on my current tank. They have performed extremely well, the corals ALL love them, and you sure cannot beat the price. I will be purchasing two more for a total of 4 over the DSA and solid-mounting them in the canopy...no hangers for me!

Still making choices on some of the other equipment you mentioned. Will be following your experiences with interest. I just wanted to thank you for sharing. As soon as I get some pix worth viewing, I will post my build.

[zoomonster]

Well... I kind of backed off a little bit, posting here, to let the dust settle but as of now my tank has not even shipped from DSA. Needless to say I'm beyond ****ed and going to keep this short. Its a long convoluted story but DSA lied when they said the tank shipped over two weeks ago (of course I find out today its not even crated yet). Its been sitting in their warehouse because they say the distributor Hagen has not paid. That's finally after the dealer going back and forth with DSA and Hagen for several days trying to get an answer to "where is the tank that shipped two weeks ago?". Of course that's what they told me when I called them weeks ago only to turn around when the dealer called to deny it and then calling within the hour to say the "tank has shipped" (which they now deny). So for weeks they have sat on the tank for non-payment but neither DSA or Hagen ever brought that to the dealer or my attention. Most of what has occurred may have been miscommunication and incompetence but in the end Hagen seems to be the bad guy. My dealer has gone out of his way to get this resolved and DSA seems to be playing the good guy now promising to make getting my tank out today a priority and expediting the shipping if possible. Its not even clear that Hagen has paid yet and it would seem that DSA is shipping anyway. I've heard two different stories but supposedly there are 12-20 other tanks sitting there in the same situation.

So after both the dealer and I talked to DSA today the word is "the tank is shipping today and you will have a tracking number today". We'll see how that goes