My New Marine Adventure - Rio 300

Hi All and firstly thanks for looking
I have been keeping Tropical fish for a couple of years now and have been itching to look into keeping a Marine aquarium for some time, I've done quite a bit of research and posted a few questions on the forum as part of it.
Anyway I thought I would start this new blog as I start to compile my inventory, any help and advice more than welcome please.
I am a plumber, working for myself, currently off work for 2 weeks after a shoulder op the other day !!! So plenty time to get my head round some designs and order stuff.
Really excited and can see Im going to get really frustrated over the coming weeks not been able to lift and start building but hey ho !

If I've done the uploading right this is my current Rio 240 Tropical aquarium that I am going to keep but in another part of the room on a different piece of furniture:


So I have now bought a Rio 300 that is going to be my new Marine tank:


It is going to stand on this Oak piece of furniture, which will house the sump and bits:




As you can see the unit has drawers. I am going to take out the drawers and convert the 6 drawer fronts into 2 cupboard doors, so the unit will look exactly the same from the outside. There should be plenty of room inside for the sump and everything else. I will need to cut out the middle section to fit the sump in and then reinforce the front with some 3"*2" but other than that it seems a pretty strong oak unit

I have bought this tank to use as a sump, it is 36"*15"*18" high so should be big enough, just need to get my head round designing the sump and will then post a design plan hopefully for comments:


So in terms of equipment I have so far ordered the following:
Eheim compact 3000 return pump
Aquarium safe silicone, HA6 RTV
D-D Refractometer with auto temp control
Plastikote Enamel Matt Black Super - to paint the outside back of the main tank

In terms of heater I was hoping my 300W Deltatherm would be satisfactory

And I am looking at purchasing the following:
Tunze Osmolator Auto top up unit
Marine sources rdc-850 Protein Skimmer
Arcpod 11w light to go over the Refugium and have on when main tank lights are off
Koralia powerheads, probably 3 Evolution 2800's (2 at the top, opposing ends and one behind the rocks) - Would this be enough or too much ?
Salifert test kit
An RO machine at some point but may buy the water at first and store it, not sure (may depend on the Cheltenham gee gees today!!!!)

In terms of lighting I have seen where I can get an extra Juwel light set with 3 flaps so that I can double the amount of T5 tubes to 4 but not too sure which colour tubes to get. In terms of my tank inhabitants I was guessing this would be set by my max lighting options. I have seen some T5 54w Juwel replacement tubes which give me the following options:
Blue Marine Actinic
Blue Plus+
Special Aqua Blue 50:50
White Marine 14000K

Any advice on which to go with really welcome. Getting the extra light set will also allow me to run 2 lights a little longer than the other 2 to give a moonlight/sunrise effect I guess.

I have already taken out the jewel internal filter and intend drilling the base of the tank to give 2 * 1" overflows and 1 * 3/4" return, with pipes hidden by a black weir. I am intending making the weir area with glass and facing with black acrylic (weir cut into the acrylic). Running one overflow submerged and one higher up as a back up and hopefully this will run quiet as this is pretty important with the tank being in the main living room.

Im going now to think about my sump design and will post my thoughts later. I was set on a 3 compartment baffled sump to hide the equipment and house refugium but now i see there are 4 compartment sumps and not sure what this extra one is for, so off to find out what I can.

bye for now and look forward to your comments
cheers
Steve

Having a mare trying to add more than one photo, sorry

Steve1972 said:

Having a mare trying to add more than one photo, sorry

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Hey steve, a lot of us use Photobucket or Flickr to post photos online. It may make things easier for you. Seems as if you've exceeded your limit for photo attachments per post.

Welcome to the salty side! Since you're a plumber a lot of the plumbing aspects of keeping Marines will be easier to you. To me, it's like Chinese. Excited to see this develop. A Rio 300 is a nice start up size.

Koralias give about 1/2, IME, of their promised gph, so adjust accordingly. Haha, I still use them. Honestly, you can't have too much flow. Aim for 20x, but in all honestly, most of my tanks have closer to 40x. That being said, I don't run sumps, so my LR has to have an awful lot of flow over it to get the maximum benefit out of my rock. I've heard good things about Tunze, but they are pricey, and surprisingly Aqueon has a new line of powerheads that seem to be delivering their promised gph in spades.

Like I said, reading about sumps is like reading Chinese, but I'll give you a big cheer! It's about I can contribute on that subject. Hahaha! Where are you, Steve?

Here's our Marine Resource Center. Have a look over some of the articles.

MARC

Again, looking forward to seeing this develop.

Hey, cheers for that, photobucket it is and sorted many thanks for that, my photos are now in the original post...
The MARC looks great I will have a good look around that thanks

In terms of the powerheads I may have a rethink then and look at your other suggestions, I was mainly looking at the Koralia due to people saying they were one of the quietest and reliable.
I am in Huddersfield, Yorkshire.

Thanks for the welcome

I have drawn up some design options for my weir and sump now so will post them for comment soon.

Do you or anybody have any ideas or suggestions around my lighting queries ?

Thanks

This is T5 normal output or high output? So we're talking 4, 54W tubes, about 216w total? It's not a whole lot for a 79g tank. A rough guideline, very rough, is between 3-5 watts per gallon. How deep is the tank? I think you'll be fine with soft corals and maybe some hardy Large polyp stony corals (lps). With all the sump hardware, though, you'll create a water chemistry environment that'll suit small polyp stony corals (sps) very well, so you may want to consider a lighting upgrade in the future. But for the "pet rock" phase and the initial setup, you'll be fine, I think. Upgrades can be done down the road.

Blue lights will make the corals pop, while white is better for growth. Depends on what you want to achieve. I try to have a nice mix. Hard to do with the Metal halides I have since they only have one bulb. But my LED pico is more flexible and I'll play with several color temperatures throughout the day.

L

Looking on the website they are high output and i would be putting reflectors with them.
I have just seen on the website they give various combinations with descriptions and I'm thinking this may be the one:

1 White 2 Aquablue 50:50, 1 Blue Plus

This combination will give you an overall slight blue tint to the tank enhancing the natural fluorescents of the corals and fish. The Aquablue are fantastic contributors to healthy coral growth as well as washing out the yellow tint to the white tubes. The blue plus will penetrate the tank to deeper levels giving you more light at the bottom.

The tank is 60 cm high but the water level line is about 53cm

Nice. Im actually freshwater but interested in your ideas for the cabinet, i've got a rio 300 too but am not keen on the stand much, i suppose your using the drawers to fit the sump as the juwels aren't really made for marine?

Are those the ikea drawers as they look very similar? I would like to get a couple sets of black ones to go with my rio

Steve1972 said:

Looking on the website they are high output and i would be putting reflectors with them.
I have just seen on the website they give various combinations with descriptions and I'm thinking this may be the one:

1 White 2 Aquablue 50:50, 1 Blue Plus

This combination will give you an overall slight blue tint to the tank enhancing the natural fluorescents of the corals and fish. The Aquablue are fantastic contributors to healthy coral growth as well as washing out the yellow tint to the white tubes. The blue plus will penetrate the tank to deeper levels giving you more light at the bottom.

The tank is 60 cm high but the water level line is about 53cm

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HO is better then. I think you can get by with some hardy LPS as I said before. Only way to know for sure is to try.

Can't wait to see this setup.

L

KkAaNnEe said:

Nice. Im actually freshwater but interested in your ideas for the cabinet, i've got a rio 300 too but am not keen on the stand much, i suppose your using the drawers to fit the sump as the juwels aren't really made for marine?

Are those the ikea drawers as they look very similar? I would like to get a couple sets of black ones to go with my rio

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Hi yeah from ikea it is one unit although they do them as single 800 units too. Tank looks really well on it

Yeah, thought it looked good from your pics. Its funny as the 800 units are £35ea, and the 1600 is £115...

Am looking forward to see you convert it too

I have now mulled over my sump / weir design options and come up with the following designs if anyone would like to pass on any remarks / advice please:

Weir design option:




Sump design option 1:



Or sump design 2:



I am leaning towards sump 2 as apparently I have read that by doing this you can control the flow through the Refugium to slow it down and allow it to work better, but Im open to criticism and ideas that point out my flaws ?

Many thanks all

Personally I would go with 2. You are absolutely correct - it is easier to control and you really need a slooow flow through a fuge for it to work effectively.

It may also be worth considering putting a filter sock under your drains - I found them useful although I know some are against them.

Also in your design the water level would sit lower in the tank overflow - it would be at the 40 cm mark of the lower of the 2 drains (the 1 1/4") Unless you have that one severely throttled back with the ball valve.

Cheers Ainsy
I see what you mean about the overflow level yes, so would I be best making the secondary overflow lower than I show it do ya think ?
I will look into the filter socks yeah, I see people recommend 200 micron for this purpose and possibly using filter wool between the bubble traps seems a common thing.

This is so cool. I wish I had the knowledge base for this. It just looks like pretty pictures, but I'm sure it'll be awesome.

L

Steve1972 said:

Cheers Ainsy
I see what you mean about the overflow level yes, so would I be best making the secondary overflow lower than I show it do ya think ?
I will look into the filter socks yeah, I see people recommend 200 micron for this purpose and possibly using filter wool between the bubble traps seems a common thing.

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What I would do is cut the pipes to the length that you think is right and then push fit them into the tank connector, but don't cement them in place at this stage. Then you can remove them and chop a bit more off if you need to.

As for the filter sock I used 200 micron but had a few of them so that I could swap them daily and give them a thorough wash. I doubt that you will need any wool between the baffles - they will probably remove all the micro bubbles. If you do find that you need it then make sure you change it really frequently as it can become a nitrate problem if you don't