Its been a long time - my AR300 build

[primus95]

Sensational work! Love the remote sump, but I must admit - if I had the luxury of a remote sump I'd be going much much larger. (although hard to see what room you have to work with there).

Great to have another reefer in Geelong. Yell out if I can help out with anything, I'm just in Grovedale. I have 6 tanks, but this is my main display:

I pop up to DeerPark aquarium every Thursday night straight after work and can always bring you back anything you need.
Sam

thanks for the offer of help Sam, your tank looks AMAZING (to say the least)!

Plan is to get rid of the stock AquaOne sump at some stage (your right it is small @ roughly 2ft) and build a new one out of a 3-4ft tank, but for now I've spent enough money on the build

I'm taking this one slow, getting everything setup before I start (although its killing me having it empty).

I'm a bit disappointed with the flow from sump to display tank, its only turning over 1.5x per/hour max. The pump is rated to 9000+ ltrs per hour (at 4ft head) but the restrictive hole size (15mm) in the tank and head height certainly has reduced that to next to nothing. I was tossing up re-drilling the tank, but its no small task to get done, and I'm scared I'll just stuff it all up (not to mention I don't know if the tank base is tempered or not).

[primus95]

Drained my tank (300ltrs) via 25mm pipe under cabinet that runs straight outside the house into storm water! Saved so much time

I broke one of my rock scapes putting the sand and rock back in, and in the process I think the scape turned out much better so it was meant to be!

[primus95]

Decided it was time to fill it so I got 22kg of Aqua Forest Sea Salt, made 350ltrs of RODI water, and now the fun stuff really begins!


Here's the sump, and skimmer foaming off its head as it breaks in and the tank settles:

[primus95]

Well 98 days later my tank is cycled.

My comments on fishless cycling - Dr Tim's Ammonia & Baterica in a bottle is a load of expensive bullshit.

I followed the Dr Tims fishless cycling method, and with Ammonia not having reduced one single bit @ day 45, I collected snails from my local beach & crushed them up to get the tank cycling organically. 15 days later (with a load of large snails also in the tank also), Ammonia 0, another 30 days later & its finally cycled.

I knew the process would be longer due to using base rock / Caribsea Real rock, but this process was down right frustrating 98 days total).

[PranK]

Any updates? Tank looks nice so far!

[Harry1122]

Hey question I'm at day nine ammonia is at 2 and tanks going brown is this normal? Sorry new to this all

[monta777]

Looking good mate how did you mount the coral box dc pump in that skimmer any photos

[Combatants]

Any updates on this build? Looked like a great but frustrating start