Mike's Money Pit - Custom 31 Gallon Peninsula

[TheMikey]

My introduction to marine aquariums started a long time ago. I was in Puerto Vallarta and did a snorkel over a reef in the Pacific and absolutely fell in love with the reefs and began to research how to build a reef in my own home. I began to research and obsess over the vast amount of information about all kinds of marine environments.

I browsed my local online ads and found a used 15gallon aquarium setup on the cheap, bought some RO water and mixed my first tank of water.



I settled on a 15gallon tank, picked up 12 pounds of live rock and waited for it to cycle. Wanting to keep things inexpensive, I made the executive decision to keep a Fish Only tank, likely with just two clownfish for inhabitants. Everything I had read warned about how finicky small, skimmerless nano systems were, and I didn’t want a bad experience to ruin my first foray into the hobby.



I was a university student at the time, so I did things on the CHEAP. All my equipment (except a Koralia powerhead) was bought used. No sump, no skimmer, no money, no problems.



Well, one thing led to another, and I had soon upgraded from T8s to Compact Fluorescents, then to T5HO and finally on a Metal Halide pendant. There was nothing wrong with my T5s, however I had an opportunity to upgrade to a new cube set up and my t5 light would not fit in the stand, giving me an excuse to “upgrade” the lights again.





I kept my 22gallon semi-cube for more than two years. Everything was pristine, I was seeing excellent growth and my SPS were becoming nice little colonies. Excellent colouration and healthy inhabitants showed that I had made a nice, mature nano tank. I was looking forward to see how the colonies grew together in the limited space.





Until… disaster.

I woke up one morning to several dead fish and cloudy water. It seems my Maxima clam had decided to reproduce and expelled its Gametes into the water. As they died, they burned all of the usable O2 left in the water and created a 25gallon apocalypse. It was a complete crash - I even lost the first fish I had bought: a yellow watchman goby that I had owned for over 4 years.



So I was running empty. I knew I’d get my feet wet again, but for now, all of the equipment was boxed away and all of my live rock was out drying in the sun. As everything as dry, I had decided that I was going to upgrade my existing tank to convert to an external overflow as I had always been annoyed with the large center overflow that presently existed in the cube. Ideally, it was my preference for a large open sandbed, for larger LPS corals such as open brains, plate corals, or scolys.

The Rebuild!

Equipment List:

DIY Full-Spectrum LED Light (LEDGroupBuy LEDs)
Reef Angel Plus Aquarium Controller
Vortech MP10ES
Bubble Magus NAC-3.5 Cone Skimmer
Eheim Return
Jager 125W Heater
Titanium 125W Heater
ATO (Controlled by RA+)

I ordered a new glass pane with an overflow notch and a single return. I cleaned up the existing silicone from the old cube and prepped it for the addition.

But the more I looked at the existing dimensions, the less interest I had in limiting myself to that particular size. I’d might as well go bigger.

I live in an apartment, so I was going to be limited on the size of the tank. I didn’t want to go too large either as I love the idea of the nano tank (I have little interest in larger fish, too, so I don’t need to be concerned with accomodating tangs or heavy swimmers). My new dimensions are 19.5” x 24” x 16”, which is roughly 31 gallons. It will be plumbed into a 3-chamber (Intake > Skimmer > Return) sump housed in a 15gallon tank. I will not be running a refugium. I had already ordered the back pane with the weir and external overflow, so I simply chose to go with 24” dimensions and crafted a peninsula-style tank.


There will also be a 5-gallon RO tank for an automatic top off that will be controlled through the Reef Angel.