Nate's 210g Tank

The Tank and Sump

I read quite a bit about working with acrylic and ended up building the tank from acrylic sheets. The dimensions are 72"x30"x24"(width,height,depth) with 1" cell cast acrylic on the sides and 1/2" on the bottom. I put 4" of euro bracing on the front of the tank to make sure that it wouldn't bow out. Then I put a coast to coast external overflow on the back which prevents bowing out on the back and saves some space inside the tank. 

The sump is ~100 gallon with 48"x18"x24" with 1" cell cast acrylic on the sides and 1/2" on the bottom. This size of the tanks worked well for me since I was able to make the sump and the tank from two full sheets of 1" and 1 sheet of 1/2" acrylic with very little waste. 

Plumbing

I used beananimal style overflow plumbing (http://www.beananimal.com/projects/silent-and-fail-safe-aquarium-overflow-system.aspx) with three 1.5" standpipes to get the water from the top tank to the bottom one. I wish that I would have used a gate valve instead of a ball valve to adjust it, but it hasn't been too hard to get the flow right and it is very quiet. I put some unions in to make it easier to work on(after learning the hard way). 

I used a Iwaki MD55RLT Water Pump for the return pipe which runs ~1000GPH which is 5x the volume of the main tank. I hard plumbed most of the tank, but ended up using some small sections of 1" silicone tubing to dampen any sound from the vibration. The tubing coupled with a foam pad under the pump makes the pump run pretty quietly. 

This isn't really plumbing, but I currently have 2 hydor koralia powerheads to circulate the water in the main tank. I would like to get better flow in the future and think that the new gyre powerheads look really neat, but will need to study that out a bit more. 

Sump Design

I made a small box for the return flow of the water to initially go into which then overflows into a compartment with two filter socks. The water is forced through the filter socks into a largish refugeum area. The bottom of the refugeum has a layer of sand and fiji mud and I'm tryting to grow some macro algae with some success. I've got a 24" green algae led sump light from buildmyled that runs on an opposite schedule from the main tank. From there it goes through a bubble trap that I have also fitted my heaters into.I have a largish return area and plan on getting a skimmer at some point, but still need to figure that out.

Heating

I have heard about a lot of tank failures from problems with the heaters so I went with an approach of buying 4 of the most inexpensive 300 watt heaters I could get and connected then to a Ranco ETC-111000 controller so I didn't have to depend on the heaters internal thermostats. I had to waterproof the probe on the Ranco controller and do a little wiring, but it was pretty straight forward. I also bought an apex controller that among other things acts as a failsafe to turn off the heaters when it's too warm.

Lighting

I really wanted to reduce the operating cost of the tank so I went for led lighting and bought 3 buildmyled MC Series - 20000K Reef Spectrum lights on the tank. I like the color and look of them a lot and it has been fun playing with dimming the different channels. I was worried about getting enough light deep enough since the tank is 30" deep so I have two of the fixtues running at a 75 degree beam angle and the one in back is a 90 degree angle.

Stocking 

I've had the tank up and running since March and I currently have 4 blue/green chromis, a finamented wrasse, and a pajama cardinal fish. I'm planning on doing a mixed reef setup with peaceful fish, but have been taking it slow until I can build some confidence that I've figured things out.