Arman's Red Sea Max S-650 Build thread

[ArmanS]

Hello all, this is going to be my thread for my Red Sea Max S-650!! I placed my order about 6 days ago for the tank but the seller said that all the white S-650's are on major backorder but he said he may have secured me one for a delivery in the third week of march.

I still have a lot to do in the mean time, order lots of equipment as I currently have nothing since I sold everything when I took a break from the hobby.

I also have to organize my garage for my Ro/di station / water change mixing station, and I am thinking about purchasing a 100-150g rubbermaid stock tank to have in my garage for curing my live rock.

I am planning on getting 100-120 lbs of live rock, I do not want to put so much live rock because I want plenty of room for corals and room for the fish to swim. Corals I plan to have a mixed reef and eventually some sps.


Equipment that I am going to order soon will be:

Controller:

• Neptune Apex Controller
• Neptune PM2
• Neptune PH, Temp, Conductivity Probes
• 2 x EB8s

Ro/Di:

• SpectraPure Maxpure 180GPD

Testing Equipment:

• Hanna Phosphate Checker
• API Ammonia
• Red Sea Ca/Alk/Mg, Nitrate,
• Salifert Nitrite
• Milwaukee Digital Refractometer

Water flow:

• Tunze 6105
• 2 x Mag 18s for water change / mixing
• Tank comes with 4 powerheads and return pump

Heating/Cooling

• 2 x Eheim Jager 300w
• JBJ 1/3HP Chiller

And lots of other misc, I need to research and see what skimmer I want to use but I first need to find what measurements the skimmer section will fit.

Live rock I am deciding between Buna Ultra Live rock and Fiji Premium Live rock, the Fiji live rock I found a local guy who can purchase wholesale and just charges a fee per box, 120lbs of Fiji would be about 465$ which is a great price but I have to cure that rock. The Buna is fully cured.

Right now I won't have too many major updates until I get my tank, I will probably start ordering some equipment in about a week, and start organizing my garage, water change setup, and maybe the rubbermaid stock tank in about 2 weeks.

I hope that people who have any questions about the Red Sea Max line and the S650 feel free to ask, especially once I get my tank!!

Thanks for following, I will have lots of questions hopefully some of you guys can help me with!

[NeilFox]

Good luck with it. Everything looks really nice. I'm back in the hobby too...

[kmellon]

Any updates on your build? I am curious to see how you incorporated the apex and the additional tunze for water flow.

[ArmanS]

Hey, sorry for no updates. I had to move everything that was nearly finished setup to my office at work. My parents were complaining about the amount of space it was taken considering I have two 5' wide stands next to each other. Now it is at work, I am finishing up adding a seperate 30 amp circuit for the tank. I also ordered the bulkheads for the frag tank. Once I am done with that I will put the tank on the stand and take some pics! I switched from Tunze's to the WP40's the water flow is very very strong and they are extremely cheap, I ordered two of them with the variable speed power supply to adjust flow. I may switch to vortech/tunze in the future if these give me problems but so far from testing them they are very very strong.

Let me know if you have any questions or need pics of anything! I hope to get the electrical and plumbing done in 1-2 weeks.

[ArmanS]

Updates!!

So I had to move the tank to my office at work, we own a used car dealership and I have a pretty big office and next to my desk is a empty wall that was perfect, plus I am always at work so it wasn't too bad. It took a lot of work to move the tank, equipment, etc from my house to work. 3 full size 8' trucks!!

Anyways, I made a lot of progress. I made some changes to my original plan.

I added a 48"x22"x14" advanced acrylic frag tank, and I got some custom frag racks that give t a really nice look. I modified the sump to fit my Alpha Cone 170 skimmer. Here are some photos!

Photo of tank, it arrived in a huge wooden crate maybe 6'x4'x4' I had to unscrew it a lot just to open it! .



Photo of sump and plumbing included,



Here is a photo of the alum stand that I assembled, took me about 2 days from start to finish to assemble the stand, lights, etc.

Here is my frag tank and pics of the frag racks





Here is a photo of the tank with stand and lights, it looks gorgeous in person everything is color matched pearl white! My fav color!

[ArmanS]

So you can imagine how hard it was to move the tank, and stand, and all the equipment etc to work! Here are the photos of the tank setup in my office, and the frag tank stand I built and the return loc line on the frag tank.

[ArmanS]

Next updates!

Here is the frag tank plumbing I did.

2 3/4" returns that are plumbed from my mag 18 which is one of my two return pumps, this is only for the frag tank, and 2 1.5" drains, one is an emergency.









And setup RO/DI. I will probably get some larger water storage tanks and hard plumb it later to allow easy water changes.



Photos of the water test!







Not a single leak! I let it run overnight and it was perfect! The S 650 system once dialed in is unbelievably silent, as well is the frag tank once I adjusted the flow. You cannot hear any water running etc, all you can hear is a slight hum of the return pumps, haven't figured out if its the mag 18 or the one with the S 650.

Now, the only issue!! noob mistake!! : I used 3/4" line for the return and T'd it off so the mag 18 is pushing through 3/4" but the drain is 1.5". The return flow is maybe 3 or 400 gph in the frag tank, so my question is, should I change the return line to flex 1.5" and than T it off to two 3/4" or leave it as is and just add a WP 40 to the frag tank which I already bought 2 and don't mind buying more.

Tomorrow I should get my eztubes to make my light rack and next week my marco rock, ordered 100 lbs, and my tropic eden reef flakes sand ordered 120lbs!!

Thanks!!

[Biocubehqi]

I've wanted one of them! But I heard shipping costs the same as the tank

Looks good so far!

[ArmanS]

Originally Posted by Biocubehqi

I've wanted one of them! But I heard shipping costs the same as the tank

Thanks!!

Really? Not sure where you heard that.

I got mine on eBay, free shipping to my door and they brought it in the garage and no tax!

Not sure if I can post links but if your interested pm I can give you the sellers info, he was super nice texted me updates etc and he's sold 17 of these on ebay!

[infpalex]

Subscribed... I am thinking about getting one of these! How's it going? Any updates?

[ArmanS]

Hey, its going ok. I was working on setting up my Apex system and once I had it setup and ready to turn on for the first time, no power, than after a few seconds one of the eb8's started to smoke so I disconnected it from the power and than called Neptune, they did some diagnostics over the phone and basically the entire system isn't working. So I had to send it in yesterday.

Really strange for this to happen, I'm not ****ed at Neptune because things happen especially when they make tons of these there are some that will have issues. I just hope the whole system isn't messed up, not sure how it is but thats what it seems like and what Neptune is saying.

They should have it all tomorrow and we will see what they say!

Onto some good news! I decided to order the reef genesis renew and storm pro systems, these will allow me to automate my water changes, I will be doing probably 4 gallon water changes daily, and the system will automatically do one every 6 hours. I decided to buy the storm as well because it syncs with the Renew and when the Renew is doing a water change it will not add freshwater to the system, it also has a cool feature the RocV which will monitor the levels in my freshwater resevoir and replenish when needed.

I also ordered a custom ATO reservoir to sit next to my frag tank. All black 1/2" thick acrylic, 12" long by 24" wide x 30" tall. Holds about 37 gallons of ATO water which I think will last me almost 2 weeks.

Also, I ordered an MP60 to add to my WP40's.

Infpalex, if you have any questions about the S 650 feel free to ask or if you want any photos, I really love mine so far!

[bhbbhb]

I also have a Max S-650. I need help figuring out exactly how to set the control valve. I have read other posts (on other sites) - but still have a couple of issues. In the manual it talks about - when the level is set correctly you should not see the water line from the front of the tank. However, if I follow the instructions above and set the valve so that the water is 3/4 inch lower than the backup overflow opening - the water in the front of the tank is about 1/2 inch below the front trim. If you set the water flow so that it lines up with the top line increment on the sight glass - the water is also too low from the front of the tank.
My other concern - it seems the adjustment valve has about 4 complete turns from fully open to fully closed. When completely open the water flows very quickly and makes the noise discussed above, for me it takes almost 3 1/2 turns from open to closed to stop the noise and bring the water level up high enough to not been seen from the front of the tank. At this level the water in the rear collection cup is full and just about at the level where it will start to flow into the higher "overflow" pipe. Does that seem correct ? And am I getting enough flow from the tank into the sump with the valve closed that much? It seems to me that the flow is too low and that it is not forcing all floating particles into the sump to be filtered. ANy thoughts suggestions or comments from folks experienced with this tank would be greatly appreciated.

[ArmanS]

Hi Bhbbhb, for setting the valve what I did was fill the tank so that the sump gets filled to about 12" of water, turn on the 4 circulation pumps than add some more water because when you do that it sucks some water to the back, than when your sump has about 12" of water turn the return pump on.

After you do that and it balances out and is just loud, what you do is start turning it slightly until you feel it get softer (hard to describe but you feel it when its about right ) then let it work for a few mins and check it again. You should be able to feel when the water flow is at the right level and the tank will be DEAD silent.

For me it was like you said about 3 turns I believe, the return pump is still sending a lot of water into the tank, actually too much where it blows all the sand from the from the from of the glass.

It should not flow into the higher pipe, that is a backup and should only be working if the first one is clogged.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

[land locked]

Do you have any new pics?

[ArmanS]

Yes I do! But let me post them maybe tomorrow. I have my new sump that I should be picking up either tomorrow or Friday. That will be a nice update!!

[ArmanS]

So change of plans, setting tank up in a new location which will have a fish room! So, I got a new custom sump from John over at Advanced Acrylics! Top notch work as usual!

66"x30"x18"
3/4" acrylic, white baffles.
5 4" filter socks

Here are some pics!

[Drae]

I usually don't ask prices but may I ask what that bad a%$ sump cost? That thing will last 100 years! 3/4" on a sump... Nice.

[ArmanS]

Originally Posted by Drae

I usually don't ask prices but may I ask what that bad a%$ sump cost? That thing will last 100 years! 3/4" on a sump... Nice.

Pm'ed.

I made it big because I plan on replacing the tank in a few years when everything grows to a 96"x36"x30" so this sump should be perfect!

[Drae]

Originally Posted by ArmanS

Pm'ed.

I made it big because I plan on replacing the tank in a few years when everything grows to a 96"x36"x30" so this sump should be perfect!

Thanks!