Eagle's 240 Build

[eagle]

It has been a journey to get to this point but I'm almost there. I started working on my wife a couple years ago about getting a bigger tank, but since I'm away from home with work most of the time she didn't want more tank to watch. So I waited and bargained my way to it lol. We enclosed our garage for the room that our 75 gallon sits in now, and every time it rained I got an earful about building a carport. So this summer she got a carport and I got the OK to upgrade the tank. Fair is fair. In the construction we built a storage room that's part fish room and part storage. The room that the tank is in wasn't insulated on the outside walls so we went ahead and did that before upgrading the tank, and sheetrocked the room. It had exterior paneling so it just fits the rest of the house better now. The room we built has my rodi and barrels in there. It's nice to have the extra room for that stuff. I had the tank built recently and picked it up this week. It's 96X24X24 with dual external overflows. I have been building the lights when I get time away from work. I'll be taking the tank home from Pittsburgh to Mississippi on my next days off. (work in PA live in MS) I had a guy up here build it. So I'll have to build a stand and finish my lights yet. I'm just going with the open look. No canopy or bookshelf stand this time. I'm hoping to be home for the holidays but not overly optimistic. I'll post pics as I get to the next point in it. Can't wait to see it filled.

 

[eagle]

Picked tank up and have it sitting at the office in Pittsburgh

 

[eagle]

The Carport lol It was a lot of work.

I call this the fish room, my wife calls it the storage room haha

Fish rooms have barrels :wink:

 

[ohio reefer]

Following. Tank looks amazing!

 

[eagle]

And the Tank room. My wife and cousin actually hung the sheet rock while I was at work. She did a heck of a job.

 

[eagle]

Thanks Ohio, I'm actually in Ohio right now on a job. I'll try to get pics up. It's been a lot of work trying to get it to this point. We are all excited now that we actually have the tank built and ready to go home.

 

[eagle]

One of three lights finished.

Building the driver box. LDD Driver boards, Apex to PWM boards.

Testing LED Strings

Light Mounts

 

[eagle]

I had a great week getting some bigger hardware for the larger tank. I have a Euroreef RS135 so my first thought was to add another one of them. I won an auction on one for $51. Of course the next day I found a RS250 for sale and got it for $100. It was a pig when it showed up but my wife got it loking like new. I found a Deltec PF601, Pinpoint PH controller, Bottle, Regulator, and media on craigslist for $200. I know the aquabee on the Deltec has had issues but the price was right. It's the latest revision and the guy says he has never had any issues out of it. If it craps out it's getting an eheim mod.

RS250 as it arrived.

After my wife got ahold of the new (old) skimmers lol. Good as new. Now for some pump upgrades!!

Deltec Calcium Reactor

 

[dwair]

I love that room, the flooring is awesome with that centerpiece. I just redid my floor and did hardwood. But that tile is sexy!

Following along!

 

[eagle]

Thank you Dwair,
I can't take any credit for the design. My wife can work circles around me and most of the guys I know. Pays attention to detail for sure. I dunno what I'd do without her. I'm a neutral color person and that's all I lobbied for. Brandi just seems to have an eye for it, and her Uncle laid the tile. If she's not painting/antiquing something or building something at our house then she's doing it at someone else's house lol. Family and friends come to her to see how to design a room or colors to use etc. The centerpiece was her idea and if it were up to my ideas I know it wouldn't be very inspiring haha. We helped remodel her cousin's house and put in hardwood floors a coupe years ago. I like hardwood too.

 

[Macropora]

Nice start and sweet looking fishroom/man cave. I can see a 12' tank on that long wall in the future :bigsmile:. Curious... Who built your acrylic tank by the way? Looks great with the blue background.

 

[eagle]

I had it done by a guy North of Pittsburgh, but I'm not gonna recommend him. It took 2 months and a lot of phone calls to keep him on track. The price was good, the seams look good and all but there's a couple things that weren't done right. I walked him through what a starboard bottom is and paid extra for it. I go to pick it up and it's white acrylic ughh. I wanted the overflows to be BLACK. I prolly sent 10 emails describing this and phone calls. The overflows are white??? So after prolly 2 1/2 months I finally got to the point of picking it up and seen it, I was ******. Just said screw it at that point and loaded it up and will never do business there again. He was recommended to me by a guy that lives up here. It's all 3/4 inch acrylic and I like the external overflows. He did a good job on the construction but the lack of communication just drove me crazy. I asked for picture several times and nope, never got any pictures. He said he wanted it to be a surprise lol. It was.
I'll never talk her into a 12 footer lol. It's a nice dream.

 

[SantaMonicaHelp]

Nice!! Good luck on the mancave Beautiful house btw. Keep us posted on any progress. I would like to see how this turns out!!

 

[eagle]

Well I did get the tank home for the holidays and got it out of the crate and in the house today. I'm pretty ticked off at the guy that built this tank. There are scratches all over it, inside and out. I tried to leak test it and found that the bottom is actually starboard. I found out because it floated with the water. After getting it lifted up finally because the moron didn't leave any gap like I asked, I can see he tried to glue it down with weld on. Of course that didn't work. So I cleaned it out with a shop vac. The overflows are not as deep as he said so now my light mounts don't fit. So I'm sitting here now with bottles of novus trying to get these scratches out. It's gonna take some sand paper I'm afraid. I wrote him a lengthy email today. At the end I told him I would pass the word to everyone be very wary of buying anything from Acrylic Creations in Butler PA. Terrible communication, and now it's looking like I will have to work on this thing a lot just to get it setup. Starting the stand in the morning. I guess the good thing is I have worked with acrylic a lot over the years and have plenty of weld on if anything leaks, and all the tools to get these ridiculous scratches out. I should have just built it myself.

 

[dwair]

Oh no!

 

[eagle]

We built the stand today. Decided to paint and antique it. Will have the doors made. Since our light hangers don't fit now, we are gonna do a tall canopy and side cabinets with book shelves. Fixing to prime the stand and we are gonna start the canopy tomorrow after church. The stand worked out nice. We added space to the back to hide the piping from the external overflows.

 

[eagle]

More pics

 

[eagle]

Made the canopy today. Brandi is working on the stand.

 

[eagle]

And after the antique. Turned out great. The wife's a genius

 

[eagle]

More pics. Can't wait to see it all come together.