Skay
Well-Known Member
Alright, at the beginning of this year, I set out to build myself a reef tank. The problem is I’m a broke full time student. Regardless, I was getting that reef tank. I searched online and nothing was catching my eye. I wanted something big but not huge, while also being small but not too small. It had to be presentable as well since this was going in the living room. Every prebuilt system that was in my budget looked great but way too small (15g or less) so I settled on a sump design that utilized my existing aqueon 10 gallon currently housing my betta fish (sorry bud) along with a 40 gallon display tank. Out of pure chance, petsmart had a half off top fin aquariums deal that same week so I quickly bought one. Next was equipment. I ordered a pond pump, nicrew 100w light, individually controlled powerstrip, ceramic media, sand, a heater, bacteria, powerhead, eshopps m overflow, and finally a 10 gallon sump kit plus some extra goodies all on Amazon for around ~300 dollars. See attached.
So with everything here, we got to work. First, we derimmed the tank (save your replies I know the risks) and got to work drilling.
I bought a cheap stand on petco that was coincidentally also on sale and gave it a mock setup. Here’s how it looked.
Next was the sump, I evicted my betta and put him in an old 5 gallon container as temporary housing. I used silicon to assemble the sump kit. Once dried gave it a leak test and threw in the equipment.
Bonus photo betta housing
In hindsight I should’ve gotten a smaller heater as I would later add a protein skimmer and dry rock so the heater now sits diagonally vertically but what can you do. Now it’s time to put it all together.
As seen above I bought some 1” pvc with 90 degree elbows. I’ll later change these to 45 degree joints as the flow resistance was quite literally shaking the entire system. I then drilled and setup the 3/4 return line along with adding black vinyl shown here
If it looks a little bare bones stick with me. I end up upgrading all the loops. But now it’s almost ready for water, I set up the equipment one last time and gave her a look.
A little before this I went to my lfs wwc in orlando to buy dry rock and hatched out a rough idea of how I wanted my aquascape.
I end up adding more rock later, but for now, it’s time to fill her up. Bought 3 five gallons buckets from home depot and me and my girlfriend went to buy the water. It took three trips to wwc and the thought of doing this every week was so awful I ended up purchasing an rodi system a month later LOL.
A few of you might have noticed something I didn’t do especially for a diy build. A leak test. This’ll come back to haunt me as Immediately after pouring in the water I found two huge leaks both involving the overflow box. It was leaking at the connection point with the tank AND the left input pipe. Very discouraging but it was my own fault for not leak testing. So I got to work and drained the newly filled tank plus disconnected everything. To my surprise I misplaced one of the rubber gaskets on the primary bulkhead for the overflow box. See the eshopps box comes with two gaskets, one for the inside of the tank and one for the outside (not inside the box itself) and I mistakenly put both on the inside. Okay, easy fix for leak number 1. Leak number 2 proved more difficult. And again involved a rubber gasket. It was missing. I’m not sure where I placed it or if I just never got it included. Before I realized this I ended up pouring an ungodly amount of silicon around the bulkhead in hopes of stopping the leak to no avail. So off to lowes we went in search of a 3/4 rubber gasket. We didn’t find that but we found a sheet of rubber to make your gasket with customs dimensions.
My girlfriend cut out two small donuts and I installed them in the bulkhead one on the inside and outside for good measure. To my surprise it worked, and to this day leak free. Okay, so back to filling. This is how she looked after everything settled
I threw in the bacteria along with the live sand I used and waited a week. After testing some, it was time to add our first fish
Bathtub
And Faucet
Shortly after I added unions to all pvc connections, ball valves, and extensions if needed. For the return line I added a check valve (that barely works for some reason) ball valve and union for ease of use. I'll include a picture in case anyone needs it
Shortly after my mom bought a wooden cabinet stand from petco for the project so I installed that as well. Final look:
Ignore the anemone walking around in the first pic it’s a new addition and escaped its bowl. Here’s a pic when the lights are on
Thanks for checking out my build thread, I haven’t found anyone online that has done a build like this. If you have any questions I’ll be happy to answer as a little help would’ve gone a long way for me. Overall fun yet stressful build, definitely going with prebuilt on my next tank. Some things I didn’t mention was my pump is way too strong for the system, so a couple 90 degree elbows was enough to slow the flow. Also what’s up with my pvc check valve not working? Who knows. Let me know if you have a similar build!
So with everything here, we got to work. First, we derimmed the tank (save your replies I know the risks) and got to work drilling.
I bought a cheap stand on petco that was coincidentally also on sale and gave it a mock setup. Here’s how it looked.
Next was the sump, I evicted my betta and put him in an old 5 gallon container as temporary housing. I used silicon to assemble the sump kit. Once dried gave it a leak test and threw in the equipment.
Bonus photo betta housing
In hindsight I should’ve gotten a smaller heater as I would later add a protein skimmer and dry rock so the heater now sits diagonally vertically but what can you do. Now it’s time to put it all together.
As seen above I bought some 1” pvc with 90 degree elbows. I’ll later change these to 45 degree joints as the flow resistance was quite literally shaking the entire system. I then drilled and setup the 3/4 return line along with adding black vinyl shown here
If it looks a little bare bones stick with me. I end up upgrading all the loops. But now it’s almost ready for water, I set up the equipment one last time and gave her a look.
A little before this I went to my lfs wwc in orlando to buy dry rock and hatched out a rough idea of how I wanted my aquascape.
I end up adding more rock later, but for now, it’s time to fill her up. Bought 3 five gallons buckets from home depot and me and my girlfriend went to buy the water. It took three trips to wwc and the thought of doing this every week was so awful I ended up purchasing an rodi system a month later LOL.
A few of you might have noticed something I didn’t do especially for a diy build. A leak test. This’ll come back to haunt me as Immediately after pouring in the water I found two huge leaks both involving the overflow box. It was leaking at the connection point with the tank AND the left input pipe. Very discouraging but it was my own fault for not leak testing. So I got to work and drained the newly filled tank plus disconnected everything. To my surprise I misplaced one of the rubber gaskets on the primary bulkhead for the overflow box. See the eshopps box comes with two gaskets, one for the inside of the tank and one for the outside (not inside the box itself) and I mistakenly put both on the inside. Okay, easy fix for leak number 1. Leak number 2 proved more difficult. And again involved a rubber gasket. It was missing. I’m not sure where I placed it or if I just never got it included. Before I realized this I ended up pouring an ungodly amount of silicon around the bulkhead in hopes of stopping the leak to no avail. So off to lowes we went in search of a 3/4 rubber gasket. We didn’t find that but we found a sheet of rubber to make your gasket with customs dimensions.
My girlfriend cut out two small donuts and I installed them in the bulkhead one on the inside and outside for good measure. To my surprise it worked, and to this day leak free. Okay, so back to filling. This is how she looked after everything settled
I threw in the bacteria along with the live sand I used and waited a week. After testing some, it was time to add our first fish
Bathtub
And Faucet
Shortly after I added unions to all pvc connections, ball valves, and extensions if needed. For the return line I added a check valve (that barely works for some reason) ball valve and union for ease of use. I'll include a picture in case anyone needs it
Shortly after my mom bought a wooden cabinet stand from petco for the project so I installed that as well. Final look:
Ignore the anemone walking around in the first pic it’s a new addition and escaped its bowl. Here’s a pic when the lights are on
Thanks for checking out my build thread, I haven’t found anyone online that has done a build like this. If you have any questions I’ll be happy to answer as a little help would’ve gone a long way for me. Overall fun yet stressful build, definitely going with prebuilt on my next tank. Some things I didn’t mention was my pump is way too strong for the system, so a couple 90 degree elbows was enough to slow the flow. Also what’s up with my pvc check valve not working? Who knows. Let me know if you have a similar build!
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