Bear
Community Member
Hi guys,
Any and all help/advice is more than appreciated on this. While I am not new to aquariums, I am new to saltwater and do not know what I am doing as of this moment. I have been leaning towards this for years but have not had any friends or associates that have saltwater aquariums much less fresh to learn from. I am wanting to build a reef tank. I am more interested in coral reefs than fish, I have plenty enough fish in my house. I will start by showing what I have in my house. My primary is a 180 gallon glass tank that I acquired off Craigslist for a straight even trade. It came with filters and 24 spare cartridges, lights, real drift wood decor, various maintenance supplies, and no stand. I new this would be extremely heavy, the glass aquarium took three guys to move, I decided to build my stand out of steel. I used 1x1 square tubing with a .160" wall thickness. I welded the whole thing together and then bought that 5mm paneling from lowes and attached it to the steel to make it look like a wooden stand. I attached the cheapest trimmed they had and made doors from 1x4 planks that were on clearance due to warpage. This stand ended up costing me $55 to build and can withstand around 3500lbs.
I used a all in one stain and varnish. I put 4 light coats over a course of 2 days. It fits very nice in the living room and looks extremely well.
This is my wife's tank, she started off hating aquariums and now has her very own that she maintains herself (truth), and is also the cause of us having 2 poison dart frog set ups.
Now moving on to the reason I am here on this forum, the future reef tank. I had an old motorcycle in my garage that I found in a pasture. After some mechanical work and a lot of of cutting, welding and fabricating, I had an awesome bobber that did not really cost me anything.
It ended up just sitting in my garage collecting dust and taking up space. I completely lost interest in the bike because of my truck, I converted my old 1994 Chevy pickup to the 2007 Ls1 power train out a Corvette. My buddy had just returned home from Korea and had orders to North Dakota. He decided to stop and stay a night on his way up from Louisiana. While visiting we ended up trading the old bobber for all the salt water stuff he had in the back of his truck.
Here's the stand for the new 90 gallon. I will probably end up building a matching one to the 180 stand that I built.
I got a Cascade canister filter rated for a 100 gallon aquarium. A 5 gallon bucket of live rock and a couple of extra pieces (all dead, been out of water for a year now). Some carbon, replacement filters, and power heads with a very nice coralife light.
Here is the tank. I have it masked off for painting after I drill the holes. I have locations on the tank marked for the drill spots. I will be painting the back OD the tank black because of it clean look and the bottom white to help with lighting and give it the appearance of a substrate presence.
I am holding off drilling the tank for just a little bit until I can design the sump for the bottom. I know nothing about salt water except that I want a reef and that can't be done with a canister filter setup. I probably will add the canister to my freshwater and use the extra space for a larger sump tank. I am thinking of going with the biomedia, fuge and skimmer on each end with the return in the center. Any advice here is very much appreciated. I am extremely patient and time is not an issue for me. I want to build it right the first time but cheap it as cost effective as possible (I have all the time but not the money). Is the bigger the sump the better true?
Any and all help/advice is more than appreciated on this. While I am not new to aquariums, I am new to saltwater and do not know what I am doing as of this moment. I have been leaning towards this for years but have not had any friends or associates that have saltwater aquariums much less fresh to learn from. I am wanting to build a reef tank. I am more interested in coral reefs than fish, I have plenty enough fish in my house. I will start by showing what I have in my house. My primary is a 180 gallon glass tank that I acquired off Craigslist for a straight even trade. It came with filters and 24 spare cartridges, lights, real drift wood decor, various maintenance supplies, and no stand. I new this would be extremely heavy, the glass aquarium took three guys to move, I decided to build my stand out of steel. I used 1x1 square tubing with a .160" wall thickness. I welded the whole thing together and then bought that 5mm paneling from lowes and attached it to the steel to make it look like a wooden stand. I attached the cheapest trimmed they had and made doors from 1x4 planks that were on clearance due to warpage. This stand ended up costing me $55 to build and can withstand around 3500lbs.
I used a all in one stain and varnish. I put 4 light coats over a course of 2 days. It fits very nice in the living room and looks extremely well.
This is my wife's tank, she started off hating aquariums and now has her very own that she maintains herself (truth), and is also the cause of us having 2 poison dart frog set ups.
Now moving on to the reason I am here on this forum, the future reef tank. I had an old motorcycle in my garage that I found in a pasture. After some mechanical work and a lot of of cutting, welding and fabricating, I had an awesome bobber that did not really cost me anything.
It ended up just sitting in my garage collecting dust and taking up space. I completely lost interest in the bike because of my truck, I converted my old 1994 Chevy pickup to the 2007 Ls1 power train out a Corvette. My buddy had just returned home from Korea and had orders to North Dakota. He decided to stop and stay a night on his way up from Louisiana. While visiting we ended up trading the old bobber for all the salt water stuff he had in the back of his truck.
Here's the stand for the new 90 gallon. I will probably end up building a matching one to the 180 stand that I built.
I got a Cascade canister filter rated for a 100 gallon aquarium. A 5 gallon bucket of live rock and a couple of extra pieces (all dead, been out of water for a year now). Some carbon, replacement filters, and power heads with a very nice coralife light.
Here is the tank. I have it masked off for painting after I drill the holes. I have locations on the tank marked for the drill spots. I will be painting the back OD the tank black because of it clean look and the bottom white to help with lighting and give it the appearance of a substrate presence.
I am holding off drilling the tank for just a little bit until I can design the sump for the bottom. I know nothing about salt water except that I want a reef and that can't be done with a canister filter setup. I probably will add the canister to my freshwater and use the extra space for a larger sump tank. I am thinking of going with the biomedia, fuge and skimmer on each end with the return in the center. Any advice here is very much appreciated. I am extremely patient and time is not an issue for me. I want to build it right the first time but cheap it as cost effective as possible (I have all the time but not the money). Is the bigger the sump the better true?
