Ok, so I need to update this due to a few reasons:
1. My daughter Broke her arm the day before I posted but we did not know until Saturday afternoon.
2. After doctors visit and casting her arm up, life happens, daddy takes care of his babies before building the tank.
3. 2 days later, brakes went out on an ancient car I have been trying to keep running for 200K miles, it needed new rear brakes and a new brake line.... good old Salt on winter roads eat 20 year old brake lines. After 2 nights under it to replace rusted parts, it worked well again.
4. Car above died on the wife commute to work a week later. She said enough is enough and we bought a new car last Saturday.
Now, as far as the tank goes and how I got back into reefing:
I have been talking to my little ones for about 6 months about missing reef, dart frog and water dragon tanks. Lucky me, I found this tank in my local Craigslist, and it came with a custom Oak stand. I saw it and emailed about 12 mintues after they posted. I went the next day after work and picked it up.
It is a 65g Oceanic tank, I am very familiar with this size due to the 56g RR I used to have. But in the 10 yesars since I have been away, lighting has completely changed. I am thinking of starting with T5, and then later add LED for a hybrid... but I am open to any ideas.
I purchased 2 bags of reef grade live sand, and a Jebao DCQ-8000 for my return. I have HW-Marinemix salt for when I fill up the tank, most likely this coming weekend.
I have ordered all of the components, except for lights, and they are all in.
Unions, green PVC schedule 40 pipe to show which pipe in the back will be the full siphon for the herbie method I will run this go around. I have a few feet of silicone 1" pipe to help reduce the (if any at all) vibration from the DC pump.
Tomorrow I will be adding a single pane of 1/4" glass in to the 20g long sump. I will be doing this so that I can move anything around in the small sump, and it will give me a stable level in the return chamber to allow for a later ATO.
I have a Reef Creators overflow that I have installed, the 1200GPH box, 2 1" bulkheads. I drilled the tank a few weeks ago myself, along with pressure washing the reefsaver rock I received from Florida via
Amazon.
So for now, I have a tank drilled, a sump in the stand and the glass I cut this morning. I also removed the sharp edges with my dremel and a diamond bit to make sure I don't go to the ER.
The reason I am updating tonight, and took tomorrow off of work is because I won a huge gift from Zoanthids.com. I need to get up and running and cycled sooner than I was slowly working up to. My previous goal was to be cycled by my birthday in October and later in the month at Chicago's Reefapalooza.
I will add many pictures of my build and read your replies, and your comments on what to do better. I would like to have another 10 year old Reef along with other animals/amphibians.
