75 Gallon to 120 Gallon Upgrade

[thewbell]

I recently picked up a 120 extra high (60x18x26) on CL to replace a 75 I have had running for 2.5 years. The 75 was in desperate need of a new drain setup and would require a coast to coast overflow due to the previous owner drilling holes in the corners of the back pane. Since I would have to tear the tank down to do this I decided to shop for a 5' or 6' tank and open the door for more fish. After a few weeks of looking I came across the Marineland tank below. It was set up as a freshwater tank so it came with a ton of gravel, undergravel filter, decorations, FW lights, canister filter, air pumps and a Vortex diatom filter. The FW accessories will be swapped over to my current 75 gallon after the livestock is moved out and my wife's turtles and guppies will be moving into the 75.

The tank did not come with a stand and I just happened to have a few sticks of 2" .120 wall square tubing, C4x5.4 channel and a welder laying around so I went to work building a stand for the tank. The goal was to have the center of the stand open so I would have maximum access to the sump and based on my calculations and a SolidWorks model (yes I am an engineer )the 4" channel with gussets would provide the needed strength to accomplish this.

After welding the stand was painted white and I installed some adjustable feet to level it before moving it inside.

During the last week plumbed the bean animal drain and return lines and installed the 40B sump before filling the tank with RO/DI water for a leak test. After the successful leak test I added my salt and sand and the tank has been running with some spare heaters the last few days to bring it up to temp.

I will be moving my livestock and rocks from the 75 into the tank tomorrow and will be borrowing the curve 5 skimmer from the 75 while I wait for my new D700 skimmer to arrive next week. The equipment list for the new tank is as follows and most everything is either here or on its way.

• Coral Box D700 skimmer (had to try it out for the price)
• Reefbreeders Photon 48 long
• Jebao DCS-12000 return pump
• 2 Jebao RW-8 powerheads
• 2 Eheim Jager 250 watt heaters
• 140lbs Marco Rocks sand
• 80lbs live rock from 75 gallon

The sump will have a refugium in the far left compartment fed by the open channel drain of the overflow. I also installed a manifold in the return with 3 ball valves so I can run another line to the refugium for additional flow if needed along with carbon and GFO reacors as needed.

I will hopefully post some more pictures of the successful swap tomorrow!

 

[dbl]

Great upgrade and your new system looks great. What are your plans for skinning the stand? Or are you leaving it open?

 

[thewbell]

I am in the process of building some cabinet faces from poplar and it will be painted. So far the three sides and canopy are complete but my router cannot handle the rail and stile bits I want to use for the doors so a new router will be here this weekend. The skin will be held on by magnets with some alignment blocks to ensure it goes on level. I will post some pictures of the skin when I can get back to working on it.

 

[thewbell]

The tank is set up and all of the livestock moved. Added a ball of chaeto to the fuge and ended up with a green torch coral too.

Now I just have to finish the cabinet doors and get the cabinet painted.

 

[thewbell]

Everything made in through the night and I noticed some odd but good behavior from my coral beauty. She used to stay in the rocks in the 75 and only come out briefly or to eat but in the new tank she spends 90% of the time swimming in the open in front of the rocks. So far the torch has opened up to about 75% of the size it was at the store and I have tweaked my flow as it was being blasted pretty good initially and that seemed to help.

 

[dbl]

Everyone loves a success story.

 

[thewbell]

Got to work today on making the doors for the cabinet and got very well acquainted with my new router. Had some sears gift cards so I upgraded the 30 year old 1/4" shank router I had for a 1/2" shank to handle the big bits to cut the cabinet doors. At the end of the day I have a pile of rails and stiles and one completed side panel. I finished up the frames for the base and canopy a week ago so all that is left is gluing the rest of the doors together and mounting the hinges then paint.

The goal for tomorrow is to have all of the doors glued together and the magnets mounted in the panels that go around the base.

 

[dbl]

Looking good.

 

[thewbell]

Getting closer. All doors are done and one side is complete and ready for paint.

The side panel is held on with 3 rare earth magnets and the front will have 6. Next on the list is to mount the rest of the doors and get the rest of the magnets installed then enlist my wife's help to paint everything.

Also got a 7.5 gallon trash can I'm gonna use for an ATO for now. Debating if I am going to end up dosing 2 part or not and making an ATO reservoir to maximize my space.

 

[thewbell]

Went out of town for a few days and the ups man made a visit and dropped off my new skimmer. It is a coral box d700 and so far I am very impressed. It replaced the Curve 5 skimmer I had from the 75 and absolutely dwarfs it. The skimmer is running at half power now to break in but so far it seems extremely easy to tune.

All of the fish have gotten used to their new home now and my torch has also really started to open up.

 

[thewbell]

Nothing too exciting has happened over the last few days other than the skimmer breaking in and moving the torch. I also made plans to go to Fragniappe (frag swap/event in south Louisiana) and will be looking at some more corals. I have not decided what I want yet but I really like a lot of the LPS corals and some of the SPS so I may go that route. I have pretty much decided an Apex is in my future and will most likely be purchasing one in the next few months. Here are a few pictures of how everything is doing.

Also, the skimmer is working great so far. The only negative I have seen on it is that it releases some bubbles into the sump. Mine does this to some extent on high but my bubble trap takes care of it. It took a few days to settle down but I have it in about 5-6" of water and the pump on high and it has been solid for 2 days so far.

 

[Anirban]

Getting closer. All doors are done and one side is complete and ready for paint.

The side panel is held on with 3 rare earth magnets and the front will have 6. Next on the list is to mount the rest of the doors and get the rest of the magnets installed then enlist my wife's help to paint everything.

Also got a 7.5 gallon trash can I'm gonna use for an ATO for now. Debating if I am going to end up dosing 2 part or not and making an ATO reservoir to maximize my space.

Really liked the idea of holding panels using magnets. I am also looking for that kind of arrangement for my build. Can you please show how you did that using magnets and details of magnets which you used. How you fixed the wooden panel on that metal frame?

 

[thewbell]

Really liked the idea of holding panels using magnets. I am also looking for that kind of arrangement for my build. Can you please show how you did that using magnets and details of magnets which you used. How you fixed the wooden panel on that metal frame?

I just put the last coat of paint on the panels and will mount the doors tomorrow. The side panels have 3ea 1-3/8" holes counter bored deep enough to sink my 35mmx5mm magnets right at the surface of the wood. The front panel had 6 magnets since it is much larger. I have not tested the front with the full weight yet by the one side worked great. Here are a few pictures of the magnets installed.

The magnets have a countersunk hole in the middle and I have some small SS screws I had laying around to hold them in. I bought the magnets on Amazon for $20 per 4-pack and used a total of 3 packs.
Sunkee 4pcs 35x5mm /1.37"x0.19" strong round magnets with countersunk hole 5mm /0.2" rare earth neodymium magnet https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0185EPYGM/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awd_u6HYwbSW3YHT4

 

[Anirban]

I just put the last coat of paint on the panels and will mount the doors tomorrow. The side panels have 3ea 1-3/8" holes counter bored deep enough to sink my 35mmx5mm magnets right at the surface of the wood. The front panel had 6 magnets since it is much larger. I have not tested the front with the full weight yet by the one side worked great. Here are a few pictures of the magnets installed.

The magnets have a countersunk hole in the middle and I have some small SS screws I had laying around to hold them in. I bought the magnets on Amazon for $20 per 4-pack and used a total of 3 packs.
Sunkee 4pcs 35x5mm /1.37"x0.19" strong round magnets with countersunk hole 5mm /0.2" rare earth neodymium magnet https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0185EPYGM/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awd_u6HYwbSW3YHT4

Thanks for the information. Please post some pictures once you fix them on the stand.

 

[thewbell]

Well the magnets on the front panel are not enough to hold the weight up. The panel sticks and is difficult to remove but slides down the steel.

I installed the doors on the front panel and the canopy today and started on the canopy piano hinge. I will try to finish it up this week and do the final adjustments on the doors to get them level.

 

[thewbell]

Got the canopy installed and light hung. The only thing left now is to put the hinges on the side doors when they come in and stick the panels on.

As a side note, my calcium, alkalinity and mag test kit came in today and I took some base numbers. I overshot on the mag but by my best guess it was 1400ish. Calcium was 440 and alkalinity was 9.8. I jumped the gun last week and have added 4 tsp of kalk to 5 gallons of ATO water twice and this has kept my ph at 8.2. I am going to monitor the calcium and alkalinity over the next week to see if they move at all since I just did a 25 gallon water change today.

 

[dbl]

Really came out nice...great work.

 

[thewbell]

Everything has been nice and smooth so I added a new fish. Ended up picking up a foxface and he is getting used to his new home.

I was worried about him for a while since he turned almost solid black and hid for two days but now he is out and swimming around.

Planning on going to Fragniappe next weekend and will pick up a few new corals and an Apex so next week should be fun. Any suggestions on corals??? I am thinking a few torch/frogspawn/hammer corals in varying colors to keep around my torch. Other than that I know I want a BTA and a brain of some kind. I am thinking I will do primarily LPS and maybe some SPS.

 

[dbl]

Normal behavior for the foxface. It will probably change colors whenever it gets scared. Very cool fish with really odd behaviors...lol.

Coral choices seem fine but you may want to hold off on the BTA until the tank stabilizes for a while. Some will say 6 months. Stability is key, for more things than just the BTA!

 

[thewbell]

I keep telling myself to hold off on the BTA so we will see how strong my will power is. Haha. I figured I should be safer than a new system as I used all of the rocks from my 75 with new sand so I did not experience a cycle at all, but who knows.