This is my first aquarium build. I did some DIY stuff like drilling the tank, making a sump, cutting my own plumbing and painting and finishing an old stand.
I made some major mistakes, but with each mistake I found a way to fix it and move foreword, learning, learning, learning.
I will take you through my build mistakes by mistake. First I drilled the tank a little sloppy. There were some tiny chips - no biggy. Next I got cheap bulkheads to my external overflow. After a water test I had to tighten each of them ever so gently, and sure enough a new drip would form, until finally no drips - I was really worried I would crack the whole tank.
Sure enough after everything was in place and full of my precious RODI water, a tiny tear drop of water leaked down. There was no going back for me at this point. I just rolled with it and to this day salt creep has been keeping the slow drip under control, but that salt creep has peeled away the rust oleum paint on the back of the aquarium in a tiny spot.
My next mistake was going with the eschops shadow box external overflow- after one month the acrylic bowed a bit and it looks a little funky. Oh well at least it is a bean animal. Which leads to the next mistake. The whole overflow was too low and the water level was like 3 inches from the trim!!!!
This mistake almost defeated me . At first I thought I could raise the water with getting more powerful return pumps- which another mistake was going with a soccer pump that was too small I think the 1.5, at least I had two. Later on I would replace one with a second hand Rio pump and just use the other as my back up- always running parallel in case the rio breaks.
After realizing it wasn’t the pump and my own incompetence, I decided to get a piece of acrylic that was black and cover the weirs of the overflow by half in order to raise the water level- the overflow box was rated for a much larger tank so there was little risk in doing this and so far I haven’t had any problems- other than a slight trickle from the water traveling further to get to the pipes - this was solved with epoxy behind the weirs.
Next mistake- I measured and cut the pvc, forgetting about the gate valve and the door to the stand wouldn’t close. Darn. Believe it or not I actually lived with this until well after the tank was cycled with fish - Big mistake! Because each time I would close the door it would put pressure on my already sketchy overflow. Oh yeah it is on carpet!
So when I decided to shut off the returns and put battery air stones in the tank for a whole day and a half while redoing the pvc and curing the glue, I failed to understand the importance of the air stone to reach all the way to the bottom of the sand. I lost my watchman goby But my other fish survived. Well the next mistake was getting a 4 wheel drive goby in a relatively new tank, sadly it also died after a week because the sand was too clean.
After all that the door finally closed and that felt good at least. Next mistake was not placing enough room in the sump for a filter sock or roller mat. I tried velcroing a strap to hang a sock around the two drain pipes in the first compartment but I don’t think it is worth the risk of putting weight on the pipes because of my overflow lol. I do like my use of double sided velcro in almost every aspect of my build- from supporting pipes to wire management.
My next major mistake goes back to my rock work - just a tad close to the sides of the glass- it is hard to clean in those areas but I can still get to it with a toothbrush. I also drilled holes in the rocks and got fiberglass driveway markers and fit it together like a puzzle - but when it came time to try and take a rock out - I forget why - maybe to catch a fish - sand got in the shallow hole and Never fit the same again, so I got epoxy and rubble to hide the Fiberglass.
Next mistake was the stand and sump in general - I would have liked a 20 breeder long to fit in the stand - well about the stand... I got it for free from my father in law because he wanted to get rid of his empty fish tank that was running empty with no fish for the entire time I knew him haha. He would do water changes in a tank with nothing!
So I had a stand with dimensions that fit a 30 gallon tank - and I couldn’t get a large tank because my wife said no, her main concern was how far it would protrude from the wall- a peninsula was out. So I went high. Thus the majestic 45 high. Now with all my shortcomings as a builder, plumber, and tank designer, the one thing I know is art and perspective . To this day I love my 45 high because I believe a taller tank looks vastly larger than a deeper tank. Plus you can make depth with little space by putting rocks slightly in front of another. Some will consider that a mistake though. As long as you can still touch the sand right?
Well I guess my mistake was getting a stand and trying to blindly buy a tank and sump to fit the stand. Success! The tank fit perfectly! The sump- not so much. I had to go for the 20 high breeder - reducing my space for a refugium and equipment - but thankfully allowing plenty of space for water to drain into even if my two check valves fail. So it wasn’t all bad. Anyways the refugium idea was a mistake.
Later on I had many a hard time trying to start a refugium too early- blasting it with a kessil A80 Tuna Sun and getting hair algae all in my sump and turf algae all in my display. Later I fixed that with Aquamesh and they did a good job at blocking out the light- actually it separated the light into cool Pink Floyd rainbows. I eventually tried to grow Chaeto twice but both times failed. Either from competing hair algae the first time, or other nutrient removal methods months later the second time- I was using lanthium and nopox together while trying to start another fuge. Now I just use GFO in a reactor mixed with carbon. That leads into the next mistake
My carbon gfo reactor Run off water also powered my chiller. I figured I could reduce the flow by first running it into a reactor and then into the chiller and save a pump. Disaster struck when the GFO was improperly mixed with the carbon and solidified, reducing the flow to a trickle and causing the chiller to go crazy. Don’t worry I eventually got the dedicated chiller pump and sacrificed my refugium space to do so. Priorities.
There are many many more minor mistakes such as letting my phosphates get too high while autofeeding way to many pellets to my tank when it was just a Fowler early on and I was on vacation. I think this has made my rocks leech phosphates to this day. I have to dose lanthinum and still use gfo. My point is I could go on and on.
The grand daddy number one mistake of all time was kalkwasser in the ato. I know at least I had an ato- a nice one too - tunze osmolator. Not only did Inbliw through a pump, it was messy, but worst of all my alk would swing like crazy trying to tune it. By this time I was going coral crazy. I was attempting to dose way too early without really watching consumption. I just thought I could add the right amount and the tank would be good. Wrong.
All my corals pretty much died. I had some large colonies I bought, a cool orange pavona, birdsnest, branching cyphastrea, rainbow acan, meat coral, a scoly, duncan, candy canes, elegance, Montipora digi, red monti cap, a maxima clam, a feather duster worm. The only thing that survived was my pink Goni, my leather hand, and my neon sinularia-I even had a mushroom die. That was absolutely brutal.
I got to the point where I gave up in my head. I continued water changes but stopped testing. My tank looked like just rocks again. I probably lost a thousand dollars. I felt so stupid for relying on water evaporation to replenish elements that I had no idea how to gauge what my tank needed. I took advice and misused it, cherry picking bits and pieces without thinking about how it pertained to my personal situation and environment.
Then I made an impulse buy and bought a huge carpet anemone to cover up the emptiness. I figured I don’t care if it moves around, I have nothing. I will just have an anemone and softie tank. Well it ate my Mandarin. I loved that mandarin because he was super fat, I was buying copepods every week, and he was also eating mysis. That really hurt. Then it ate my cardinal fish, then it ate snails, many snails, a conch, and finally a clownfish. That was the last straw I finally pulled out the rocks to get him out only days ago. Thankfully he was attached to the glass so he is fine- I got some credit for him and my tank is exorcised if that demon!
My tank is back on track now. I started testing again in march, found my consumption, started dosing two part with dosing pumps. Perameters are doing great. My algae is finally going away. Ihave been dosing vibrant every week. My sand looks great. My new conch is the man! Once I felt comfortable again I started getting new corals in May and I haven’t had too many issues yet except one torch who was getting stung and had to be moved. I am seeing crazy growth, my Goni took off! my tank is a year since it finished its cycle. It is still a ways away from being established but it feels like it is maturing.
Each one of my mistakes adds a quarKiness to the build and instead of getting annoyed by it, I am proud of them because it is what makes it unique. Each mistake was a day that I overcame and learned from. My tank works but it is not perfect- I don’t think I would want it to be. It wouldn't feel the same.
In all of that there are things I feel I did right from the beginning...
I chose to build my own battery back up.
I painted the inside of the stand with white epoxy paint.
I have two return pumps and two check valves.
I chose live sand and cured my dry rock.
I put a ph controller and probe in the sump back when I had the kalk (didn’t really help then but I can easily check ph now)
I went with an ATO from the beginning
I spent a lot on test kits and test religiously
I got a 4 stage RODI from the very beginning and have been really good about replacing the sediment filter
I went with kessil lights (but I bought one second hand which I regret now)
I made some major mistakes, but with each mistake I found a way to fix it and move foreword, learning, learning, learning.
I will take you through my build mistakes by mistake. First I drilled the tank a little sloppy. There were some tiny chips - no biggy. Next I got cheap bulkheads to my external overflow. After a water test I had to tighten each of them ever so gently, and sure enough a new drip would form, until finally no drips - I was really worried I would crack the whole tank.
Sure enough after everything was in place and full of my precious RODI water, a tiny tear drop of water leaked down. There was no going back for me at this point. I just rolled with it and to this day salt creep has been keeping the slow drip under control, but that salt creep has peeled away the rust oleum paint on the back of the aquarium in a tiny spot.
My next mistake was going with the eschops shadow box external overflow- after one month the acrylic bowed a bit and it looks a little funky. Oh well at least it is a bean animal. Which leads to the next mistake. The whole overflow was too low and the water level was like 3 inches from the trim!!!!
This mistake almost defeated me . At first I thought I could raise the water with getting more powerful return pumps- which another mistake was going with a soccer pump that was too small I think the 1.5, at least I had two. Later on I would replace one with a second hand Rio pump and just use the other as my back up- always running parallel in case the rio breaks.
After realizing it wasn’t the pump and my own incompetence, I decided to get a piece of acrylic that was black and cover the weirs of the overflow by half in order to raise the water level- the overflow box was rated for a much larger tank so there was little risk in doing this and so far I haven’t had any problems- other than a slight trickle from the water traveling further to get to the pipes - this was solved with epoxy behind the weirs.
Next mistake- I measured and cut the pvc, forgetting about the gate valve and the door to the stand wouldn’t close. Darn. Believe it or not I actually lived with this until well after the tank was cycled with fish - Big mistake! Because each time I would close the door it would put pressure on my already sketchy overflow. Oh yeah it is on carpet!
So when I decided to shut off the returns and put battery air stones in the tank for a whole day and a half while redoing the pvc and curing the glue, I failed to understand the importance of the air stone to reach all the way to the bottom of the sand. I lost my watchman goby But my other fish survived. Well the next mistake was getting a 4 wheel drive goby in a relatively new tank, sadly it also died after a week because the sand was too clean.
After all that the door finally closed and that felt good at least. Next mistake was not placing enough room in the sump for a filter sock or roller mat. I tried velcroing a strap to hang a sock around the two drain pipes in the first compartment but I don’t think it is worth the risk of putting weight on the pipes because of my overflow lol. I do like my use of double sided velcro in almost every aspect of my build- from supporting pipes to wire management.
My next major mistake goes back to my rock work - just a tad close to the sides of the glass- it is hard to clean in those areas but I can still get to it with a toothbrush. I also drilled holes in the rocks and got fiberglass driveway markers and fit it together like a puzzle - but when it came time to try and take a rock out - I forget why - maybe to catch a fish - sand got in the shallow hole and Never fit the same again, so I got epoxy and rubble to hide the Fiberglass.
Next mistake was the stand and sump in general - I would have liked a 20 breeder long to fit in the stand - well about the stand... I got it for free from my father in law because he wanted to get rid of his empty fish tank that was running empty with no fish for the entire time I knew him haha. He would do water changes in a tank with nothing!
So I had a stand with dimensions that fit a 30 gallon tank - and I couldn’t get a large tank because my wife said no, her main concern was how far it would protrude from the wall- a peninsula was out. So I went high. Thus the majestic 45 high. Now with all my shortcomings as a builder, plumber, and tank designer, the one thing I know is art and perspective . To this day I love my 45 high because I believe a taller tank looks vastly larger than a deeper tank. Plus you can make depth with little space by putting rocks slightly in front of another. Some will consider that a mistake though. As long as you can still touch the sand right?
Well I guess my mistake was getting a stand and trying to blindly buy a tank and sump to fit the stand. Success! The tank fit perfectly! The sump- not so much. I had to go for the 20 high breeder - reducing my space for a refugium and equipment - but thankfully allowing plenty of space for water to drain into even if my two check valves fail. So it wasn’t all bad. Anyways the refugium idea was a mistake.
Later on I had many a hard time trying to start a refugium too early- blasting it with a kessil A80 Tuna Sun and getting hair algae all in my sump and turf algae all in my display. Later I fixed that with Aquamesh and they did a good job at blocking out the light- actually it separated the light into cool Pink Floyd rainbows. I eventually tried to grow Chaeto twice but both times failed. Either from competing hair algae the first time, or other nutrient removal methods months later the second time- I was using lanthium and nopox together while trying to start another fuge. Now I just use GFO in a reactor mixed with carbon. That leads into the next mistake
My carbon gfo reactor Run off water also powered my chiller. I figured I could reduce the flow by first running it into a reactor and then into the chiller and save a pump. Disaster struck when the GFO was improperly mixed with the carbon and solidified, reducing the flow to a trickle and causing the chiller to go crazy. Don’t worry I eventually got the dedicated chiller pump and sacrificed my refugium space to do so. Priorities.
There are many many more minor mistakes such as letting my phosphates get too high while autofeeding way to many pellets to my tank when it was just a Fowler early on and I was on vacation. I think this has made my rocks leech phosphates to this day. I have to dose lanthinum and still use gfo. My point is I could go on and on.
The grand daddy number one mistake of all time was kalkwasser in the ato. I know at least I had an ato- a nice one too - tunze osmolator. Not only did Inbliw through a pump, it was messy, but worst of all my alk would swing like crazy trying to tune it. By this time I was going coral crazy. I was attempting to dose way too early without really watching consumption. I just thought I could add the right amount and the tank would be good. Wrong.
All my corals pretty much died. I had some large colonies I bought, a cool orange pavona, birdsnest, branching cyphastrea, rainbow acan, meat coral, a scoly, duncan, candy canes, elegance, Montipora digi, red monti cap, a maxima clam, a feather duster worm. The only thing that survived was my pink Goni, my leather hand, and my neon sinularia-I even had a mushroom die. That was absolutely brutal.
I got to the point where I gave up in my head. I continued water changes but stopped testing. My tank looked like just rocks again. I probably lost a thousand dollars. I felt so stupid for relying on water evaporation to replenish elements that I had no idea how to gauge what my tank needed. I took advice and misused it, cherry picking bits and pieces without thinking about how it pertained to my personal situation and environment.
Then I made an impulse buy and bought a huge carpet anemone to cover up the emptiness. I figured I don’t care if it moves around, I have nothing. I will just have an anemone and softie tank. Well it ate my Mandarin. I loved that mandarin because he was super fat, I was buying copepods every week, and he was also eating mysis. That really hurt. Then it ate my cardinal fish, then it ate snails, many snails, a conch, and finally a clownfish. That was the last straw I finally pulled out the rocks to get him out only days ago. Thankfully he was attached to the glass so he is fine- I got some credit for him and my tank is exorcised if that demon!
My tank is back on track now. I started testing again in march, found my consumption, started dosing two part with dosing pumps. Perameters are doing great. My algae is finally going away. Ihave been dosing vibrant every week. My sand looks great. My new conch is the man! Once I felt comfortable again I started getting new corals in May and I haven’t had too many issues yet except one torch who was getting stung and had to be moved. I am seeing crazy growth, my Goni took off! my tank is a year since it finished its cycle. It is still a ways away from being established but it feels like it is maturing.
Each one of my mistakes adds a quarKiness to the build and instead of getting annoyed by it, I am proud of them because it is what makes it unique. Each mistake was a day that I overcame and learned from. My tank works but it is not perfect- I don’t think I would want it to be. It wouldn't feel the same.
In all of that there are things I feel I did right from the beginning...
I chose to build my own battery back up.
I painted the inside of the stand with white epoxy paint.
I have two return pumps and two check valves.
I chose live sand and cured my dry rock.
I put a ph controller and probe in the sump back when I had the kalk (didn’t really help then but I can easily check ph now)
I went with an ATO from the beginning
I spent a lot on test kits and test religiously
I got a 4 stage RODI from the very beginning and have been really good about replacing the sediment filter
I went with kessil lights (but I bought one second hand which I regret now)
