Bear's 125G build - A year in the planning

Bear Necessities · Dec 3, 2017

Hello everyone!

So about a year ago I came across a listing on craigslist for a 125 gallon acrylic tank. They wanted $800 for it so I passed it up. Next day the person reached back out and offered it to me for $400 if I could grab it that day. Who could say no? When I got there it was still full of water and substrate and decorations so I had to spend close to 2 hours draining it and taking everything out. Got it brought it home and now a year later I am wrapping up the final steps as I finally had the budget and time to actually work on it.

I have a video playlist on youtube showing you everything that I have done thus far from when I got the tank to the plumbing I am doing now. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkikW46Dd8FJZtoHDx1H7bHbKDPNDteUY

( I have a bunch of other videos on there too showing off my freshwater tanks if you're interested. I got quite a few. )

The previous owner didn't take really good care of it. It also was not drilled so I have spent a lot of time making sure I don't mess this up. You can kinda see a extra acrylic sheet on the top of the tank there. I used some weldon 4 to bind it over a crack. Not sure how they managed that but I wanted to take extra precautions just incase. I also was using a vinegar and water solution to clean up the tank a bit but I am going to be painting the back of it black and buffering the heck out of it.

So. many. scratches. But they're not bad enough that I can't do something about it. You can also see the paper they left on the bottom of the tank that I will have to get off somehow.

When I decided to start building it I knew I wanted a sump, larger the better because it would give me more room for error and more room to add on to the system if I wanted. I went with the Triton 44 of course. However it didn't fit. Those support are too big, I literally needed 3/4 of an inch to fit it not to mention those supports made it impossible to get anything under the stand. The front have doors but they're not big enough to allow anything to slip inside. Like I had realllly hard time fitting even a 20L as it was just too long to fit into the spaces given.

To give you another view of what I was working with.
I am not a handy person by any means so this is an experiment, a risk and an adventure for me.

I went to home depot and got me some wood boards, they were about half the thickness of the previous supports. I bet it would have been just fine replace three supports with these thinner boards but I wanted to make sure I gave adequate support for the long term and decided to play it safe.

So after tearing it all apart I managed to test the sump out.

It fits perfect, in fact I have enough room to wiggle it back and forth! haha. My entire plan here was to allow this thing to fit but to also allow me to remove the supports when I need to if I have to take this thing apart down the road. So 2 of the supports in the back are screwed in place, 2 of them are not and my hopes is that they will be just fine when the weight of the tank is resting on the stand.

I took some smaller piece of wood here and there to make sure things would stay in place. I was trying to make it so I could remove any of them any time I wanted by building 'guide holders' for each support. But I felt that was not really needed by the time I got all the supports wedged into place. I am no engineer or carpenter but I felt I had outdone myself with this. /

Next. Plumbing.

As of today this is were I have left it. I need to go to homedepot and get a few more fittings to make myself a manifold in the event I want to add things later and I need to get a slip to thread fitting or some flex tubing for the return pump. (I have not cemented anything in place just yet.

any ways, I am going to be making a homedepot run tomorrow on the way home to wrap some of this up, I will be adding another union to the emergency drain so when I hard plumb all of this for a water/pump test I can take everything apart with enough ease to move it inside when all is said and done. I may add another union under the check valve as well so all of the plumbing can be removed but leave the top portions on without jeopardizing ruining anything.

Overall I think I may have this up and running in the next few weeks at the earliest. Working a full time job with freelancing on top make it sometimes really hard to get time to do this kinda stuff.

I will have to supply a list of all the other goodies I got in my next post perhaps. I did quite a bit of shopping over the black Friday sales.

Ashish Patel · Dec 3, 2017

Good looking setup!! Good luck with the build

Maritimer · Dec 3, 2017

Sometimes, you gotta work around - and it looks like your workaround works. That's a sweet sump setup!

~Bruce

Aaron-A2 · Dec 4, 2017

My dude! Looking forward to seeing the progress

sneub · Dec 4, 2017

Wow, nice find on craigslist!

Bear Necessities · Dec 31, 2017

Nearing the end of the month. I got a lot done. At this stage I polished it up and then decided to pain the back black. That unfortunately did not yield the results I wanted. I was using the Novus system, I had thought I got it all off but it seems I was a bit too impatient. The specs were hard to see at the time so it was a careless mistake. However I was able to remove all of the paint (just used a black latex paint) and it basically just pealed off.

Once I got all of the paint off I just was not happy with the state of the tank. Scratches and those specs left over from the novus. I could have just spent time with the polish pads and cleaned it off really well but I decided to go a different route and sand it all down. I used a 1000 grit, then another pass with a 2000 grit, then I ditched the novus stuff because to be honest, I didn't care for it. I used a automotive head light cleaner kit I got at an auto supply shop and that kit worked like a charm. I then repainted the back and it's beyond smooth and rather perfect. I will admit, this process was not fast, fun or easy. Sanding it down was not the worst, polishing it was. It consumed a good day and a half of just sitting with the polish and my drill adapter polish pad. Eventually it got to the point it looked good enough for me.

I decided to go with a Bean Animal Overflow style. I am not sure if I got it right, I am still playing with it and the posts/videos etc I have seen explaining it, do a poor job explaining exactly what I need to do. I think I got it right but I could be way off base. It seems to work just fine but I need to do some adjusting of the flow and what not.

Not perfect but I am happy with the end results. I then hard plumbed everything and a week later I managed to water test it. Water testing it consumed several hours and I am still not 100% on my fine tuning of the flow rate, but I had to bring it in the same day, so I had to drain it and dry it off as the weather here in KC has been anything but friendly. It's getting well below zero at night and I didn't want to risk a sorda wet tank freeze. I brought everything in side and set it up the following day.

I still have some touchup to do on the stand. I nailed in the extra support beams but that left some uglyness on the front, I have it sanded down I just need to do some touch up paint and then it will be good. My next challenge is to fill it partly and make sure it's level. My house is anything but level. I do have both the stand and the tank sitting on some neoprene foam. I am hoping that helps level it out some but it may not be enough. So while I work through that I also need to figure out what I want to do with my lights. I can either hang them or look into building myself a rail system. I have 3 Ocean Revive T247 lights. Totally open to any ideas anyone has on that front. I am def taking my time with this build as I want it done right and there is a lot of time, money and effort bring put into this and not to mention I would die if it leaked. I have most of everything else I need waiting to be put together and installed. I have a closet to the right of the tank I plan on cleaning out and using for storage and my RODI water storage area. Also I was planning on putting this tank by the window in this room but it's been so dang cold I would worry about how that would effect the tank and the heaters I plan on having on this system. This seemed like a much better option. That and the bear kind of makes it all the more epic. As bears normally do.

The picture below shows some water on the tank, there was some left over in the return nozzles that kinda got everywhere. I had to do some innovative manurers to get this thing inside this room. One step closer. It's hard to believe I am going to have a reef soon!

I try to also do regular video updates to check me out on youtube or other social media.

Youtuber: https://www.youtube.com/c/BearNecessitiesOfLife
Reef Build: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/bears-125g-build-a-year-in-the-planning.341627/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andy.bear.necessities/

JV17 · Jan 1, 2018

Looks like you're on your way to a legendary build. Looking forward to seeing your continued progress.

Brew12 · Jan 10, 2018

Was looking through your thread because of a different post and noticed this. You may want to make the emergency pipe and the trickle drain both a little higher. I had to do the same thing with my synergy overflow. The drop from the front of the weir will cause noise if the trickle drain is too low. You may not want to change it now, but if it is noisy when the water flows into the overflow its an easy fix.