Hello everyone! Tomorrow marks my next step in my reefing journey. Currently I have a 9gal Fluval Flex setup as a nano. Its running an upgraded pump and a Kessil A80 light. Its a good looking tank, however, the stand it's sitting on is starting to swell from the water spills and I can see the top starting to bow. Before I end up with a disaster on my hands I needed to move the tank to a new, more sturdy stand. I knew as I built the stand I wanted two things. 1) A top large enough to work around the tank and set my tools/food. 2) A waterproof top that was easy to clean drips and spill from. I work for a quartz, granite, and marble countertop fabricator, so I knew instantly what the best choice for a top would be. So I ventured out back after work one day and found a few decent size scrap pieces of quartz and saved them from the garbage. Later on I decided on one piece that was quite a bit larger than I really needed but it so happens that I figured one day I may upgrade to a larger tank. So here is the stand all finished up.
Once I completed the stand I had some electrical and trim work to finish up in the corner that the tank was getting moved to permanently. (I have a 93 gal marineland cube that I will be placing where the tank is currently. I can't wait to start that build and I will make sure I make a build thread for that as well.) Once everything was completed I got the stand shimmed level and used some silicone to secure the top to the stand. Last night I was planning out the move in my head and I realized then just how thin the glass on the fluval flex tanks are. (many issues with these tanks cracking or the bottom seal failing) My worst fear is to have a cracked tank. I was talking to my fiance about it and as a solution we decided that it would be best to move from that tank to another. After giving up on trying to convince her that it was time to take my 65 gal tank with sump out of storage, and then going down the list of a 40 breeder, 20 tal, 20 long, and a few 10 gallon tanks. At which point it dawned on me that I have one of two problems. A tank hording problem, or too many empty tanks problem. You decide lol She finally agreed to let me use my 20 gallon long. Which works great as that was technically what the stand was designed around from the beginning. I just didn't expect to move to a larger tank for another 6 months to a year.
Now the issue in my mind at this point, was, how do I set this up? I hate having filters and everything stuck to the back wall of the tank and out of the top. My tanks are located in my office/den so I definitely want them to look nice and be as quiet as possible. I didn't want to go though the hassle of doing a sump on a 20 gallon, so I landed on AIO. I love the fluval flex but you can tell its not optimized for a marine aquarium. So to Menards I went to look for some acrylic. All they had in the sizing I need was either smoked, or white. I decided on the white as I thought it matched the stand and didn't want any issues caused by the transparency. A few cuts here and there with a touch of silicone, I went to bed with a tank that looked like this.
The display ended up being about 14.2 gallons. The chambers are 4 inches deep. The plan is to make a media basket to hold filter floss, purigen, and carbon. The second chamber I made large enough to hold a nano skimmer or to use to grow some cheato. I'm leaning towards cheato currently.
This afternoon I spent a few hours getting a few more things ready. I knew I needed a screen top right away from a few hard lessons in the past. So I whipped one up out of some white screen frame and bird netting doubled up to make smaller holes. I then took another piece of acrylic and cut it to fit over the chamber section and added two slots for cords. To hide the chamber section from from view I asked my fiance to cut me some matte black vinyl with her cricut. The black/white theme is strong now, but I'm really liking it and I can't wait to see what it looks like with some white sand.
With that taken care of, I turned my thoughts towards light. My A80 which was just fine for my little 9gal fluval, was not going to work on this tank. The goal is to be able to thow any coral I would want into the tank and be able to care for it properly. I then remembered I had a light that came with my 93gal when I bought it. I had plans on throwing it out as I remembered it was pretty gross. To which I thought, its probably a diamond in the rough. I'm pretty dang handy so I thought I'd open it up and give it a good cleaning.
annnnddddd..... that's where I stopped. For two reasons. One, sick nasty. Two, its at this point that I realized its not dimmable and that I'd more than likely fry my corals with this light. I knew I'd need adjust ability. So back into the trash pile it went.
So that's where I'm at now. The tank is running a leak test behind me and I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to light this bad boy for relatively cheap. I've been looking into a used AI Hydra 26HD or an Ocean Revive T247. The OR T247 is way too powerfull but I like the idea of mounting it up really high and not having to move it when I work in the tank. Plus its fully programmable which means I can turn it down so I don't fry my corals. Any other suggestions are welcome in this department. I'm hoping to come up with a light in the next few days. For the time being I'll be using my Kessil A360x which will be going over my 93gal cube with some T5's once that time comes.
I will move everything over from the other tank tomorrow morning, but I do have just a few more things to sort out before I'm able to do so. I need to drill a larger hole for the return plumbing, and I need to add another tooth to my overflow weir some how. I can get the water levels to balance out, but if a snail were to block one tooth, the pump would run dry. Which means my weir doesn't flow a large enough volume of water. I'd say by looking at it, the water level is about 3/4 the way up the teeth. So by the time the water level would rise enough to equalize the flow, the pump runs out of water. To make things worse, the pump I'm using for my leak test is less powerful than the pump I'm going to be using. So I'm not sure what I'll do to solve this, as taking a saw to it while its siliconed in is just asking for trouble. I'll sleep on it and figure something out.
Once I completed the stand I had some electrical and trim work to finish up in the corner that the tank was getting moved to permanently. (I have a 93 gal marineland cube that I will be placing where the tank is currently. I can't wait to start that build and I will make sure I make a build thread for that as well.) Once everything was completed I got the stand shimmed level and used some silicone to secure the top to the stand. Last night I was planning out the move in my head and I realized then just how thin the glass on the fluval flex tanks are. (many issues with these tanks cracking or the bottom seal failing) My worst fear is to have a cracked tank. I was talking to my fiance about it and as a solution we decided that it would be best to move from that tank to another. After giving up on trying to convince her that it was time to take my 65 gal tank with sump out of storage, and then going down the list of a 40 breeder, 20 tal, 20 long, and a few 10 gallon tanks. At which point it dawned on me that I have one of two problems. A tank hording problem, or too many empty tanks problem. You decide lol She finally agreed to let me use my 20 gallon long. Which works great as that was technically what the stand was designed around from the beginning. I just didn't expect to move to a larger tank for another 6 months to a year.
Now the issue in my mind at this point, was, how do I set this up? I hate having filters and everything stuck to the back wall of the tank and out of the top. My tanks are located in my office/den so I definitely want them to look nice and be as quiet as possible. I didn't want to go though the hassle of doing a sump on a 20 gallon, so I landed on AIO. I love the fluval flex but you can tell its not optimized for a marine aquarium. So to Menards I went to look for some acrylic. All they had in the sizing I need was either smoked, or white. I decided on the white as I thought it matched the stand and didn't want any issues caused by the transparency. A few cuts here and there with a touch of silicone, I went to bed with a tank that looked like this.
The display ended up being about 14.2 gallons. The chambers are 4 inches deep. The plan is to make a media basket to hold filter floss, purigen, and carbon. The second chamber I made large enough to hold a nano skimmer or to use to grow some cheato. I'm leaning towards cheato currently.
This afternoon I spent a few hours getting a few more things ready. I knew I needed a screen top right away from a few hard lessons in the past. So I whipped one up out of some white screen frame and bird netting doubled up to make smaller holes. I then took another piece of acrylic and cut it to fit over the chamber section and added two slots for cords. To hide the chamber section from from view I asked my fiance to cut me some matte black vinyl with her cricut. The black/white theme is strong now, but I'm really liking it and I can't wait to see what it looks like with some white sand.
With that taken care of, I turned my thoughts towards light. My A80 which was just fine for my little 9gal fluval, was not going to work on this tank. The goal is to be able to thow any coral I would want into the tank and be able to care for it properly. I then remembered I had a light that came with my 93gal when I bought it. I had plans on throwing it out as I remembered it was pretty gross. To which I thought, its probably a diamond in the rough. I'm pretty dang handy so I thought I'd open it up and give it a good cleaning.
annnnddddd..... that's where I stopped. For two reasons. One, sick nasty. Two, its at this point that I realized its not dimmable and that I'd more than likely fry my corals with this light. I knew I'd need adjust ability. So back into the trash pile it went.
So that's where I'm at now. The tank is running a leak test behind me and I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to light this bad boy for relatively cheap. I've been looking into a used AI Hydra 26HD or an Ocean Revive T247. The OR T247 is way too powerfull but I like the idea of mounting it up really high and not having to move it when I work in the tank. Plus its fully programmable which means I can turn it down so I don't fry my corals. Any other suggestions are welcome in this department. I'm hoping to come up with a light in the next few days. For the time being I'll be using my Kessil A360x which will be going over my 93gal cube with some T5's once that time comes.
I will move everything over from the other tank tomorrow morning, but I do have just a few more things to sort out before I'm able to do so. I need to drill a larger hole for the return plumbing, and I need to add another tooth to my overflow weir some how. I can get the water levels to balance out, but if a snail were to block one tooth, the pump would run dry. Which means my weir doesn't flow a large enough volume of water. I'd say by looking at it, the water level is about 3/4 the way up the teeth. So by the time the water level would rise enough to equalize the flow, the pump runs out of water. To make things worse, the pump I'm using for my leak test is less powerful than the pump I'm going to be using. So I'm not sure what I'll do to solve this, as taking a saw to it while its siliconed in is just asking for trouble. I'll sleep on it and figure something out.
The fiance deems it over excessive in size and volume. LOL (Insert, that's what she said joke)
