Lowstorm
Well-Known Member
This will take.. a LONG time to come through, but I've seen other tank build threads take a long time too.
I don't have much in the way of eye candy yet.. just a few pics I'll throw up over time.
Anyway-I'll start at the beginning.
Hello, I'm Jodi, and I'm an addic... wait, wrong place
When I was a kid back in the 80's and 90's, I grew up on a farm with exotic animals thanks to my dad. And also thanks to my dad, he kept fish. Well, a few fish. We of course had the shiners we kept in the horse trough for fishing. But he did have a 29 gallon with angels in the kitchen. He eventually 'upgraded' to piranhas. Super fun watching them tear apart those shiners from the horse trough!!!
When I went to college (at this point I was a single mom in 2002) I decided, since I couldn't have any pets other than a fish tank-to get into reef. So my first reef tank was a 55 gallon with a 250 watt metal halide, hob skimmer, couple of maxijets, some LPS, and flasher wrasses. I eventually went through and got clowns too! Oh, and I had amazing luck with RBTA's then too.
Moved out of the apartment, got a seahorse tank. 35 gallon hex. The horsies didn't make it due to buying cheap, net-raised sri-lanka... yeah, it went bad. Poor little guys.
Gave up for a few years, came back in '06 or so with a 75 gallon. I also had my now youngest son then, I stopped caring for the tank, it crashed by 2008 or so.
Came back in '10 with a 25 gallon cube. It was an awesome tank. Ecoxotic panorama fit perfect over it-when LEDs were new and although I bought top of the line, come to find out that 1 watt leds will NOT light much more than softies and low-light lps. It WAS a rather nice tank though.
Upgraded to a 75, broke up with my long-term boyfriend, moved out and bought my very own house~! The 75 did move with me, all was good (did have some sps loss during the move, and lost my amazing clam-heater malfunctioned in the holding buckets when I had to leave it all in the tubs overnight) Less than 8 months later, my tank broke. Literally. I own a trailer house, and when 35+ gallons of water ended up on the floor I kinda gave up. It was a bad day when that happened. The bottom glass panel on my tank gave out, pouring half my tank on the floor before I got home-it soaked into the carpet, into the crappy wood the floors are made out of... Very bad day. I quickly threw the survivors into a small 16 gallon I had sitting around, sold almost everything off... This all happened in 2013.
Come 2015. I'm now married. My living room is completely vinyl tiled (although where the tank is going I'm going to completely redo the tiles-some of them are torn, and I don't want the new plywood floor getting soaked)
In November I found a craigslist post. 125 gallon for $200. Yup, I had the itch and I scratched.
Its still empty. I am more or less refusing to drill the tank. Yes, I know I COULD. But I am NOT.
I still have my Reefkeeper lite and my RO/DI (5 stage) from before. Everything else will be bought new.
Specs:
125 gallon oceanic tank. 72x18x24 (already owned)
30 gallon 'stock tank' sump. Yeah, the black rubberish kind that people use to water animals.
...and that's all I've gotten so far. Oh, my salt came in the mail today. IO reef crystals.
Planning out the pvc overflow (as seen here: )
I'm definitely going full LED. Black Boxing it. Most likely the SBlights, but I'm still shopping around, since that will be the biggest single purchase for my tank.
Oh, and by February I will have the stand all sanded down, re-stained, and new accents on it. My husband and I both have a love for steampunk, so that's what I'm going for. Old fashioned, fake-metal accents. Hopefully it will look like what's in my head when I'm done.
And shadowbox instead of fully-painted back. I'm still working on the background for that.
Anyway, Pictures, right?!?! I have one. Of the back in its fancy frosted blue-ness:
I don't have much in the way of eye candy yet.. just a few pics I'll throw up over time.
Anyway-I'll start at the beginning.
Hello, I'm Jodi, and I'm an addic... wait, wrong place
When I was a kid back in the 80's and 90's, I grew up on a farm with exotic animals thanks to my dad. And also thanks to my dad, he kept fish. Well, a few fish. We of course had the shiners we kept in the horse trough for fishing. But he did have a 29 gallon with angels in the kitchen. He eventually 'upgraded' to piranhas. Super fun watching them tear apart those shiners from the horse trough!!!
When I went to college (at this point I was a single mom in 2002) I decided, since I couldn't have any pets other than a fish tank-to get into reef. So my first reef tank was a 55 gallon with a 250 watt metal halide, hob skimmer, couple of maxijets, some LPS, and flasher wrasses. I eventually went through and got clowns too! Oh, and I had amazing luck with RBTA's then too.
Moved out of the apartment, got a seahorse tank. 35 gallon hex. The horsies didn't make it due to buying cheap, net-raised sri-lanka... yeah, it went bad. Poor little guys.
Gave up for a few years, came back in '06 or so with a 75 gallon. I also had my now youngest son then, I stopped caring for the tank, it crashed by 2008 or so.
Came back in '10 with a 25 gallon cube. It was an awesome tank. Ecoxotic panorama fit perfect over it-when LEDs were new and although I bought top of the line, come to find out that 1 watt leds will NOT light much more than softies and low-light lps. It WAS a rather nice tank though.
Upgraded to a 75, broke up with my long-term boyfriend, moved out and bought my very own house~! The 75 did move with me, all was good (did have some sps loss during the move, and lost my amazing clam-heater malfunctioned in the holding buckets when I had to leave it all in the tubs overnight) Less than 8 months later, my tank broke. Literally. I own a trailer house, and when 35+ gallons of water ended up on the floor I kinda gave up. It was a bad day when that happened. The bottom glass panel on my tank gave out, pouring half my tank on the floor before I got home-it soaked into the carpet, into the crappy wood the floors are made out of... Very bad day. I quickly threw the survivors into a small 16 gallon I had sitting around, sold almost everything off... This all happened in 2013.
Come 2015. I'm now married. My living room is completely vinyl tiled (although where the tank is going I'm going to completely redo the tiles-some of them are torn, and I don't want the new plywood floor getting soaked)
In November I found a craigslist post. 125 gallon for $200. Yup, I had the itch and I scratched.
Its still empty. I am more or less refusing to drill the tank. Yes, I know I COULD. But I am NOT.
I still have my Reefkeeper lite and my RO/DI (5 stage) from before. Everything else will be bought new.
Specs:
125 gallon oceanic tank. 72x18x24 (already owned)
30 gallon 'stock tank' sump. Yeah, the black rubberish kind that people use to water animals.
...and that's all I've gotten so far.
Oh, my salt came in the mail today. IO reef crystals. Planning out the pvc overflow (as seen here: )
I'm definitely going full LED. Black Boxing it. Most likely the SBlights, but I'm still shopping around, since that will be the biggest single purchase for my tank.
Oh, and by February I will have the stand all sanded down, re-stained, and new accents on it. My husband and I both have a love for steampunk, so that's what I'm going for. Old fashioned, fake-metal accents. Hopefully it will look like what's in my head when I'm done.
And shadowbox instead of fully-painted back. I'm still working on the background for that.
Anyway, Pictures, right?!?! I have one. Of the back in its fancy frosted blue-ness:
