I grew up with varying degrees of complicated fresh water tanks, so last year when my husband and I bought our first house, I knew a tank of some sort would be a must. It's something he seemed excited about as a new hobby for himself, but school, work, and his grow-room ended up taking most of his time, so now it's pretty much all me.
We found a steal of a deal on FB Marketplace. This guy about 40 minutes from our town has been reefing for decades, and wanted to upgrade one of his many tanks, so he got rid of a homemade setup. We got a 75gal tank with built in overflow and water in-take, 3 Dsuny lights daisy chained on a mount, a sump with 3 large chambers and 2 small ones, skimmer with needle wheel pump, return pump, and homemade stand.... all for $400!!!
We re-worked the stand by replacing rotting pieces and topping with a really nice remnant chunk of granite from a local stone yard, and I stained and protected the whole thing. I also made doors to hide the sump.
After weeks of cleaning the equipment and tanks and bringing the stand up to par, we (I) finally set everything up in our theater room. We got some live sand and rock from a great shop in north Dallas since everything here in Tyler SUUUUUCKS for this hobby. I'm still dialing in the salinity, but we've had the water cycling for about 2 weeks now. Hopefully soon we can add our first clown fish, then maybe a couple other utilitarian fish, then time for our first corals!
We found a steal of a deal on FB Marketplace. This guy about 40 minutes from our town has been reefing for decades, and wanted to upgrade one of his many tanks, so he got rid of a homemade setup. We got a 75gal tank with built in overflow and water in-take, 3 Dsuny lights daisy chained on a mount, a sump with 3 large chambers and 2 small ones, skimmer with needle wheel pump, return pump, and homemade stand.... all for $400!!!
We re-worked the stand by replacing rotting pieces and topping with a really nice remnant chunk of granite from a local stone yard, and I stained and protected the whole thing. I also made doors to hide the sump.
After weeks of cleaning the equipment and tanks and bringing the stand up to par, we (I) finally set everything up in our theater room. We got some live sand and rock from a great shop in north Dallas since everything here in Tyler SUUUUUCKS for this hobby. I'm still dialing in the salinity, but we've had the water cycling for about 2 weeks now. Hopefully soon we can add our first clown fish, then maybe a couple other utilitarian fish, then time for our first corals!