What's up guys. It's finally time I begin my build thread. I've been slowly working on this tank for the past 5 months now. With work, family, and school I've not had the time to put in a lot of work into the build like I would have wished. That said, I just recently finished my college courses and now have my weekends back!
I bought the tank used off of Craigslist. I was looking for a 120, but the dimensions of this 90 gallon fit my spot just perfectly, and I really enjoyed that it's rimless. So I decided to go ahead and pick it up. Here's a picture of the tank when I brought it home. Note* to the right of the tank is an Ikea cabinet that I purchased so that I can put all of my electronics in.
After a bit of time, I decided that the stand was just plain boring. So I ventured to spruce it up a bit. I completely disassembled it, added several pieces of trim, and then made the decision to paint it white. This now means, that I wasted my money on the black Ikea cabinet and need to make another trip to Indy Ikea to purchase the same cabinet, but in white.
Now on to the sump...When I bought the tank on CL, it came with a Trigger cube sump. I really enjoyed the form factor and how it still left a bit of room in the stand for other pieces of equipment. That said, I was really sold on the rollermats versus having to change out the filter socks every so often. So I purchased a ClariSea Roller Filter and used an reciprocating saw to retro fit the roller filter. I completely cut out the filter sock section and then spent hours sanding down all of the remaining edges of acrylic. After sanding, I then bought an acrylic polishing kit to try and hide as much as I could. I think it came out pretty decent. Just thinking about how much effort that took, I wish I would have just bought a new sump with the roller mat already built in LOL. Here's some photos of that process:
After completely destroying the sump to make it fit the roller mat, and after several weeks working on the stand this is what I've come up with. Don't pay attention to the dirty/dusty tank. I haven't had time to clean it yet!
Ok, so on to plumbing...I've gained inspiration from several reefers on this forum through all of their amazing plumbing skills and I wanted to follow suit. Just to name a couple, @Broadfield & @Eight both have amazing build threads with very detailed walkthroughs on how they went about their plumbing. Aside from the labor that I put into the plumbing, I would not have come out with such an amazing end result without those two build threads, amongst others as well. So, here's some photos of my sump area that's all plumbed, and has most of my equipment in place. Don't mind the lack of cable management; nothing other than the sump lights are plugged in as I still need to build the control panels (and buy the new cabinet).
And here's a short video clip of the sump area. If you made it this far through my post, thanks for reading and stay tuned for the next step; aquascaping!
I bought the tank used off of Craigslist. I was looking for a 120, but the dimensions of this 90 gallon fit my spot just perfectly, and I really enjoyed that it's rimless. So I decided to go ahead and pick it up. Here's a picture of the tank when I brought it home. Note* to the right of the tank is an Ikea cabinet that I purchased so that I can put all of my electronics in.
After a bit of time, I decided that the stand was just plain boring. So I ventured to spruce it up a bit. I completely disassembled it, added several pieces of trim, and then made the decision to paint it white. This now means, that I wasted my money on the black Ikea cabinet and need to make another trip to Indy Ikea to purchase the same cabinet, but in white.
Now on to the sump...When I bought the tank on CL, it came with a Trigger cube sump. I really enjoyed the form factor and how it still left a bit of room in the stand for other pieces of equipment. That said, I was really sold on the rollermats versus having to change out the filter socks every so often. So I purchased a ClariSea Roller Filter and used an reciprocating saw to retro fit the roller filter. I completely cut out the filter sock section and then spent hours sanding down all of the remaining edges of acrylic. After sanding, I then bought an acrylic polishing kit to try and hide as much as I could. I think it came out pretty decent. Just thinking about how much effort that took, I wish I would have just bought a new sump with the roller mat already built in LOL. Here's some photos of that process:
After completely destroying the sump to make it fit the roller mat, and after several weeks working on the stand this is what I've come up with. Don't pay attention to the dirty/dusty tank. I haven't had time to clean it yet!
Ok, so on to plumbing...I've gained inspiration from several reefers on this forum through all of their amazing plumbing skills and I wanted to follow suit. Just to name a couple, @Broadfield & @Eight both have amazing build threads with very detailed walkthroughs on how they went about their plumbing. Aside from the labor that I put into the plumbing, I would not have come out with such an amazing end result without those two build threads, amongst others as well. So, here's some photos of my sump area that's all plumbed, and has most of my equipment in place. Don't mind the lack of cable management; nothing other than the sump lights are plugged in as I still need to build the control panels (and buy the new cabinet).
And here's a short video clip of the sump area. If you made it this far through my post, thanks for reading and stay tuned for the next step; aquascaping!