ScubaSteve'sSeadog
New Member
Whew, this hobby gets deep….fast! (pun intended) Hopefully you’ll get how well that fits with our tank’s story by the end of this thread. Either way, I’m excited to have a place to document our build from start to present, and even more excited to join the R2R crew!
My husband and I’s saltwater journey began midway through 2021. We took over a 34g bow-front from a local hobbyist. It’s only occupants were a pair of clownfish (still with us today) and a cleaner shrimp (named Otto…not many things get names in our tank so he’s worth the mention). As one does when diving into this hobby, we began exploring the many LFS in our area…and out of our area, heck.
Needless to say, we found the coral section…
I’ll never forget how excited we’d get to wake up every morning to watch our patch of GSP open up. Watching it spread over the rock daily was fascinating, as were the other corals we had collected. But, within a matter of months, my husband had upgrade fever, as did the hobbyist we bought our upgrade from. Hence, the 180g (plus a 40g sump) was born. This is when we really dove into the aqua scape (which now partially lives in our current DT, but we’ll get to that…). So much appreciation for our un-used fireplace…not sure there would have been a better place to store that messy project.
I highly recommend using the tape tip. It’s easy to get carried away building structures only to realize, “oh snap….that’s too tall” or “how are we going to clean the glass there?” As for a plan, there wasn’t one really. We’re very much go with the flow people, so that’s exactly what we did over the course of a few days. Man the super glue…I think I pick it off my hands for a week. We went ahead and purchased the large bottle from BRS. I’m usually seen clearing the rack at Dollar Tree, but the BRS glue was nice as it is super thick, and we needed a lot so the large bottle was nice. Also, the accelerator spray off Amazon is sooo worth it. Just buy it!
We lost the hood and replaced the wood on the bottom of the stand with white planks shortly after we were up and running. As most reefers are, we were definitely more concerned with the contents of the tank vs. the ugly stand. But it didn’t take very long before marketplace hook, line and sinker’d my dear, sweet husband again. Luckily, this particular, generous reefer was getting out of the hobby for a short period of time (I believe y’all probably know him pretty well…) My husband was on a road trip to AL with his employees shortly after it was posted. Boy, we were so thankful for their muscles and good attitudes!
I cannot even begin to tell ya’ll how excited we were to be getting this monster setup…not to mention from the legend and very creator of this page himself! The 360g tank plus a 100g sump was cramming itself into our TN home, one way or another. We upgraded our water station from brute trash cans to tanks as you can see at the end of the post. Another wonderful snag from “the rev”.
Take note of the wall in the picture of our old water station. We constructed that wall about a year before to separate the bonus room into an office and plant room. Keep in mind that our bonus room is, and will forever be, under construction. We’ve remodeled every room in our house. The bonus room was last on the list…until this monster happened. Who knows when we’ll finish it now….we’ve got 400+ gallons of ocean in our house, so who really cares?
We considered putting it in our bedroom (which would turn it into a cracker box), with a cutout into our living room. Then we just decided to knock the new wall down and disperse my plants because it made the most sense
Let the ultimate jigsaw puzzle begin! Now that the wall was out of the way, next was figuring out the sump. Ideally, we wanted it under the tank because we really didn’t have room for it being on a separate stand as it was before. But the stand is made from steel and wasn’t made with an opening big enough to slide a 100 gallon tank in. So out comes the grinder and welder, because my husband is awesome like that! After that, it was clean-up time. Citric acid and a wet vac did the trick.
Next it was time to do some plumbing! Did I mention how handy my man is? Thank the Lord! Another thanks to his sweet employees for crawling under the house with him to place supports….home-girl doesn’t do snakes and that’s their territory as far as I’m concerned
At last, she was ready to hold water. Eleven bags of sand later, it was time to fill her up. After researching, we decided on the quick swap method when it came to moving our 180g crew over to the new system. This meant transporting everyone plus all the water from the old tank to the new. And boy was that a long night of bucket toting. I think we clocked out around 1:00 AM that night.
Aside from a few pieces of SPS and our linkia starfish, losses were minimal. Mission success! The biggest heartbreak was losing some of our original structures. They simply did not move as easily as we had hoped. But, in the end, it turned out just fine.
Fast forward to today which is ~3 months shy of our tank’s one year anniversary (that sounds like a new fish/coral purchase to me). I have found this hobby to be full of continuous research, problem solving and head-scratching. But I’ve also found much reward, lots of knowledge and yet another reason to stare in awe at God’s handiwork in my own home. I feel blessed, but even more-so to be doing it along side my best friend. If you’ve read this far, I thank you…and happy reefing y'all!
-Chels (a.k.a. Mrs. Scuba Steve)
My husband and I’s saltwater journey began midway through 2021. We took over a 34g bow-front from a local hobbyist. It’s only occupants were a pair of clownfish (still with us today) and a cleaner shrimp (named Otto…not many things get names in our tank so he’s worth the mention). As one does when diving into this hobby, we began exploring the many LFS in our area…and out of our area, heck.
Needless to say, we found the coral section…I’ll never forget how excited we’d get to wake up every morning to watch our patch of GSP open up. Watching it spread over the rock daily was fascinating, as were the other corals we had collected. But, within a matter of months, my husband had upgrade fever, as did the hobbyist we bought our upgrade from. Hence, the 180g (plus a 40g sump) was born. This is when we really dove into the aqua scape (which now partially lives in our current DT, but we’ll get to that…). So much appreciation for our un-used fireplace…not sure there would have been a better place to store that messy project.
I highly recommend using the tape tip. It’s easy to get carried away building structures only to realize, “oh snap….that’s too tall” or “how are we going to clean the glass there?” As for a plan, there wasn’t one really. We’re very much go with the flow people, so that’s exactly what we did over the course of a few days. Man the super glue…I think I pick it off my hands for a week. We went ahead and purchased the large bottle from BRS. I’m usually seen clearing the rack at Dollar Tree, but the BRS glue was nice as it is super thick, and we needed a lot so the large bottle was nice. Also, the accelerator spray off Amazon is sooo worth it. Just buy it!
We lost the hood and replaced the wood on the bottom of the stand with white planks shortly after we were up and running. As most reefers are, we were definitely more concerned with the contents of the tank vs. the ugly stand. But it didn’t take very long before marketplace hook, line and sinker’d my dear, sweet husband again. Luckily, this particular, generous reefer was getting out of the hobby for a short period of time (I believe y’all probably know him pretty well…
) My husband was on a road trip to AL with his employees shortly after it was posted. Boy, we were so thankful for their muscles and good attitudes!I cannot even begin to tell ya’ll how excited we were to be getting this monster setup…not to mention from the legend and very creator of this page himself! The 360g tank plus a 100g sump was cramming itself into our TN home, one way or another. We upgraded our water station from brute trash cans to tanks as you can see at the end of the post. Another wonderful snag from “the rev”.
Take note of the wall in the picture of our old water station. We constructed that wall about a year before to separate the bonus room into an office and plant room. Keep in mind that our bonus room is, and will forever be, under construction. We’ve remodeled every room in our house. The bonus room was last on the list…until this monster happened. Who knows when we’ll finish it now….we’ve got 400+ gallons of ocean in our house, so who really cares?
We considered putting it in our bedroom (which would turn it into a cracker box), with a cutout into our living room. Then we just decided to knock the new wall down and disperse my plants because it made the most sense
Let the ultimate jigsaw puzzle begin! Now that the wall was out of the way, next was figuring out the sump. Ideally, we wanted it under the tank because we really didn’t have room for it being on a separate stand as it was before. But the stand is made from steel and wasn’t made with an opening big enough to slide a 100 gallon tank in. So out comes the grinder and welder, because my husband is awesome like that! After that, it was clean-up time. Citric acid and a wet vac did the trick.
Next it was time to do some plumbing! Did I mention how handy my man is? Thank the Lord! Another thanks to his sweet employees for crawling under the house with him to place supports….home-girl doesn’t do snakes and that’s their territory as far as I’m concerned
At last, she was ready to hold water. Eleven bags of sand later, it was time to fill her up. After researching, we decided on the quick swap method when it came to moving our 180g crew over to the new system. This meant transporting everyone plus all the water from the old tank to the new. And boy was that a long night of bucket toting. I think we clocked out around 1:00 AM that night.
Aside from a few pieces of SPS and our linkia starfish, losses were minimal. Mission success! The biggest heartbreak was losing some of our original structures. They simply did not move as easily as we had hoped. But, in the end, it turned out just fine.
Fast forward to today which is ~3 months shy of our tank’s one year anniversary (that sounds like a new fish/coral purchase to me
). I have found this hobby to be full of continuous research, problem solving and head-scratching. But I’ve also found much reward, lots of knowledge and yet another reason to stare in awe at God’s handiwork in my own home. I feel blessed, but even more-so to be doing it along side my best friend. If you’ve read this far, I thank you…and happy reefing y'all!-Chels (a.k.a. Mrs. Scuba Steve)
Last edited:
