Waited for the moment - Finally doing a build thread

[MyFirstCar]

Hi all! I recently moved from Canada to the Bay Area and I've slowly been getting my tank setup back up and running. My neighbour is tank-sitting for me in Canada, but its been at least 6 months so its time to start moving everything over. I'm also finally doing a build thread after 3 years of posting and asking questions here.

So, this build starts when I find a very well maintained used Reefer 200 XL for sale. Brought it home and wanted to try NSA aquascaping for this time. Over 4 months or so, I managed to find an hour or so each weekend and came up with this final result! I only have one in-progress pic unfortunately. Ended up re-building it a couple times as I got much better at gluing/epoxying parts together as time went on. Overall I'm pretty happy with it. I tried to give the fish lots of space to hide, but also keep everything viewable.

Next is leak check, then filling, then sand, cycling, and then shipping the my livestock over from Canada! I took a look at the support below my floor, and it looks pretty sturdy to me, but I thought I'd attach some photos here in case someone tells me leak checking this will create a 200XL shaped hole in my floor.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Following along!

 

[MyFirstCar]

Sump cabinet lighting is in! I say this every time, but this time I'm actually hoping to have good cable management and not just a tangle of wires coming out the back.

 

[kevgib67]

Very well thought out, well done.

 

[MyFirstCar]

And water is in! I'm pretty proud of the scape here if I may say so myself. Lots of surface area, and lots of fish habitat, but there's nowhere that can be seen by walking around the tank, and most importantly, from the top down there's no shadows over the entire thing, so all top surfaces are good for corals.