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[FTS May 2022]
Greetings all! My SPS dominant reefer 250 is more than 5.5 years old now (www.reef2reef.com/threads/tenurepros-redsea-reefer-250.295764/#post-3619469) and I've been thinking about an upgrade for a bit over a year now. The reefer 250 was the largest tank that i can fit in our home - that is until last summer when i finally finished our basement. With the extra room, i've decided to shut down the reefer 250 and migrate my sps collection and fish to a bigger tank. After a lot of research - i decided to go for a Waterbox 180.5; it is literally the largest tank i can buy that can actually make it through the main entrance of the house, navigate a 90 degree turn to a flight of stairs to a landing, then navigate a tight 180 degree turn to another flight of stairs to the basement... I ordered the tank in Sept. 2021, and it was finally delivered to my garage two weekends ago.
I managed to put together the cabinet, which is really well built. One little bit of advice; if your floors are uneven (my basement floor slopes towards a floor drain), the supplied leveling feet will not do it - they are only good for correcting up to 1/4". But waterbox uses M6 bolts, so i managed to find longer leveling feet really easily, which did the job nicely.
After the stand was up, i made two plywood panels behind the tank for mounting equipment and power strips. I installed an under cabinet LED lighting system from amazon. I also got two smart wifi power outlets from Kasa which are controllable via Alexa...
So now i can just say - Alexa, turn on cabinet lights, and voila! This should allow for hands-free control of tank equipment while i am doing maintenance.
After the cabinet was all ready, its was time for the big move. What made this move possible was this amazing thing called a 'stair climber' they've been around for a while, but i had neverf heard of one before. Its essentially a heavy duty hand truck with a motor that allows the truck and its load to climb up or down stairs on their own power... You just need to balance and maneuver the cart, but the motor does all the heavy lifting on the steps. have a look at the last video to see it in action with a life-size replica of the tank (hey .... practice makes perfect!)
I also got 4 x 8" suction cups, which made lifting the cart a breeze. So on the weekend, 5 of my best buddies came over. We lifted the tank on the hand struck - i placed a 1/4" sheet of plywood gluded to a 1/4" sheet of foam to pad the glass where it makes contact with the metal hand truck to avoid scratching the glass. it took about 1.5h to make the move, but happy to report that it went smoothly... a lot of effort was needed to support and manoeuvre the stairclimber, but no damage was done to the tank, the house, and any of my buddies!
I'll be tracking the progress of this build on my YouTube channel - here is the first vid showing the tank, stand build, and the equipment used during the move. I'll be updating this page as we go along....
The next step will be sump and plumbing installation, and leak testing! wish me luck!
thanks and cheers!
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