Winflakes
New Member
Greetings everyone.
This is where I will chronicle the events leading up to this new reboot and the progress I make as I move forward. This will be a long first post that will likely get broken into 2 or 3 to make it more digestible. Pull out the popcorn folks, it's a roller-coaster of emotions.
I've always been interested in reef aquariums, and 2.5 years ago my older brother told me I could acquire his system on the cheap, he was going to be bouncing around the country for 3 years for work and his wife wouldn't maintain it. April of '16 I show up at his house in Norman, OK to transport it to me in DFW. After getting it all set up to my liking and leaving it overnight to clear up I was the proud owner of a Brand Used reef tank!
I decided I wanted to build a sump that would hold more water and have more space for future upgrades.
There will be many lessons learned by doing this, the first of which was some woodworking! The stand that came with the system had a support beam in the middle on the front, back, and top. The sump I was designing would not fit without cutting a hole in the side panel. I decided to forego that option and build my own stand. I found Rocketengineers plans and got to work,
While I was building this, I was also learning some of the temperaments of the new fish. The Starry Blenny "Oscar the grouch" would star at anyone who walked by and not back down. Any time a hand went in the tank he would nip it to make sure his dominance was asserted. The Maroon clown claimed the entire sandbed as her own, and as such moved every single piece wherever she pleased much to my disapproval. In the following picture you'll notice that the flame scallop is gone, the alveopora is dead, the frogspawn is missing, and the chalice in the bottom left is struggling very severely:
This tank is living in my office, and she did this every weekend. It was decided that she would not stay around long, but I bond quickly to animals so it was hard to feel okay with getting rid of her.
I got the new stand completed, painted, and sealed. Spent a long day and snagged a coworker to help and we got it moved to the new stand.
Next was the new sump. Ordered some glass from glasscages, got it all assembled and water tested successfully!
I also redid the overflow using one of the King of DiY's designs for using a single pvc pipe in the tank. It worked well, but it always made me nervous.
At this point I stopped taking pictures because nothing major was changing, other than taking the maroon clown to the LFS so she could find a better home in a larger tank. The orange fairy wrasse also went carpet surfing twice. The first time I happened to be in my office and heard the thud, but a few months later he did it over the weekend. I was down to 4 fish now. Powder Brown Tang, Starry Blenny, Lantern Bass, Cleaner Wrasse. Some of the corals started to diminish as time went on. I blame it wholly on my laziness. In fact, I didn't even realize the full extent of the reduction until I moved it for my first reboot. My company moved across the hall, in the same building that we own, and we didn't have any tenants lined up to take over our space so the tank sat in my old office being fed but otherwise neglected while I tried to do things over and more "right"
Reboot time!
I managed to find another 75g at an LFS for $50. deal. The back panel wasn't tempered so time to learn a new skill and drill some holes in the glass, right?
All in all, not perfect, but I was proud! You can see in this next picture that I cut a hole in the wall. The plan was to scoot the stand all the way back to the wall and have the overflow and pipes in the cavity.
After having the DIY sump running for a year and a half, I learned some things that might have been obvious to you experts from looking at the pictures. The sock holder section was too high and caused a LOT of un-needed salt creep and quite a bit of splashing. The remaining baffles were also too high. When I turned the return pump off it would fill to about half an inch from the top. That did NOT make me or my boss feel very assured. Reboot was a time for doing it right, so a premade sump was ordered.
I have to say their packing was stellar. Next was to paint the back of the glass with some oil paint and start routing some of the plumbing.
That picture was taken December 21, 2017. My wife was expecting our baby boy in Late January. This is when she became very much not a fan of "my stupid fish."
I decided to step back and focus on her, my 4-year-old daughter, and get our house ready for our son.
Fast forward to late March, and we get a new tenant to sign the contract to take our old office space. That's when I realized just how much work I had left to do. I buckled down and got after it, and as such didn't take enough pictures.
I went with white, because the black showed every single molecule of salt creep and the cabinets in our kitchen were already white. Also, I stopped at just priming and painting. On the initial stand I finished with a coat of Marine Spar Varnish. I mean, shoot, if it's what they use to keep boats waterproof and boats stay in the ocean forever, it's gotta be perfect right? WRONG! Oh, so very wrong. Just in-case any of you think it's a good idea... Let me save you. Putting Spar over white paint makes it look like a herd of cats used it for their litter-box... and that was before any of the salt creep funk.
YUCK!
Moving on!
I think that looks pretty snazzy. I actually had to put new angles on the trim, as I didn't want it to come out super far from the stand. That was a scary process of running trim vertical over the table saw. 1/10 would not recommend. You can also see a little bit of the hole I cut in the wall. We actually had to jigsaw cut a metal stud in order to route the plumbing. Little did I know that this would all have been for nothing because the trim I put on the stand spaces it off the wall about 2 inches... My boss just laughed and said, "it's a good thing that fish tank is going to cover it up so you don't have to patch it then." ;Sorry
Double checking my measurements for a canopy. Please ignore the gaping hole in the wall.
Remember kids, Measure once cut twice!
Continued in Part 2 due to image limit!
**Edited to remove the duplicate pictures. Didn't realize when I uploaded it would keep the pictures in the post AND the bottom.**
- Winflakes
This is where I will chronicle the events leading up to this new reboot and the progress I make as I move forward. This will be a long first post that will likely get broken into 2 or 3 to make it more digestible. Pull out the popcorn folks, it's a roller-coaster of emotions.
I've always been interested in reef aquariums, and 2.5 years ago my older brother told me I could acquire his system on the cheap, he was going to be bouncing around the country for 3 years for work and his wife wouldn't maintain it. April of '16 I show up at his house in Norman, OK to transport it to me in DFW. After getting it all set up to my liking and leaving it overnight to clear up I was the proud owner of a Brand Used reef tank!
I decided I wanted to build a sump that would hold more water and have more space for future upgrades.
There will be many lessons learned by doing this, the first of which was some woodworking! The stand that came with the system had a support beam in the middle on the front, back, and top. The sump I was designing would not fit without cutting a hole in the side panel. I decided to forego that option and build my own stand. I found Rocketengineers plans and got to work,
While I was building this, I was also learning some of the temperaments of the new fish. The Starry Blenny "Oscar the grouch" would star at anyone who walked by and not back down. Any time a hand went in the tank he would nip it to make sure his dominance was asserted. The Maroon clown claimed the entire sandbed as her own, and as such moved every single piece wherever she pleased much to my disapproval. In the following picture you'll notice that the flame scallop is gone, the alveopora is dead, the frogspawn is missing, and the chalice in the bottom left is struggling very severely:
This tank is living in my office, and she did this every weekend. It was decided that she would not stay around long, but I bond quickly to animals so it was hard to feel okay with getting rid of her.
I got the new stand completed, painted, and sealed. Spent a long day and snagged a coworker to help and we got it moved to the new stand.
Next was the new sump. Ordered some glass from glasscages, got it all assembled and water tested successfully!
I also redid the overflow using one of the King of DiY's designs for using a single pvc pipe in the tank. It worked well, but it always made me nervous.
At this point I stopped taking pictures because nothing major was changing, other than taking the maroon clown to the LFS so she could find a better home in a larger tank. The orange fairy wrasse also went carpet surfing twice. The first time I happened to be in my office and heard the thud, but a few months later he did it over the weekend. I was down to 4 fish now. Powder Brown Tang, Starry Blenny, Lantern Bass, Cleaner Wrasse. Some of the corals started to diminish as time went on. I blame it wholly on my laziness. In fact, I didn't even realize the full extent of the reduction until I moved it for my first reboot. My company moved across the hall, in the same building that we own, and we didn't have any tenants lined up to take over our space so the tank sat in my old office being fed but otherwise neglected while I tried to do things over and more "right"
Reboot time!
I managed to find another 75g at an LFS for $50. deal. The back panel wasn't tempered so time to learn a new skill and drill some holes in the glass, right?
All in all, not perfect, but I was proud! You can see in this next picture that I cut a hole in the wall. The plan was to scoot the stand all the way back to the wall and have the overflow and pipes in the cavity.
After having the DIY sump running for a year and a half, I learned some things that might have been obvious to you experts from looking at the pictures. The sock holder section was too high and caused a LOT of un-needed salt creep and quite a bit of splashing. The remaining baffles were also too high. When I turned the return pump off it would fill to about half an inch from the top. That did NOT make me or my boss feel very assured. Reboot was a time for doing it right, so a premade sump was ordered.
I have to say their packing was stellar. Next was to paint the back of the glass with some oil paint and start routing some of the plumbing.
That picture was taken December 21, 2017. My wife was expecting our baby boy in Late January. This is when she became very much not a fan of "my stupid fish."
I decided to step back and focus on her, my 4-year-old daughter, and get our house ready for our son.Fast forward to late March, and we get a new tenant to sign the contract to take our old office space. That's when I realized just how much work I had left to do. I buckled down and got after it, and as such didn't take enough pictures.
I went with white, because the black showed every single molecule of salt creep and the cabinets in our kitchen were already white. Also, I stopped at just priming and painting. On the initial stand I finished with a coat of Marine Spar Varnish. I mean, shoot, if it's what they use to keep boats waterproof and boats stay in the ocean forever, it's gotta be perfect right? WRONG! Oh, so very wrong. Just in-case any of you think it's a good idea... Let me save you. Putting Spar over white paint makes it look like a herd of cats used it for their litter-box... and that was before any of the salt creep funk.
YUCK!Moving on!
I think that looks pretty snazzy. I actually had to put new angles on the trim, as I didn't want it to come out super far from the stand. That was a scary process of running trim vertical over the table saw. 1/10 would not recommend. You can also see a little bit of the hole I cut in the wall. We actually had to jigsaw cut a metal stud in order to route the plumbing. Little did I know that this would all have been for nothing because the trim I put on the stand spaces it off the wall about 2 inches... My boss just laughed and said, "it's a good thing that fish tank is going to cover it up so you don't have to patch it then." ;Sorry
Double checking my measurements for a canopy. Please ignore the gaping hole in the wall.
Remember kids, Measure once cut twice!
Continued in Part 2 due to image limit!
**Edited to remove the duplicate pictures. Didn't realize when I uploaded it would keep the pictures in the post AND the bottom.**
- Winflakes
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