Thanks for the step-by-step I really like how you've secured the rocks to the acrylic base! Where do people get their acrylic from? I need a bit to make a filter foam tray to sit before my return pump...

Finally, in the last section I wanted to make a lagoon with low(ish) terraces that hovered over the sand. One criteria here is that I did not want the appearance of a heavy base rock supporting the terraces. Instead, I used a slab of tavertine as my anchor and drilled holes into it where I would insert very long and thick rods to support my terraces. If you've never seen or worked with tavertine, it is a very very dense and heavy rock! They use it to build buildings! I would then cover up the exposed acrylic with rubble epoxied to it. The tavertine is a tan colour that perfectly matches the sand bottom.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249495943

I guess now is a good a time as any to let the cat out of the bag. Way back in the beginning I had made a decision to go bare bottom. Well, after staring into my 150 for the past few weeks and then seeing the aquascaping come together I decided that I truly am not a bare bottom kind of guy. Sure it looks cool, but I think sand looks better, more complete and natural. The decision to put some sand on the bottom helped me to put all the pieces of my puzzle together. For example, I can now hide those acrylic panels that I glued my live rock too and I can partially burry the travertine slab so that it blends in with the sand.

Anyway, here's one of the terraces drilled.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249500394

And here they are built up.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249500441

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249500475

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249500504

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249500523

Note: When dealing with live rock you have to work quickly. What I had on hand was a tub with heated salt water from the tank that I could use to dunk the rock into every now and again to keep them moist. Unfortunately this made for a very messy rock building session.

I got my acrylic panels from Home Depot (sump panels), and Rona ( base panels for aquascaping). Same stuff and pretty much the same price. It's just that sometimes they are out of stock.

Acrylic plugs from Red Coral :-)

Acrylic rods from Industrial Plastics and Paint

Totally love the way your doing this. Gives me a lot of ideas also. :wink:

Out with the Old and in with the New.
 

It is probably safe to say that moving/changing tanks is the most hated task for any aquarium hobbyist. Typicaly you set out with some sort of a plan or process. You execute it and then somewhere along the way there are hiccups, some bumps, bruises, sweat, tears, perhaps a little blood, and a few colourful metaphors thrown in for good measure. I have moved tanks many many times now, and each time I made note of something I learned that worked well, or was an EPIC FAIL. This tank move went quite smoothly as a result. Here's how it went down.

1. First I mixed two 33 gallon tubs of salt water. I heated and circulated this water so that it was the exact same temperature as the Old tank. That's a totally of 66 gallons in tubs. There was another 25 gallons in my premix Brute tub in the basement on hand and a full 55g of RO/DI water just in case. You may have noticed this tubs in some of the build picture.
They're sitting next to the display tank.

2. After fishing out some of my live rock to build the Cave structure I then proceeded to pump out water from the Old tank into the New tank.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249501545

3. Once I had enough water in the display tank (probably about 5 inches of water), I put a heater into the New tank and made sure it was heated. I like to run 77 degrees F. I also put in a power head to circulate the water in the New tank.

4. With 5 inches of water in the new tank I had enough water to move some corals. Using a tupperware container large enough to hold a coral colony with some water I placed colonies one at a time into the container and transported them to the new tank, making sure that they were never exposed to air. I know that they are fine with air exposure but I figured the whatever I can do to minimize the the stress of the tank moving the better!

5. I repeated this process until I ran out of room and then proceeded to pump more water into the New Tank.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249501752

6. Once more rock was exposed in the Old tank I took them out and worked on them (aquascaping) for the new tank. (see previous posts on aquascaping).

7. I repeated steps 4-6 until everyone was moved from the Old tank to the New tank. By now the Old tank was empty and the new tank was half full of the Old tanks water. Slightly cloudy. No one was very happy but none the worse for wear. I did not do all the aquascaping as i went along. For example, the last arm of the Bonsai and the Lagoon rocks I just left sitting at the bottom of the tank to be worked on later (after all the water was filled).

8. At this point I proceeded to pump in water from the tubs of premixed salt into the New tank. Slowly. It was like a water changed to them. Although a very hefty 50% water change. The tank was a little cloudy but it cleared up pretty quick.

9. Once the water began to overflow into the sump I turned it on and away we went!

10. I then transferred the refugium from the Old sump into the refugium of the New sump. Mostly just sand, live rock rubble and a ball of chaeto that doesn't seem to want to grow very well for some reason.. mental note, need more chaeto.

The next day I put my old 48" light fixture on top of the canopy. I am still waiting for my new 72" light fixture to free itself from the evil clutches of Canadian Customs. I also cleaned and added a dusting of sand to the tank. The sand clouded things a big.

Well, that's pretty much it in a nutshell. I don't have any pics of the full tank yet because it looks really funny with the 48" light fixture. The new fixture should be here any day now..

In the meantime, here are some shots of the sump in action.

The skimmer skimming..

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249502407

The 'fuge fuging..

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249502386

and the sump sumping.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249502448

Again, some great ideas and excellent detail in your photography. Keep sharing those ideas with us!

Two full days have passed now and everyone is doing great. Corals, SPS, LPS, zoos are all open, fish are swimming eating, exploring. Here's a crappy led moonlight night shot until I get a proper shot with the new lights in.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249502878

see how funny it looks with the old light fixture on it ? :-)

Damn! Love the aquascape! :mrgreen: Tank looks awesome Kien!

Thanks :-) And thanks again for the lagoon terrace pieces ;-) I didn't really want to cook them and I didn't really need them to be "live" so I sterilized them.. did you know that dead coraline fluoresces a brilliant red under actinics?? Looks cool :rofl:

Haha! No problems, nice to be part of this build. :biggrin:

Your Koralia 4 is in there too, adding a little flow support :-) Now.. if your Diamond Watchman Goby and Royal Gramma Basslet could make their way to my tank that would be great! :lol:

Okay, as promised, here are some daytime pictures. Still using my old 48" light so the lighting in the tank is oddly unbalanced. Also, nothing is secured to rocks as i'm still working on figuring out where corals will live.

East view aka the Terraced Lagoon

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249526550

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249526638

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249526663

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249526692

Northern view of the Caves

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249526716

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249526881

The Bonsai

South View
http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249526921

North View
http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249526850

Full tank North Face
http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249527073

South Face
http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249527121

Two new cleaning stations
http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249527161

Another cleaning station and the flowerpot hanging out in the lagoon
http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249527223

Very Nice! Wow... :mrgreen:

DOUBLE WOW!! And I LOVE the aquascape Kien! It's gorgeous!

Congratulations for a well done job!
Good luck

Hey Kien, how deep is your sand bed? Im debating between a DSB and SSB.

Go
 

Wow, this is so nice.
________
Lesbian vid

all i can say is wow what a very nice looking tank

I had the same debate! I was even going to go bare bottom. In the end I went with a shallow sand bed of 0 to a max of 1.5 inches in my lagoon. So ya, it starts at at 1.5 inches at one end of the tank and gradually tapers down to just a dusting if sand at the other end. The powerheads have cleared a couple of spots of sand but I don't mind. I suspect once I get a couple of gobies in there that there will be a few more clear spots. I just love how the halide light shimmers on the sand and how it reflects light back up. Makes the tank a lot brighter.

Great looking tank Kien. I spent the last hour at work reading your build journal. :biggrin: Busy day...
I was just browsing for ideas for a new tank in my basement if I ever decide to develop it. Got a lot of great ideas from your thread. Amazing!

The rockwork looks incredible! I'm hoping I can find some nice shelf pieces as well when the time comes.

What a great build! The full tank shots are amazing with how you've done the rockwork. Thanks for sharing with us.

It's Not My Fault
 

So I'm sitting here looking at my fancy schmancy new tank and decided that it would really suck if it exploded. Thus I decided to install a GFCI. I know I should have done this at the start, and I intended to but for some reason it fell off my radar. Okay, so there are a lot of options. Buy a GFCI outlet and replace the main one in the wall with the GFCI. Or do I buy one of those GFCI powerbars ?? Lucky for me my dad had a GFCI outlet kicking around that he wasn't using. I was going to replace the wall receptacle with it but then decide that it would be nice to maybe leave the wall the way it is, and run a line under my tank and maybe use a GFCI powerbar instead.. Well, then it hit me. Why not make my own!

I ran out and picked up some supplies. A cable and a 3 prong plug, outdoor electrical box and weather proof cover.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249813653

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249813707

It was quite easy actually, and everything came with instructions.

First I stripped one end of my waterproof wire for the plug.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249813776

Then openned up the plug and inserted the appropriate wires into their respective slots.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249813813http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249813839http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249813856

So now we have a plug.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249813881

I siliconed the base of the plug (where the wire inserts into it) for good measure.

Next I ran the other end of my cable into the electrical box where my receptacle will go.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249813928

Insert said receptacle and attach the wires as per the instructions from the receptacle.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249813960

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249813983

Screw in the receptacle.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249814011

Now we put on the weatherproof box.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249814035

Attach the cover to said weatherproof box.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249814059

Voila! one GFCI power outlet. Not quite a powerbar but anything I plug into it, including a power bar or two will be GFCI'ed. Incidentally I have two powerbars that I will be plugging into it.

I plugged it in to make sure it worked of course. Orange light means it has tripped. It comes this way. Press the reset button to reset/untrip it.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249814087

Plugged my 'fuge light into it and we have power!

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1249814131

The whole process was actually quite simple and didn't take very long at all, except for having to pause after each step to take those darn pictures.

Clever!

Just remember that it's in your best interest to not run everything on that GFCI in case it trips...leave at least a powerhead or two off of it.

Agreed! That's why I decided not to install the GFCI into the wall. This way I still have the wall receptacle to use for non-GFCI'ed (backup) stuff like you said. I am going to install a weatherbox over the non-GFCI wall receptacal as well.

Hey Kien, where did you get your DJ-8 thing? Did you have to order it? Id like to get one.

Sorry, I have no idea what a DJ-8 is but if you are referring to my GFCI thing-a-Ma-jig, all parts came from Rona.

I meant one of these things as your power strip. I thought I saw one in your system, I could be wrong and havent looked back to verify:

http://askville.amazon.com/SimilarQu...eq=Power+strip

I think that power strip must be in someone elses build because it isn't in mine :-)

I will be using a Profilux digital 6 socket and 4 socket powerstrip once I get my Profilux controller up and running. Right now everything is just plugged into a regular powerbar.

Go
 

you are very creative Kien. 2 Thumbs up.
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2005 lexus cup

Great looking tank Kien. You've been busy!

Kien, this has given me a lot of great idea (your ideas that is :P) for my new build coming up. I almost feel like I should get your help doing it up. I will for sure steal some of your ideas for your baserock building. Just wanted to say your doing an awesome job. Thanks for all the pictures too! Really liking it.

Anthony

Hehe, thanks :-) Sure, ring me up anytime. Glad to help!

The Skinny
 

Finally got around to skinning the stand last weekend, and it looks something like this:

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1250485763

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1250485785

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1250485811

There are seven 24" panels in total that skin the stand. They are simply cabinet doors that I got from Ikea a while back. Not cheap but they were the only things I could find that matched exactly the look I was going for. A nice smooth glossy finish. As you can see here they are simply held in place by 4 magnets. No hinges here.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1250485928

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1250485951

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1250485969

Gravity also helps to keep them in place by resting them on the baseboard at the bottom of the stand.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1250486015

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1250486037

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1250486057

GFO and Carbon reactors daisy chained with a maxijet 900.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1250486267

Hush hush
 

So my overflow is/was rather noisy for a herbie. The herbie part of it was working fine but what ended up happening was the eggcrate grill of the overflow created 15 streams that poured into the overflow causing quite splash. It wasn't so bad when the water level in the overflow box was higher up, but when it was half way full it was quite noisy. I had to take action and this is what I came up with.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1250486567

It is simply a cut piece of filter floss that I draped over a sheet of egg crate inside the overflow box. The water flows over onto the filter floss and then gently flows down. It is quite an effective silencer. No matter what the level of the water is in the overflow box, it is dead silent now.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1250486675

Here you can see all those little streams that used to gush into the overflow box. Now they gently flow.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1250486698

Here are some full tank shots with the new light fixture. It is a 72" Maristar with three 250 watt HQI Ushio 14Ks with four 39watt HOT5s Aquascience 22Ks. I'm quite happy with this combination. The Ushios to my eyes are nearly pure white, then the Aquascience 22Ks give it that extra punch of blue, but not too much blue. The are driven by Galaxy ballasts.

South View..
http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1250487105

South East View..
http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1250487141

East View..
http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1250487207

North East View..
http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1250487240

North View..
http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1250487272

Yes.. that is a heck of a lot of glass to clean :sad:

Some random shots around the reef..

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1250487385

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1250487426

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1250487446

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1250487468

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1250487496

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1250487517

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1250487584

Very nice! It looks great :)