Apologies on some of the sizes of the photos. Been a while, and apologies on grainyness, it's apparent I walk around the dark.
Now - the tank. The day after we moved in I convinced two burly guys with muscles to come and help pick up a tank from someone who had torn his down from the next major city over. It was for sale for the longest time and my heart sunk when I made my offer and heard that someone was picking it up the next day. Long story short, it's never sold until cash is in hand and I got it.
This is what it came with.
- Overengineered Stand
- 180 gallon Aqueon (72x24x24)
- CPR Overflow Box
- SCS Skimmer
- A bunch of Jebao Pumps and Powerheads
- A 70 gallon secondary tank
- A 20 gallon refugium
- A 40 gallon Sump
- 150 lb of Sand
- 150 lb of Rock
- Leftover Plumbing
I've been wheeling and dealing on this forum for 5 months now since our house offer was accepted and had already amassed a bunch of equipment and on the other usual sites. The Overflow Box, Skimmer, Pumps and Plumbing are sitting in a closet right now.
After a good cleaning of the tank, first order of business was to bribe my neighbour again to help lift the tank on it's side to drill two 3 inch holes for a side overflow box. The ceiling isn't that high and I was just barely able to get the drill in. After 20 minutes of nailbiting suspense, the holes were drilled, and clean as well.
Next up was to trip my hot water tanks flammable vapor sensor and used some black rustoleum to paint 3 sides of the tank. Came out great. I've always been a blue background kind of guy, trying something new.
While all that was happening, I fired up my 3D printer to print some power brick enclosures so that I could cleanly mount them on the wall.
A rather odd choice of placement, must have been the beer:
What you are seeing there is:
An Apex Controller
A Current USA Loop IC Pro Controller
A Current USA Return Pump Controller
A Current USA Powerhead Controller
and a whole bunch of power bricks.
I found some pretty decent deals on the Current USA stuff, had never used it in the past, and liked the fact that it was so controllable, seemed to tick off the boxes in terms of features, water flow, and "get the job done" in terms of lighting. I've been out of the game so long I missed out on knowing about the Ebay Taotronics lights, otherwise I might have taken a different path. No regrets.
I then mounted the overflow box, and started working on the plumbing. Since there were 3 bulkheads for draining the obvious choice was a bean animal. I don't have any Upipes in there, but it's completely silent. All drains are 1.5"
I then decided to fill the tank up higher to test out the overflow box, followed by a scramble since water was seeping through the tank from those 3" holes I cut. Apparently you need to put the gaskets in between the tank and box. Woops.
In the sump area you see the outflow of the plumbing, the Bubble Magus Curve 9 Plus Skimmer, and because the water is pretty grimy you can't see the Current USA 3170gph return pump, nor 2 300watt Titanium Heat Rods. You can also see the Refugium that is plumbed in from the return pump and exits out the side into the skimmer chamber of the sump via 3/4" pipe. I painted the pipe that wouldn't be in the water with Krylon Fusion, had a hell of a time finding it here in Canada. Found a source, and bought some in "Patriotic Blue" and Gloss Black.
There's a small 8watt LED full spectrum lamp hiding in the background there for when things get interesting with the tank.
Bit of a mess with my cabling still, I haven't dealt with the cables going out from the controllers yet, but if you look on the very bottom you can see a 24v Solenoid that is going to the Apex for ATO. I sourced out the JST connectors, and some heatshrink and made my own cable.
Right now the 3D Printer is going again, to make a breakout box for the Apex, with 4 ports for water level switches, and two arcade buttons (one for feeding, one for emergency stop of everything water related.
I ordered 80lb more of base rock and placed it into the tank, turned on the heaters and dumped in the sand, creating a massive storm in the display, clouding my water, and making everything pretty grimy. I have a few more days until I'll be able to properly see before I get going with some of the aquascaping.
The last time I was on the mainland I picked up a sack of Magnesium Chloride and Calcium Chloride, someone on this forum bought my last sacks of it, and I'm pretty certain they are still using it, these things are huge. Once I've done my cycle I'll be adding it to the salt mix to get it to the levels I desire, later on down the road think about some sort of dosing / reactor strateg, but we're months away from that.
And finally, I started the cycle:
I switched to the sump after that, as that was incredibly awkward and very poor for aiming.