Dyspnea's 120g tank build

[Dyspnea]

Well this is my fourth saltwater tank thus far. I moved to Edmonton over 2 years ago for school and now that I'll no longer be living the "student life" I wanted too upgrade my tank.

Prior to coming to Edmonton, I had a 75 gallon sumpless tank, and and 20 gallon nano with sump. and prior those i had a 75 gallon with sump and fuge.

The tank I ran just before this upgrade was a 75 gallon sumpless. To put the quality of this tank it was ghetto at best.



As you can see thing were rather ghetto, the skimmer I had from my previous tanks and I was unable to sell it, so thought i might as well use it

After this past Christmas I began to explore options for a new tank. I began to consider corner tanks, cube tanks and other configuration. Looking at prices from store to store, tank prices seemed ridiculous. So I just decided to be patient and find something used, since tank prices seem to deprecate like a new car.

Eventually I found something suitable to the area I planned to place the new tank and something that i thought i could work with.



Minus the fish of course The tank was is approxmately 120 gallons of actual volume and the glass had round couners which looks great.

Moving the tank the tank from the sellers home to my condo was nothing less than a ordeal. The tank was far heavier than I expected. Thankfully with help from my girlfriend, her father and brother. We were able to wrestle the tank to its new home.

[Dyspnea]

So I began planning, Identified serveral issues that I need to deal with in order to make the tank suitable for my needs.

The first as you can see in the photos above is the sump, consumes nearly the entire stand.

Second the the overflows drilled holes were drilled at an unsual size, so i would need to drill them larger.

Third the stand was scuffed and slight damaged prior to moving it, and third the "fake wood" look was dated and just wouldn't do.


Stand all cleaned up


I added some extra verticle supports, I really didn't have any doubt's about the stand, but better safe than sorry. So added and extra 6 verticle supports.


Now to paint the stand, I wanted oto be sure that the paint would stick. The finished on the stand was really smooth, I ended up sanding every nook and cranky with course grit sand paper.



Stand primed




Stand painted, (i forget how many coats that that point)

[Zoaelite]

Looks like a great build, I will have to stay tuned. Just out of curiosity are you a doctor or do you have painful breathing?
Levi

[Dyspnea]

I began to paint the doors to the stand, I removed all the slats in the doors and painted them separately. After the slats were painted and the door were ready i began to place them back in the doors. Unfortunately I broke three of them.



Then one night at work while trying to sleep, I got a brilliant idea how i should replace them.





So finally everything was painted, and I could put the aquarium on the stand and get it out of the way


as you can see you don''t notice the replacement slats.

Now I know when everybody gets a large tank they had to take the obilgatory photo of themself or of their childern in the tank, Since I'm 6'3" i couldn't do that and I have no childern. So the girlfriend and I did the next best thing.


She was not impressed


Well I'll stop here for now, but more will be added quickly.

[TJSlayer]

Look like a pretty sweet setup....

[Dyspnea]

Tank drilling time!

TOOLS!


I order both holesaws off ebay, bought them both for about 20 dollars canadian (free shipping )

The goal of drilling the tank was to allow me to add a closed loop. I drilled all four holes on the bottom pane (intake/exhaust). I chose the bottom pane, because it was drilled previously for the overflows, so i knew it wasn't tempered and I did not know the type of glass on the rear panel.

I'm not overly concerned about the intakes to sucking sand or anything else since the tank will be barebottom.

I drilled 2 holes for a 1.5 inch bulkhead and 2 holes for a 3/4 or 1 inch bulkhead.

I chose to drill 1.5 inch intakes because the super dart requires a 2 inch intake. And if the flow is reduced at one of the intakes the pump preformance would be impacted less.

Pics of pump








The drilling went very well, no major issues. In fact each hole was drilled out rather quickly, faster than i expected. I watched videos online before drilling, i found the basic technique for drilling which worked very well.

The holes which concerned me the most about this project were these ones.


They are the holes in the overflows, four of them in total. They were originally drilled with odd sizes. In fact the previous owner just used male/female threaded fittings and used and crap load of silcone.

They concerned me becuase, I wasn't sure how they would react with re-drilling, and because how close they are to each other. I thought they might explode or crack or numerous other things.

My other conern was with the larger hole, I wasn't sure i would get enough clearance from the overglass for a 1.5 inch bulkhead.

Fortunately they drilled fine, they were a little harder to start, and i went slower with drilling them. And after drilling I did a test fit of a1.5 bulkhead and a 1 inch bulkhead, both fit prefectly.

The overflows will contain one 1.5 inch overflow each. One 1 inch return in the right overflow and a 1 inch emergency overflow in the left.

[Dyspnea]

Sump building photos to follow shortly!

[Dyspnea]

Pick up where I left off...

Sump building time!

The sump that came with my purchase as I mentioned in a previous post was far to large. It nearly consumed the entire stand.



In order to make room for the closed loop pump, i figured i needed about 12 inches more of room.

In order to keep the cost of this build down, I completely disassembled the sump, into its various piece, and spent endless time and razor blade scraping silcone. Since the glass was only approx 6mm thick I figured i could get by without any special tools.

I scored the side pieces and cut thme perfectly to the length i needed. THe bottom panel had to be different it was thicker glass (approx 8mm). I scored the glass and when I snapped the panel, the snap line broke away off the score line So I had too order a new peice of glass. I really wasn't upset about it just trying to save a couple bucks



This photo the glass sides are silconed together.



This photo the glass sides and bottom I believe are silconed together.



Preping to silcone the inside



Completed sump! I'm very happy with the way it turned out.

[Dyspnea]

With the sump complete and the tank drilled, I need to drill the stand so the bulkheads would fit throught the stand. I bought a cheap holesaw kit from princess auto for $15 which came with 5 different sizes.

When I was drilling the glass after the holes were finished, i scored the stand with the gl******* saw so it would mark for later where i needed to drill the stand.





Stand reassembled and the bulkheads and locline in place. Now things feel like they are coming together

[Dyspnea]

Plumbing coming up next!