225 Build - Funky Style

[Funky_Fish14]

Hey Everyone,

Due to unfortunate circumstances, Brett was forced to sell his system. Mine (and everyone else's) best wishes go out to he and his family! And thanks to Brett for everything!

Im the one who bought the tank/stand/plumbing/sumps. A big thank-you to Brett for everything! This thread will cover my 'funkyfication' of the system to fruition.

I have been considering a larger freshwater tank for awhile now. Have been looking at tanks in the 225-500g range. This one happened to be 30" front to back which 'fit' the situation. Its going to house some of my central/south american cichlids.

Anyways onto the 'real work' and pics. Tank+stand came in the basement door up a 1ft lip and we just had to turn it sideways. Put the tank on some sawhorses before lifting it onto the stand. Even tough the stand is 45ft tall (actually pretty damn close, the tank sits 43.5" off the ground in the end), the tank lift went well - it was the stand that sucked coming in the door. That thing is heavy!

Pics pics pics:

My tired butt standing beside it as a height reference.


Here is an 'outside shot' of my fishroom where the stand will be going infront of the window (about a foot away from the wall). The plan is to have the wall finished and painted by tuesday. You know your a fishkeepers when you have assorted tanks set-up before the room is anywhere near finished.


I picked up some really small casters (1") and will install these on the ends of the 80+lb doors to try to reduce some of the stress on the slides.


I dont know what was going on with the silicone in the sump, but for some reason it was sticky and much more flexible than the silicon on the resevoir, and the top 'bulkhead receiver piece' popped off, so i pulled out most of the inner seams and one spaces between the glass and re-did them with a different construction silicon. The resevoir is perfect so I have no idea why it felt weird? Picture of the sump with some of the silicon pulled out.


Picture of the silicon I have around to use to do this stuff. I used the GE 1200 for the tank, black. I actually have no idea why I bought so darn much? I guess i've got enough for awhile, I only used 1/3rd of a tube on the sump.


Spraypaint I'll be 'blacking out' all the white plumbing with, and also the big styrofoam backing im going to install behind the entire tank/stand because its going against a window.


Here are some shots of the plumbing i'll be using or borrowing from to build the sysem. A very small portion of it is to add a drain line and feed line from my R/O system in the basement to service the tank. Water changes will be like Brett had it set-up, draining to the basement floor drain(though mine is piped horizontally on a downslope because im already in the basement. The supply will be from a mag pump in my R/O bin. Switches and valves baby! Thats how I do most of my waterchanges.

Bought this:


Had this sitting around:


Cardboard box is stuff I already had around, styro is new stuff. Im going to try out this penductor (which already comes mounted on some locline with a threaded fitting).


Just an idea of the amount/variety of parts in the styro. And although I did get a massive pile of plumbing from Brett, I need a whole lot of couplers to put all the cuts back together, or there are some sections missing or I dont know how some of it fits back together. Hence the crazy amount of parts. I also tend to use more plumbing than necessary when I build a system.


So the new silicon in the sump is now dry (did it a couple days ago) and I put it into the stand temporarily to start some of the dry plumbing.


You can see the pump I'll be using, a GenX-PCX40, I had it sitting around for the next tank setup I got. It is basically a rebadged and re-painted Blueline NS 1100 pump (its not a common pump but they are amazing). The GenX is a more common version. It turns over 1190gph and handles 22ft of head. I'll be running it with a herbie overflow like Brett had and using 2 main center outputs on the tank and running a smaller volume through the outer lines. Lighting for this bad boy is still up in the air, im looking for less expensive (im a student with 0 available dollars, haha), but still bright enough to showcase the fish's colours. Any suggestions welcome. Im ok with asymmetric patterns or mixing lighting types. No halides though.

This is where im at right now - dry plumbing and finishing the wall it is to go against.

Any suggestions/questions welcome! Im hoping I have time to have this RUNNING before I go back to school Jan 4th but usually the holidays are more busy than schooldays. Im hoping this year is different! Also not sure how this is going to go cause my saltwater system was just completed about 2 months ago... and that was supposed to take 2-3 weeks. It took 3 years... haha.

There will be LOTS of pics as I go! Next week should see lots of progress.

Thanks again to Brett for everything, and for building such an awesome setup.

Thanks for reading!

Cheers,

Chris

PS. Sorry if any of the pics are poopy - Im taking all of them with my Crackberry's camera. And this post is way too long.. lol.