Mike’s 750 gallon build

[MikeInToronto]

I got a couple quotes for this tank and they were all roughly the same but the Miracles quote included a stand and also extended the warranty an additional 4 years if I used their stand. It was a no brainer.
The stand has a rubberized coating and it made of steel. It has 12 legs. The original design was meant for 6 leads but I was a bit paranoid that my floor would crack under the weight of the tank (I know, this wouldn’t happen) but it put my mind at ease. The floor is concrete.

It was partially assembled at the Miracles site but in order to get it into my house it had to be fully welded on site. Miracles sent a welder.

[MikeInToronto]

The glass is regular 3/4”. I didn’t go with starphire glass because I’m prone to scratching and also, I’ve heard that our modern day lighting make it negligible. I don’t know either way.

Here is the glass:


The process was pretty quick and the tank was built within a week of having the glass dropped off.


After this I had to wait 5 weeks for the silicone to cure. I had so many other things to do the 5 weeks were nothing. I’ll talk about that white box on the ceiling later.

The overflow is acrylic or something.


Here’s a side view while I was trying to figure out if that brace was going to get in the way of the plumbing. It doesn’t.

[MikeInToronto]

For lighting I went with 10 Radion G4 Pros. I picked them all up during our Boxing Week so they were on sale. To hang the lights I build a rack out of t-slot aluminum.


It feels super heavy but it weighs like 56 lbs. Weird.

I installed 3 dedicated 20 amp circuits for the tank. The lights have one installed in the ceiling. I built a box to hold all the power supplies so there are no wires hanging around. Since I redid my basement prior to putting in the tank, looking back I should have had the power supply box sunken into the ceiling to make it flush. It’s okay though. The box is that white thing in the second post.

The other two circuits are to hold two Apex power bars. Since they are max 15 amp each, this gives me some wiggle room. I’m not even close to using that much electricity.

[WarDog]

Very nice, keep it coming.

[kyl]

Beauty! Yeah, PPG Starphire seems to scratch far too easy compared to the other "low iron" tanks I've been exposed to in my hobby time thus far (IM Nuvo's).

[MikeInToronto]

The tank is heated with four 500W Finnex heaters. I did this instead of fewer big heaters because the draw from a 1000W heater is crazy on a breaker. Anyway, 1000W is HOT!
For the return pump I’m using two jebao DC pumps. 12000? They’re pretty good. I’m impressed.
For flow I’m using eight Neptune WAV pumps. I don’t really like vortechs (omg, I said that!) but the WAVs are cool because they connect directly to the Apex so there are no extra wires. When I had the tank built I requested 6 holes in the eurobracing so the WAV wires come through and are strapped along the top. This way they aren’t going over and around the bracingly. I’ll need to take a pic of that. You can see it in later posts when I discuss filling the tank and all that fun stuff.

I’m realizing now that it’s a little tough to clean the WAVs because in order to move them I have to cut the cable ties. I’ll figure something out.

[MikeInToronto]

So now the 5 weeks have passed and I did my leak test with fresh water. This is where I learned the tote sump was a bust; literally.


I let the tank run like this for a week. No leaks. Then I drained the tank completely so I could work on the aquascaping.