Squire's 80 Gallon Rebuild ** UPDATED new pics**

[ensquire]

Time for an update, been busy lately and haven't had much time to post up some pics.

Cleaning gunk off the back of tank from the old background glue.
Going through back office looking for something to use and guess what worked best. Yup Overproof Rum took care of the glue in short order.




Masked it off and used Acrylic spray paint, may need another coat but we shall see when setup.



Touch up the stand with some filler



Drill a few holes to run cords out to Powerbar.

[ensquire]

Princess Auto order arrived and I was able to get my overflow tuned up.
There was a lot of good advise on how to accomplish this because of the previous owners setup , but I came up with the following plan and have great confidence that it will work perfectly when up and running. ( I hope)
Since I have a 1" Drain bulkhead , I will adapt that to a 1 1/2 Drain Pipe inside the overflow box extending up to about 3/4 of the height of the box. With the second hole sized for a 1/2" bulkead, and not really being sufficient for an emergency drain. I decided to break open the new drill bits and bore out the hole to fit a 3/4" bulkhead. Found some adapters locally and second hole will have 1" pipe before and after bulkhead.



And for safety sake, a second 1/2" emergency drain line cut into the back of the overflow, because it was getting pretty tight in there. Thanks to a few of the members for there input on this one.








New bits mean fast drill time, minor chipping and the only real problem I found was that I didn't want to put a lot of pressure on the drill and let it do the work. What I found was that in doing this, the bit tended to sit and bore the hole out rather than drilling a nice straight hole. Nothing serious at all and I am sure after a few more tanks I will get this to work better.

[ensquire]

First coat of Marine Grade Paint on stand.





Canopy had some water damage , so I need to remove the damaged wood and rebuild it. My plan for now is to cut out a slot that my 6 Bulb Aquaticlife fixture can sit into and slide back and forth on. Depending on what I put into it I have 3 different light fixture ready to go into it, but we can discuss this later.

[ensquire]

Finally after 2 weeks, my drill bits from China arrive.
Drilling a single 1" return line through the back on the right rear of the tank.
24.00 for both with shipping and a nice case also .


used a piece of plywood on the backside to see if it would help with the chipping when the drill went thru. Seemed to help.



Finished

[ensquire]

Paint and Verathane stand is next on the list . Adjust and reconnect plumbing lines. remove baffles and reconfigure sump.

Never thought it would take this long to get things up and running, but logistically challenging with no LFS or part and piece stores in the area.
Great learning experience thus far and looking forward to the next steps.
Thanks for the advise supplied so far and I know there will be lots more solicited in the future........

[ensquire]

3 coats of marine grade black paint and 2 coats of sealer.



Set stand in place and pull out the level and ............ NO WAY



Set tank in place, nice reflection in tank me and my Sponge Bob Tshirt.



After careful consideration of all advice on how to mod my overflow, I came up with this solution. Since I had a 1" and a 1/2" bulkhead in overflow I found it insufficient to drain efficiently. I upsized the 1" to 1 1/2" Pipe above the bulkhead . I bored out the 1/2" to 3/4" and made that the emergency drain and I added a second 1/2" emergency out the back.



Side veiw



Prepping emergency line and Return line for paint. Like the look of black pipes on black background.





This is the return that I came up with, is it to much ?? want lots of flow .





Cover for overflow



Painted Lines



Ready to be glued in place and a little touch up paint. Good to go.

[ensquire]

Sump retrofit up next.