Cheryl's 165 Gallon upgrade

[CherylMcKay]

This long weekend has been great for getting things done on the tank. I had installed the overflow a couple of weekends ago and this weekend, I finsished the plumbing, the rock covers for the plumbing and actually got water in it.

The plumbing was fairly easy, just a matter of making sure I had all the cuts proper and wasn't stressing any bulkheads. Here is the overflow full syphon and the emergency. I did try to follow the herbie style...

The overflow is 48 " long and I centered it the best I could but as the tank is so heavy I had to do it while it was upright... what a pain. I knew I could deal with anything being off with the PVC and I did. The return pipes are not truely 90 degrees to the back of the tank.

I had been reading alot of threads where people were making rock walls on the back of thier tanks and I thought this would be an awesome way to hide the return pipes that have to run in the display tank. I took some egg crate, rocks (I had a bunch I had to kill off) and low expansion foam (pond variety and fish safe), zip ties and went to work. I made the frame so it would sit at the back of the tank around the PVC. I made it in 2 pieces, so I can remove it if I have to do any work on the pipes (God I hope not), an upright piece to cover the back pipe and a horizontal piece to cover the last strech going into the bottom of the tank. Once I foamed the peices, I poured some of my sand on them to cover the black foam.
The left side vertical piece:

The left side horizontal piece:

The left side assembled over the pipe:

Here is a FTS with the sand in the bottom and both sides in and assembled:

I had set them into place, using a little silicone and some foam at the back corners, and then let them cure overnight. I still have some live rock in a couple of holding tanks that will fill in some more space, but because I had to dry out this rock, I wanted it to cycle for a while without the live rock so I don't kill anything important. I figure I am going to get some major spikes from this stuff as it died when one of my holding tanks crashed, due to major bristle worm die off.... It was a small tank and the heater stuck on... major die off, thank god it wasn't the really good rock.

I am not the most artistic person, so I think it worked a whole lot better then I ever though it could.