Stone's 225 Carbonate Factory

[Stones]

It's been a long time in the making but I figured I'd start a build thread seeing as my tank is almost ready to see some salt water. I puchased the tank second hand in Calgary over Christmas and have been slowly getting it ready to house the remains of my once great SPS reef that I previously had in a 90 gallon tank. I lost about 90% of my acros when I moved the tank in Decemeber so the new tank is going to look pretty empty since all I have left is about 1 dozen small frags that I managed to save.

Here's a shot of the 1st round of die off after I moved. In total, I lost more acros than you could fit into two 5 gallon pails. 3 of the colonies I lost were over 10" - 18" in size. Life lesson: never move a reef tank when its -25 C.


When I bought the setup, the tank came with a 2" steel tube stand, a psuedo finished wooden skirt for the stand, and a 77 gallon sump that was in really rough shape.

I had to finish renovating my basmement prior to starting on the tank build so it took much longer than planned to start working on the tank itstelf. Plus work was always getting in the way since it takes me out of town for 1-2 weeks at a time.

The first stage was to prep the floor for where the aquarium was going to go. I decided to remove the carpet and tile the floor to give myself a good solid foundation for the tank as well as waterproof the floor directly under and adjacent to where the tank would go.

Dry fitting the tile


Removing the carpet


Installing 1/4" cement board


Mortaring the tile to the cement board


After grouting the tile


The tile actually looks much darker in reality but I kept getting a wicked reflection from the flash in every picture I took of it.