30gl Reef Through the Years

[anonymous6366]

Intro
Lots of pictures below!
So I've had this tank for a few years now. Originally had a snowflake eel and a dwarf lion in it (if you follow /r/reeftank you may have seen it a while back). Eel outgrew the tank so I decided to go back to small colorful fish. I also graduated college and got a pretty good paying job so I now have money to upgrade it..






Old setup
This is what the tank looked like a few months ago. when i still had eel :fish1:


Charles the snowflake eel


Leonidas the dwarf lion

Heres a pic of them posing together



I moved into a new apartment




Hood
First part of my upgrade was building a canopy to enclose the light. The 175watt metal halide tended to be a bit bliding while sitting on my couch.

layout of what I need


first supports


oops lol


Time for you to go!


looks naked

 

[anonymous6366]

Frame all done





Broke a drill bit making pilot holes




Hot glued the mooonlights in place



gotta make sure this thing is safe



halide attached



This is what holds the halides on lol



moon lights working

 

[anonymous6366]

lights all attached





Finished the construction of the canopy



makes this cool reflection on the ceiling






top view



both sides flip up so there is tons of access to the tank



went to the LFS to get a plumbing fixture I needed and came back with an acan and a badass brain coral

 

[anonymous6366]

My cat has started trying to attack the clownfish, its really cute :rollface:



gotta fix this plumbing



Painting the canopy black






Painting all done





Mandatory night pic

 

[anonymous6366]

Pumbing


Almost done with the return line





Finished, and running






Gotta take time to enjoy it



Sump
Now for the exciting stuff :bounce2: I've never done any sort of pvc work before so this was new to me. Went really well and looks a lot more professional than just having vinyl tubing!


New pump and outlet



15gl tank to replace the 10gl sump



New sump finished, and ready to go in!

Installing the new sump

 

[anonymous6366]

New sump finished and running :dance:





I'll post a few more pics once everything is finished. Let me know what you think!

 

[Lilmatty5dimes]

looking good nice job

 

[sixpackgarage]

It's very crude and organic, like a barbarian put it together, but it has a certain appeal to it. I like it man.. very interesting and it works.