Destroying a brand new wall - My 220 in wall build

[boilermaker1]

Closed on the house on thursday, and started on friday. No sense wasting time, I have to move the fish over in 2 weeks... so this is going to get interesting.
The goal right now is to have everything framed and covered this week, and get the new tank in, drilled, plumbed and filled next week, so I can get the fish moved over and in as quick as I can. This is a minor upgrade from my 180, but I figured it would be easier to get a 2nd tank and set it up, rather than leave the fish in rubbermaids while I figured out how to set the 180 in the hole in the wall.
Here's the plan:

I plan on trimming out the tank in cherry stained oak (matches the railings and floors upstairs in the house). There will be doors above for front side access, and a drink-rail type countertop below it. Below the counter, I think I'm going to do tile, but havent decided yet.

After I started, i decided that just ripping the wall framing out and starting over was probably the best move.... it just made it easier to do what I wanted. It also didnt help that the wall isnt perfectly flat, so I took the drywall down to 14" on the top and bottom (past the screws) and just hammered the studs out of the back of the wall.

Thats where it stood at 9:30 last night, its straight and leveled, just need to finish it off. Tonight I'm going to finish the stand reinforcements in the corners and probably add a centerbrace along the back side of it, just to make the overbuilding completely excessive. Hopefully will get the drywall home and start filling it back in tonight.

 

[dogstar74]

Take a cement nail and put a door stop that would flip a truck on that door, or the handle will swing open and chip out the back or side wall of your tank when it's on the stand.

Are you sure you only want to go with a 180? This would be a good time to go deeper with the dimensions from front to back. Instead of a 24" depth, you could be looking sharp with a 30 or 36" depth tank. Now's the time to decide.

I love destructio....oops I mean construction threads

 

[silentscream]

Wow, 1 day after closing! Good start, keep us updated!

 

[dogstar74]

Why did you remove the sheetrock under the stand? Wouldn't it be fine to just remove it down to the top of the stand? (Makes the hole look smaller for the wife)

 

[boilermaker1]

There will be a stopper for the door, but the handle wont hit the tank. Its 24" deep from the front side of the wall and the door is wider than that so the door itself will hit the corner of the stand first... never the less, it'll be taken care of. I'm also going to change the handle on the door to one with a lock on it, so I may see if I can get something smaller than the grab handle thats on there now.

Why did you remove the sheetrock under the stand? Wouldn't it be fine to just remove it down to the top of the stand? (Makes the hole look smaller for the wife)

Wife doesnt care about the size of the hole... especially since she helped cut it. I took it out because I had to remove the electrical box and re run the wire, so I would have had to fill in a hole no matter what. Also, since I took out all the framing from the back side of the wall, I would have had to find the screws holding the drywall up, and ruined the drywall in the process anyways, so it was just easier to go below the drywall screws and work my way up from there.

 

[dogstar74]

There will be a stopper for the door,

:thumbsup:

Wife doesnt care about the size of the hole... especially since she helped cut it.

:eek1::love2::dance:

I took it out because I had to remove the electrical box and re run the wire, so I would have had to fill in a hole no matter what. Also, since I took out all the framing from the back side of the wall, I would have had to find the screws holding the drywall up, and ruined the drywall in the process anyways, so it was just easier to go below the drywall screws and work my way up from there.

Ah gotcha

 

[slief]

Looking great! Congrats on the house!

Its a great feeling!! When I closed escrow in 1997, I closed at noon on a Friday and we were cutting the walls to make way for the tank within 30 minutes of closing.. I tore the tank down from my old house the following Sunday and had it picked up for a polishing Monday. It was delivered and put in its new resting place the following day. The tank was installed up and running in the wee hours Tuesday night/Weds morning... From close of escrow to up and running was a whole 3 and a half days. That included framing off the tank, getting some drywall up and running 1" flex PVC 18" underground around the perimeter of the house to the garage for the chiller. A run of nearly 50' each direction. In the end, it went like clockwork without a single hitch as it was really well planned out. Once it was up and running the rest of the drywall work was finished up.

It was a marathon project but I have to say, the most rewarding part had to have been when we took the sawzall to the walls that Friday afternoon!

I'm sure your setup will go great. It looks like you have done your planning! Good luck and keep the pictures and updates coming!

 

[boilermaker1]

Its been a couple days, I have no internet in the new house yet.
I've closed up the wall and am currently working on getting the wall all straightened out.

The stand is done (although I cant find a picture of it), and today we brought the tank in. Currently in the process of drilling it... 2 down, 3 holes to go.

Will finish the drilling tomorrow and get the tank in place... then the plumbing starts. I'm using 2 glass-holes overflows... a 1500 and a 700 gph box, and 2 1" returns.

 

[TheFishTeen]

Subscribed! I have a similar set-up plan. Can't wait to see how this turns out!

 

[boilermaker1]

Got the tank in place last night, installed the overflows and return bulkheads and this morning I filled it with the hose just to make sure it was all OK, and to make sure everything stays put... so far so good. Tomorrow I'm going to drain it out and start filling it with RODI... and rinsing out the sand to get everything ready.

Here's the back side (excuse the mess on the floor).

 

[mynameisjoe]

Looking good, looking good.

Just a suggestion: you might wanna remove the black from the sides and back. Being able to see in from the back will be very useful when cleaning and whatnot. You can always get some black corrugated plastic boards and attach them via Velcro. They will then be easily removed for maintenance and viewing.

Do you plan on doing a closed loop or are you just gonna use powerheads?

Thanks,

joe

 

[bmkj02]

Im in. Looks great

 

[boilermaker1]

Looking good, looking good.

Just a suggestion: you might wanna remove the black from the sides and back. Being able to see in from the back will be very useful when cleaning and whatnot. You can always get some black corrugated plastic boards and attach them via Velcro. They will then be easily removed for maintenance and viewing.

Do you plan on doing a closed loop or are you just gonna use powerheads?

Thanks,

joe

The side that you cant see (facing the door) isnt painted. We'll see how it goes, worst case scenario is I have to scrape off the spray paint, which isnt a big deal.
For water flow, I've got 2 MP40W ESes, and for a return I have a Dart and a Snapper, and I havent decided which one I'm going to use yet. I think I'll start with the dart because I want to also feed the carbon and PO4 reactors with it, and if its still too much, either valve it back or hook up the snapper.

 

[dzfish17]

Your not messing around. Looking good so far.

 

[Sully1882]

nice, that will be a sweet setup!

 

[boilermaker1]

And continuing with the marathon.... I took off tuesday to shut the water off to the house and plumbed in the RODI... then spent the day washing out sand, a mix of Marco Bahama and CaribSea Ocean Direct (which I do not recommend to anyone. The shells I could deal with, but the rocks were a bit on the rediculous side), dropped about 180 lbs of it into the tank, covered it with plastic to keep it down and started filling.
This is about 24 hours worth...

Obviously the sheet started floating, so I filled the sheet with a bucket of salt and a powerhead and now I've got saltwater brewing.... its getting there. I think it'll be full either tonight or sometime early tomorrow.

In the meantime, I got the drains worked out. A bit of a challenge when my sump is still connected to my other setup, so the bucket is not my sump... but rather something to aim for. Real sump is a 75 gallon tank that I baffled.

Nothing is glued yet, its all just held up with a couple pieces of duct tape, I'll probably glue the upper sections tonight, and hold off on the last bend or 2 until i get the real sump in. Cant do much with the return pump plumbing until I have the sump and the pump in there to work out the plumbing. Hoping to tear everything in the old place down on saturday, and either have enough water in the tank to get the fish in the tank w/o a sump on saturday night (2 vortechs and a couple heaters ought to make it fairly comfy anyways), or they're going to be hanging out in a couple 50 gallon rubbermaids for the night.

 

[gofor100]

This looks fun... can't wait to see it completely filled!

-Chad

 

[Noypi]

very nice build so far looking for more progress

 

[boilermaker1]

ugh, what an absolute disaster this weekend has been. Everything was moved yesterday, it all came apart smoothly, but when I got to the new house, everything fell apart. I brought the fish over in 5 gallon buckets then transferred them all into a 50 gallon rubbermaid tub, left and went back to go get the live rock and my sump. Came back to find water on the floor... the rubbermaid was leaking. By this point it was well past Home Depot's hours (I think it was 1130, but I have no idea, really), tank was still a bit cloudy and pretty cold. I had nothing else to put the fish in but the tank, so i got every heater I had going, turned a vortech on low and by 2am got it cleaned out enough to get them in safely. So in they went. Was pleased to find everyone present this morning.
We can skip the whole nightmare plumbing the return pump in, I got that sorted.
So I got the plumbing done, and filled the sump. Went to turn the pump on... sprayed water everywhere. Housing cracked. So I pulled it out, and hooked up the other one (I now support the extra pump thing everyone talks about). Fire up the good pump, and washed an anthias out of the overflow into the sump, obviously dead.
Tank is aquascaped, sump is almost full. I have no pictures because I'm exhausted, the fish room is a mess for all of the above reasons, and the lights arent up yet. Hopefully by mid-week I'll have something good.

 

[dzfish17]

Yeah, you need a break. With everything moved now you can slow down and tweak things as needed. GL