Well... I just spent 45 minutes writing my first thread to have my browser crash on me. AWESOME... I'll give this a try again. Unfortunately it won't be as in depth as my original post. Oh well.
My name is Frank and I live outside of Philadelphia, PA. I've wanted a reef tank for as far back as I can remember. Unfortunately, it was never really financially feasible until recently. So I decided to pull the trigger on a build.
At the moment, I have no clue what I exactly want in my tank. Seeing as i'm about two months out before I can even introduce life, I think I have some time to decide! I want to make my additions based on educated decisions and not impulse buys at the LFS.
To start off, I needed a tank for my build. I originally planned to run one of those 14g biocube setups and call it a day. However, nothing is ever that simple for me! I took a trip to Petco one night just to see what they had and decided I would get a 29g DT and then a 15g for an overflow.
I went back a few days later with a few of my buddies to make the purchase and of course they talked me into the larger 40g breeder and a 20L for my sump. Im glad they did. Thankfully I decided to start this project during Petcos $1 per gallon sale. $64 later, I was the proud owner of an Aqueon 40g breeder and a 20g long.
Here's a boring picture that i took out of excitement haha.
Now that I had my tanks, I needed a stand. Luckily my dad is a retired carpenter and I have spend the last 20 years absorbing everything I could possibly learn from that man. Here are the stages of my stand build.
I mostly used 2x4s, 3/4" cabinet grade plywood, and some trim to dress it up a bit. I also brought one of my dresser drawers to Home Depot to have them get a close color match for paint. I still need to build doors for it. Maybe i'll do that after work one night this week.
Here's some pictures. Sorry they're not so great. My iPhone back is shattered and likes to refract lighting around the camera lens. (fish tank>new cell phone)
Now that my stand was built to accommodate my tanks, I needed to start deciding on equipment! Hooray, spending money is fun!
My first purchase came from Glass-Holes. I bought their 1500gph over flow kit, dual 3/4" returns, and a Mag Drive 700gph return pump.
Im sure some of you might say that the 1500gph overflow is overkill, but I can only overflow as much water as my pump returns. I can also use it in the future if I ever decided to upgrade tank sizes.
After those arrived, I took a trip to Home Depot and purchased a jubilee of plumbing fittings, a sheet of acrylic for my sump, some silicon, and spray paint.
Now that I had everything I needed to begin my next steps, I just needed to wait till the weekend.
Saturday afternoon I drilled the two holes for my overflows and the two for my returns. I was a bit nervous because I didn't want to crack my tank. (only because the $1 per gallon sale ended the day prior haha)
Here's a crappy picture of my tank drilled and the back painted.
After I drilled the holes, I took the rest of the day off, sat on my deck, and drank a few beers while basking in my glass drilling glory.
My summer favorite!
Sunday's project was to cut and silicone the acrylic baffles for my sump. I know there is some dispute about using acrylic in a glass tank, but I decided to go this route. Now that its cured, I can't imagine it easily coming apart. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures. Its a pretty simple setup with three chambers. One for the overflow and protein skimmer, followed by a bubble trap, which is then followed by a refugium section. It is ended with an area for my return pump. It should do the trick.
After I finished up the sump, I brought everything inside and started to work on mocking up the plumbing.
The first pieces I worked on were the overflow lines. I incorporated some threaded unions for easy disassembly if needed.
After the overflow lines were setup how I wanted, I moved onto the return lines. Because I wanted to keep the plumbing as tight to the back of the tank as I could. It required the one side to be longer than the other which means I'll probably need to dial them in with the ball valves. We'll see...
As you can see, I used some more threaded unions to so I can easily break down the plumbing if I need to! The few extra bucks was worth it for me.
Alright, so thats all I have for now on progress. I will leave you with the rest of the equipment plans. I'll be buying all of these items over the course of the next few weeks.
- Reef Octopus NWB110 Protein Skimmer
- 2 - Hydor Koralia Evolution Powerheads (850gph)
- 200W Eheim JAGER Heater
- Digital Aquatics Reefkeeper Lite Plus (to control lighting, powerheads, pump, auto top off, heater, etc.)
- Buildmyled.com 36" 14000k Reef Spectrum (i'll eventually add their super actinic fixture as well)
- Digital Aquatics float switch and bracket
I think that's it for now. Some of that may change as I keep researching.
I think this was actually slightly longer than my original post! Stay tuned for more updates. I'll try to document my experiences as much as I can.
My name is Frank and I live outside of Philadelphia, PA. I've wanted a reef tank for as far back as I can remember. Unfortunately, it was never really financially feasible until recently. So I decided to pull the trigger on a build.
At the moment, I have no clue what I exactly want in my tank. Seeing as i'm about two months out before I can even introduce life, I think I have some time to decide! I want to make my additions based on educated decisions and not impulse buys at the LFS.
To start off, I needed a tank for my build. I originally planned to run one of those 14g biocube setups and call it a day. However, nothing is ever that simple for me! I took a trip to Petco one night just to see what they had and decided I would get a 29g DT and then a 15g for an overflow.
I went back a few days later with a few of my buddies to make the purchase and of course they talked me into the larger 40g breeder and a 20L for my sump. Im glad they did. Thankfully I decided to start this project during Petcos $1 per gallon sale. $64 later, I was the proud owner of an Aqueon 40g breeder and a 20g long.
Here's a boring picture that i took out of excitement haha.
Now that I had my tanks, I needed a stand. Luckily my dad is a retired carpenter and I have spend the last 20 years absorbing everything I could possibly learn from that man. Here are the stages of my stand build.
I mostly used 2x4s, 3/4" cabinet grade plywood, and some trim to dress it up a bit. I also brought one of my dresser drawers to Home Depot to have them get a close color match for paint. I still need to build doors for it. Maybe i'll do that after work one night this week.
Here's some pictures. Sorry they're not so great. My iPhone back is shattered and likes to refract lighting around the camera lens. (fish tank>new cell phone)
Now that my stand was built to accommodate my tanks, I needed to start deciding on equipment! Hooray, spending money is fun!
My first purchase came from Glass-Holes. I bought their 1500gph over flow kit, dual 3/4" returns, and a Mag Drive 700gph return pump.
Im sure some of you might say that the 1500gph overflow is overkill, but I can only overflow as much water as my pump returns. I can also use it in the future if I ever decided to upgrade tank sizes.
After those arrived, I took a trip to Home Depot and purchased a jubilee of plumbing fittings, a sheet of acrylic for my sump, some silicon, and spray paint.
Now that I had everything I needed to begin my next steps, I just needed to wait till the weekend.
Saturday afternoon I drilled the two holes for my overflows and the two for my returns. I was a bit nervous because I didn't want to crack my tank. (only because the $1 per gallon sale ended the day prior haha)
Here's a crappy picture of my tank drilled and the back painted.
After I drilled the holes, I took the rest of the day off, sat on my deck, and drank a few beers while basking in my glass drilling glory.
My summer favorite!
Sunday's project was to cut and silicone the acrylic baffles for my sump. I know there is some dispute about using acrylic in a glass tank, but I decided to go this route. Now that its cured, I can't imagine it easily coming apart. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures. Its a pretty simple setup with three chambers. One for the overflow and protein skimmer, followed by a bubble trap, which is then followed by a refugium section. It is ended with an area for my return pump. It should do the trick.
After I finished up the sump, I brought everything inside and started to work on mocking up the plumbing.
The first pieces I worked on were the overflow lines. I incorporated some threaded unions for easy disassembly if needed.
After the overflow lines were setup how I wanted, I moved onto the return lines. Because I wanted to keep the plumbing as tight to the back of the tank as I could. It required the one side to be longer than the other which means I'll probably need to dial them in with the ball valves. We'll see...
As you can see, I used some more threaded unions to so I can easily break down the plumbing if I need to! The few extra bucks was worth it for me.
Alright, so thats all I have for now on progress. I will leave you with the rest of the equipment plans. I'll be buying all of these items over the course of the next few weeks.
- Reef Octopus NWB110 Protein Skimmer
- 2 - Hydor Koralia Evolution Powerheads (850gph)
- 200W Eheim JAGER Heater
- Digital Aquatics Reefkeeper Lite Plus (to control lighting, powerheads, pump, auto top off, heater, etc.)
- Buildmyled.com 36" 14000k Reef Spectrum (i'll eventually add their super actinic fixture as well)
- Digital Aquatics float switch and bracket
I think that's it for now. Some of that may change as I keep researching.
I think this was actually slightly longer than my original post! Stay tuned for more updates. I'll try to document my experiences as much as I can.
