dwolson2
New member
So I am building a 29 Gallon Reef tank and thought I would share my build with you all.
Start off with a little history:
15+ years ago I started my first fish tank(of many). It was freshwater and filled with guppies. And was dirty all the time…
Fast forward to 3 years ago in Japan, one night my friend and I decided to take a go at saltwater. We each bought 10 gallon tanks to see what worked for each of us. Below is a picture of that tank.
As you can see I used crushed coral, and a lot of stuff out of a fresh water tank, what you don’t see is a HOB filter for fresh water and no protein skimmer…. Lots of things died in those tanks, a lot of trial and error.
After my tank had a lot more success, I moved on to a 30 gallon HEX that I found on the side of the road(that’s how the large items were picked up for trash)
I added a VERY small canister filter and a protein skimmer that looked like the underground filters for freshwater. To say it was finicky was an understatement. I have a pic of a butterfly that was in that tank:
Decided to go home on leave and ask a “friend” to watch my tank. Came home to 3 inches of green stuff at the top of the tank and my “friend” telling me that my cat “unplugged it”…yea right… with his opposable thumbs….
I then cleaned it out and put in a dwarf lionfish, which after a few months died of lockjaw(that’s what I read somewhere… its mouth got stuck open) Decided I would never get on e of those again, since it required frequent trips to the LFS to pick up live fish for it and went back to “normal” fish.
One of the guys in the area was getting deployed followed with a PCS to another base immediately following his return, so he was giving away a bunch of things, went over with my 5 gallon bucket and here were the end results:
Sold that tank to a local guy in the shop and moved to Sunny California!
Last year after taxes, I picked up a used 72Gallon bow front (now for sale…) Came with live rock, HOB protein skimmer, yellow tang, dead coral, florescent light, sump, and a canister filter. I had that set up for the last year until December when I moved to my current house. Upon moving in/signing the lease, I was informed that I would not be able to keep my 72BF. They said that the max tank I could have was a 30 gallon with renters insurance, funny thing was, I had one, in my garage that I bought from my neighbor to use as a sump. I originally asked about the 29 because I wanted the metal halide light that came with it(bought the tank, stand, light, and some power heads for 100$) but decided to keep the 29 as a sump. So I was back in the game.
Here is the 72 when it was set up:
A co-worker at work…lol… were talking and found out we both had SW tanks. His is much nicer..125 coral reef… and he started “mentoring” me on what I have been doing wrong. And so the build began… At the start of this my transportation tank set up with the MH fixture looked like this:
One of my friends was deployed an lent me his 55Gal to use for the transfer, and is now the holding tank until the 29 is finished. Here is a pic of it holding the stuff for the 29:
Now I have a plan, Here are a few renderings:
Adding one hand drawn later.
Pictures of my sump, I am going to be merging 2 sumps to get a bit more volume:
The second one shows that my frame is too narrow by about ¼ inch on each side.
I won’t be using the bio balls, so if anyone is local to Camarillo wants them, let me know!
This is a picture of the stand vertical.
Specs right now are:
Coralife 125 skimmer
Iwaki pump
There will be more to come, and this is going to be a longer work in process, I am working about 1/ 2 an hour a day on it.
Start off with a little history:
15+ years ago I started my first fish tank(of many). It was freshwater and filled with guppies. And was dirty all the time…
Fast forward to 3 years ago in Japan, one night my friend and I decided to take a go at saltwater. We each bought 10 gallon tanks to see what worked for each of us. Below is a picture of that tank.
As you can see I used crushed coral, and a lot of stuff out of a fresh water tank, what you don’t see is a HOB filter for fresh water and no protein skimmer…. Lots of things died in those tanks, a lot of trial and error.
After my tank had a lot more success, I moved on to a 30 gallon HEX that I found on the side of the road(that’s how the large items were picked up for trash)
I added a VERY small canister filter and a protein skimmer that looked like the underground filters for freshwater. To say it was finicky was an understatement. I have a pic of a butterfly that was in that tank:
Decided to go home on leave and ask a “friend” to watch my tank. Came home to 3 inches of green stuff at the top of the tank and my “friend” telling me that my cat “unplugged it”…yea right… with his opposable thumbs….
I then cleaned it out and put in a dwarf lionfish, which after a few months died of lockjaw(that’s what I read somewhere… its mouth got stuck open) Decided I would never get on e of those again, since it required frequent trips to the LFS to pick up live fish for it and went back to “normal” fish.
One of the guys in the area was getting deployed followed with a PCS to another base immediately following his return, so he was giving away a bunch of things, went over with my 5 gallon bucket and here were the end results:
Sold that tank to a local guy in the shop and moved to Sunny California!
Last year after taxes, I picked up a used 72Gallon bow front (now for sale…) Came with live rock, HOB protein skimmer, yellow tang, dead coral, florescent light, sump, and a canister filter. I had that set up for the last year until December when I moved to my current house. Upon moving in/signing the lease, I was informed that I would not be able to keep my 72BF. They said that the max tank I could have was a 30 gallon with renters insurance, funny thing was, I had one, in my garage that I bought from my neighbor to use as a sump. I originally asked about the 29 because I wanted the metal halide light that came with it(bought the tank, stand, light, and some power heads for 100$) but decided to keep the 29 as a sump. So I was back in the game.
Here is the 72 when it was set up:
A co-worker at work…lol… were talking and found out we both had SW tanks. His is much nicer..125 coral reef… and he started “mentoring” me on what I have been doing wrong. And so the build began… At the start of this my transportation tank set up with the MH fixture looked like this:
One of my friends was deployed an lent me his 55Gal to use for the transfer, and is now the holding tank until the 29 is finished. Here is a pic of it holding the stuff for the 29:
Now I have a plan, Here are a few renderings:
Adding one hand drawn later.
Pictures of my sump, I am going to be merging 2 sumps to get a bit more volume:
The second one shows that my frame is too narrow by about ¼ inch on each side.
I won’t be using the bio balls, so if anyone is local to Camarillo wants them, let me know!
This is a picture of the stand vertical.
Specs right now are:
Coralife 125 skimmer
Iwaki pump
There will be more to come, and this is going to be a longer work in process, I am working about 1/ 2 an hour a day on it.
