My inwall starfire 330g Display and 220g sump build, with fish room. LOTS of pics

[Jeff000]

Huge work in progress, but I feel I am far enough in to start a thread and not have it move too slowly.
I started with a 90g in my condo, and once I bought my house I knew a bigger tank is what I needed, so a 330g 72x32x32. So I bought a 220g sump (72x30x22) to house the occupants of the 90g from my condo.

Started by spending hours figuring out how the basement will look. (Did this before I even had possession.

The tank is 2/3's in the living room, and 1/3 in the fish/furnace room.

Walls going up.

Walls kinda up, dry walled and painted the important ones. And put up a two tube 8' T8 fixture.

Huge mess, the sump turned temp holding tank is full of water and a bunch of live rock added.

Decided I needed a frag tank, and couldn't find room, so I hung it from the ceiling. You can see my skimmer and diy led fixtures.

After a few months the money to order the tank was available, so time to build the stand.

It's all glued and screwed.

My saltwater mixing station, 20g fresh water barrel on top of a 45g salt mixing station. It's piped to the sump now, not pictured.

Putting the top and bracing on the stand.

Because the tank is half in the wall I needed to have a table for them to build the tank on. Tank is 72x32x32.

Tank is built, black vinyl on the sides, black acrylic on the back.

Bad news though, they scratched the main glass.

1.5" scratch that was pretty much dead center and eye level. sigh.

 

[Jeff000]

Replacement front glass....

Yup, that's a scratch again. same spot but a vertical scratch instead of horizontal.

How'd that 4 year old get in there?

Thirt time was the charm for the glass.

External overflow.

Didn't want to take a chance with another scratch.

5 bucks worth of painters tape.

And 15 bucks worth of corrugated plastic.

Did I mention I hate drywall work?

A shot of the starting of the of my plumbing, and the hanging frag tank with my sump fish tank.
Just need to finish the plumbing and wait for the silicon to dry.

It'll be and SPS tank.
I have the following fish right now:
Gold flake angel
Chevron tang
Blue throat trigger pair
4 snowflake clowns
5 Lyretail anthias

Want to add:
Purple tang
Yellow tang
Sailfin tang
Magnificent fox face
Blonde naso


I want to put an exhaust fan in the room too, but I need the exhaust to travel about 14'. Is that ok for a normal fan? or should I do an inline type fan?

 

[Jeff000]

Few more pictures too.
Only progress I have made so far is second mudding and painting the drywall above the tank.
FYI, even white paint makes a bad mud job look worse... Thank go it's not visible to anyone.

I do have a few supplies for when I start the tank up.

A small skimmer. Salt bucket for scale (I do not use that salt ever, it's just a bucket)

Vertex Alpha 300

Also got the motorized cleaning lid. No idea how it works yet, but excited.

Also two media reactors, the RX-U 2.0

Not sure where to put these yet.

A little bit of salt, and 360lbs of sand.

 

[Holyreefer]

Sir! You ain't playing! Nice!
How did you care for it? You replaced it? and how does that happen twice?!I noticed the tape but that won't hold no water
Will you be running 2 skimmers one in that sump and another for the tank or will that care for the entire tank?

 

[Jeff000]

Sir! You ain't playing! Nice!
How did you care for it? You replaced it? and how does that happen twice?!I noticed the tape but that won't hold no water
Will you be running 2 skimmers one in that sump and another for the tank or will that care for the entire tank?

I have no idea how they scratched it. All I know is I wasn't going to pay for their mistake. They think the edge polishing machine might have had a bad wheel or something.
I put the tape on to protect it from myself.

I will be selling the Bubble king that I am using right now and just running the Vertex alpha 300.
Once the take is ready for water the sump will be just a sump.

 

[worm5406]

Very nice... and I do think you have enough salt for a week.

 

[Graham670]

Tagging along, going to be an awesome build. As for your exhaust fan, 14' should not be a problem, as long as its a straight run. HVAC code around Oklahoma allows a total running distance of 25'. But a 90 degree elbow adds 10' and a 45 degree elbow adds 5'. So....If it's a 14' run with two 90 degree turns in in, that would equal 34' and you would then want to install an inline booster fan. ( they're not too expensive, and may be a good idea regardless just to help push some of that humidity out even easier ) hope that helps.

 

[elvischam]

continue to work hard

 

[Charfish]

have very similar project in my near future...tagging along...looking good so far....

 

[ace_92101]

Wow! That's a beautiful looking tank. Sorry about the scratch.

 

[Jeff000]

Got a little more work done and started to fill it.

I put up some drywall on the ceiling above the tank.
This is the last screw.... and how close it made it before my last of 8 batteries died and I couldn't find a screw driver (left my tool bag at work).

Of course right. I ended up using a robertson and a hammer to get it to a point I could mud over it.


Look water is finally going in!

After about 24 hours

And a little look at how the show side of it is turning out.

I have a heater in it right now with a power head, I want to start getting the salt where it needs to be and the temp so I can put a couple rocks in there.

 

[worm5406]

Are you filling it all with that 1/4 line?

WOW... Hit me up next week when it is done.

Just kidding. Mine took two days to fill 180+40. Then adding rock I had to remove a bit too. It let me see where my overflow limit was with the sump. (with out getting anything wet too)

I did mix my salt in a brute just 2 hours before putting it in the tank though. No occupants or sand or anything. Wanted to water test and mix water at same time.

Since that day it has been 75-83 degrees from cycling and testing... Now it is a constant 77.9-78.3 temperature.

 

[RayL]

Looking very good, love all the pics
Right now I have a 150G but in the near future I will be getting a tank around 600G, so I will be tagging along to get some ideas

Good luck

 

[Jeff000]

Are you filling it all with that 1/4 line?

WOW... Hit me up next week when it is done.

lol, yes filled it with the RO, took almost 3 days.

 

[Jeff000]

Got lots done now, fish are in the tank, and everything is coming together, just a massive mess right now.


Here are the drains finished.

Overflow kinda finished, the right pipe is my emergency pipe, I have a T on it right now because I cut the pipe a 1/2" too short.

Gap between the tank and the wall above it, I think I'll use that pond spray foam to fill the gap?

All the fish in, and my first aquascape, most fish still hiding.

Vertex Alpha 300, this is a big skimmer, dual pumps, but dead quiet.

Looking into the sump... not sure I like just having a bunch of live rock in there, but not sure what else I would do.

Vibration isolation mounts for my pump, started with a hammerhead, but that pumped just too much water for my overflow weir to handle, this barracuda flows a much more appropriate rate.

And the current aquascape, not sure I am really happy with it still.

And a couple fish shots here.

 

[worm5406]

Looking into the sump... not sure I like just having a bunch of live rock in there, but not sure what else I would do.

Leave it. That will work perfectly. I would put a PH in there just to keep it all blowing around.

 

[Jeff000]

Leave it. That will work perfectly. I would put a PH in there just to keep it all blowing around.

I have a power head in there, but wasn't sure it was good to run it. I was thinking maybe detrius and stuff will settle in the rocks, make it easy to just vac it all out in water changes. And there is a good 3000gph+ going through the sump, actually a pretty good current.

 

[worm5406]

No the other items in the sump will want to eat it. And stiring it up will let the skimmer take care of it too.

 

[muttley000]

Looking good so far. On your pump mount did you fasten the unistrut down to the base? How is the sound level there. I have a hammerhead/dart hybrid to mount and like your idea.

 

[allsps40]

Looking good.