Scotts 180 Gallon Rebuild (NEW TO ME)

[sharrison]

This is not a new tank / stand / canopy.
I got this tank from a fellow hobbyist
1. The tank is an All Glass tank built December 26, 1994.
2. The canopy, I'm guessing was built the initials (JWL) are engraved in it.
3. The stand looks like something that was store bought.

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I would first like to thank Wayne, Wayne’s daughter and Norm in helping me load this beast into my suburban.
I did not take pictures of the tank, stand, canopy, plumbing and motor before I started cleanup. However, I am going to start posting some pictures and what I plan on doing with the various items.

Just for the sake of this article I used a Nikon D-50 with a VR tele lens 10-80 1.8f

It has taken me a few weeks to a month to get everything to come together so far.
I stripped all the wood work from an original stained look to painting it white. I have done this to mainly go with our houses inside trim. I am happy with how things have turned out.
I have been posting this only on our MTRC (Middle Tennessee Reef Clubs) site, which is http://www.mtrc.org/blogs . If you are interested in joining please visit us.
Since I am this far I am going to build this thread and keep both of them up to date as this build progresses.
Here are some of the pictures so far. ( I will update the build as I have time.)
Thank you for looking…

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Here are some pictures of the stand before I sandded all the finish off.

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[sharrison]

Pictures of the Stand after sanding the finish off.

Stand after a whole day of standing the gloss coating off (10/17/2009). This took me from 10:00 A.M. until 6:00 P.M. I only took a 20 min break for lunch. I was so sore when I went to bed, I thought I was goig to die. I will not be using the old doors or be replacing the bottom. I'm goign to leave it an open space from the bottom of the tank to the floor. I want the ability of being able to wick up any spilt water anywhere around the stand. I believe that I will be painting the stand and canopy oil base white. I am not sure yet but I might make a shell that can be slid in and out from the stand.
Since I've had the stand home, in the car-port it is still wet and I've had it for a week. After I took the finish off I brought into the house so it would be in a controlled enviroment and hopefully dry out. I'm going to give it 2 weeks before I start to prime the stand and get it ready for the final finish.

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Pictures of the tank semi-cleaned.

180 Tank (Seni-Cleaned). Me and my son worked on the aquarium a lot today (10/18/2009). We steelwooled the top of the tank to get off all of the oxidation from the saltwater and lights that sat over the tank over the years. With a closer inspection of the tank durring this clean process I discovered that this tank is an AllGlass manufactured on December 28 of 1994. Here are some of the shot this afternoon.
I am planning on painting the outside back of the tank black with enamel high-gloss paint so I am not worried about getting the back inside of the tank spotless.

 

[sharrison]

This is a picture where it going to reside after it is all said and done.
This oak table and chairs are going to get moved out as soon as I get the tank on the stand. We really don't need it because we have a largeer table in our other dining area.
The wall to the right is where all my plumbing it going and is our laundry room. There will be no powerheads or anyother noise makers near or around the DT tank.

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After much debate with myself and talking to a few people I plan on redoing the silicone webbing on the inside of the tank. The structure silicone that actually holds the tank together looks good but since this tank is about 15 years old I figured that I would go ahead and get this out of the way so I can have a least anohter 5 years of worry free, no questions asked, wether or not it would be leak free.
I plan on over buying most of the components in the system and more than likely upgrade to a 400+ gallon system in that aloted time.
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Ok. I have been working on this project every waking moment when I'm not at work. It is starting to come together.
I primed and painted the stand, doors and the canopy. I also re-webbed the tank, painted the back black and installed the bulk-heads in the overflow.

 

[sharrison]

In the Picture above, showing the shot of the over-flow, I siliconed the overflow to the tank. I then installed the bulkheads. It took me about 30 mins to get the nuts on the bulkheads as tight as I wanted the because the silicone was easing out the sides and bottom of the overflow as I was tightening the bulkheads down. There is no way for water to leak around these bulkheads.
I am very happy how the webbing came out. I masked all the joints out with painters (blue) masking tape. I then put the silicone on then removed the tape. It took me about an hour and a half to mask everything out. It took me about 15 mins to silicone the tank. All in all it took about 18 hours to re-web the tank including removing the old silicone and making sure all the seams were clean before applying the new silicone.

 

[sharrison]

Here are some shots of the stand, canpoy, the T5 retro's and my 250 MH retro's. I'm not sure but I might need to put me another 250 MH retro because of the display tank having 2 braces across the top. I won't fully know until I get the tank on the stand and turn the lights on.

 

[sharrison]

11/02/2009
Tonight I wired all the lights into the canopy and installed the piano henge. I used all stainless steel parts to keep oxidation down and tested all the lighting. Everything in the canopy is 100% ready to go. I mounted the T5 ballast in the back of the canopy. However, I mounted the IceCap MH ballast's on the back-end top of the canopy. I have the MH ballasts sitting on top of 4 stainless steel nuts, one on each corner of the ballast, to keep it suspended so that air could freely pass all around them. Since wood is an insulator I did not want the bottom of the ballast to be touching the canopy. I might purchase some heat sinks for them but at this point I'm not that worried about it.
I am ready for the tank to go on the stand but I'm going to wait to place the canopy on it this weekend so the paint can harden a bit more.
I have been pondering that I might purchase all new plumbing for the fact that I want grey or black pipe. I don't like the way white PVC pipe looks, personally. I know that grey or black schedule 40 is a little more expensive so I have also thinking about just buying white PVC and painting it high gloss black.
I have also thought about buying schedule 80 for the added strength but since only skimmers uses high pressure pumps I have almost opted out of that idea, mainly due to the fact that schedule 80 PVC's ID is smaller than 40 and I don't want any restrictions on the Reef-Flo Hammerhead pump for my closed loop.
I could not believe the price of a stainless steel piano henge. The price is outrageous. Unless you are a stickler, like myself, don't bother. However, I hate oxidation so the price didn't really matter.
Anyway, enough of my blabbering, here are some more pictures of what I accomplished tonight.

 

[sharrison]

Ok. I couldn't help myself. I had to put everything together tonight.
Here are the pics. Hope you enjoy them.

 

[Shane Hoffman]

Looks awesome. I would only put ps on the outsides of the tank and softies/lp in the middle. If you do that you could definately get away with just the 2 MH lights......as far as appearance and visual light spread for viewing it looks great.

 

[sharrison]

Yea. I got to thinking about how I wanted the aquascape is going to be built.
It will more than likely have a look like this with some other odds and ends in there:

I will post more pictures as time goes.

 

[Trilogy]

hmmm..bonsai style ?? good idea bro..i like the clean look with lots of space ..keep up the good work!!

 

[lastlight]

I love the bonsai photoshop hack very nice!

You really breathed some new life into that stand it looks great. If it were mine however I might put some foam strips or something behinfd one door out of each pair so when shut the light doesn't bleed. Something similar on the canopy but yeah it all loos great.

And lastly is this webbing process just laying silicone over all the old stuff? I've never seen that...

 

[leslie hempel]

looks good, cant wait to see how this develops.

 

[MarineGirl411]

wow nice job!

 

[sharrison]

Yea. I will be foaming the entire inside of the stand. The reason you see light on the canopy is because it is not fully closed . I don;t want to close the top fully until the paint dries for more then 2 to 3 weeks.

if you look closely you will notice 2 stainless steel screws in the corners hold the top of the canopy up from the bottom lip Don't want it to stick...

Any more suggestions are more than welcome