The Big Kahuna (hawaii upgrade) 300gal

[h2obaby]

I will start with a little progression run down. 1st off this is my first thread so pardon my mess ups.
My husband has always been into keeping reef tanks, But for me it all started on our honeymoon to Maui I fell in love with the water,fish and reefs and all the animals that I found in the water. I wanted soo much to be able to have all those memories right in my living room so I could go there any time i wanted. So like a good hubby he bought me a 55 gal tank.I read everything i could get my hands on.I wanted to know what i was getting into, this after all was my very own tank and i wanted to do it by myself.Tank, sand, rock and a half dozen fish my Hawaii tanks was born.

All my fish were just babies when i got them. After about 1 year they out grew the tank. A friend of ours gave me a 125 gal (Thank you Al) 2nd up grade was done in 1 day alot harder than i thought.The fire place insert had to be taken out so the stand would fit

Plumbing, more sand,And my beloved Bologna(my Bat fish that was getting too big for his tank)upgrade finished.

1 year later the tank needs upgrading again Bologna (now about 12") and all my other fish are just getting too tall and too big for the tank.

We got a good deal on a used and running 300 gal tank, stand and canopy that we plan to completely redo.

Stay tune more to follow as we go along as we build a new home for all my babies
Michelle

 

[h2obaby]

The big Kahuna cont with more pics

The big Kahuna cont with more pics

The take down of the 300 gal Acrylic truvu tank (96" long X 30" tall X 24" deep) was about 3 months ago it took us two days.day one was all the live stock,fish, rock with every thing in buckets,

it was time to get the sand out. This was a little hard I could not reach the bottom even with the dust pan.

as you can see my best bet was to get in the tank. Day 2 was moving the tank and stand. The stand was not very stable so we got one from CL not very nice looking but paint can fix it.

that was what the whole thing looked like. It was a commercial stand.It weighs about 300 lbs 98" long X 36" tall X 26" deep.with a little refurbishing this is what it looks like now.

Much better don't you think?? I will have to wait for my hubby to help me write about all the plumbing and toys that he put on.So in the next couple of days there will be more of the equipment part of the build thread.
Thanks for looking.:wave:

 

[jeff209]

looking good so far cant wait to see it up and running

 

[Paulca916]

Right on can't wait to see more !!!!!
Kelly give us the details Bro :wavehand:

 

[h2obaby]

And now the toys :>

And now the toys :>

kelly has been scrounging up equipment before we even had the tank planning for a large tank upgrade. Everything had to fit in the stand sure looked to me that everything would fit and still have plenty of room, boy was i wrong i had no idea what all he would try to fit in there.according to Kelly there is no such thing as too much flow or lighting,Mind you this is a fowler tank only so to me there is such a thing as too much light i don't want to have custom sun glasses made for the poor fish.I think he wanted to light a football stadium with the lights and I wanted to see the fish not blind them.Wile deciding on the lights he started with the sump and pump.

The sump is plexy glass. 36" long X 20" deep X 18" tall and holds 56 gal if full.He then started on the flow with a hot tub looking monster,he call a amp master 3600 i call it a fish extractor,it looks like it will blow my fish right out of the tank.I had in my hands the return pumps that came with the tank(2 rio 1700's) he made a funky noise and told me we will use them on the next 20 gal we build.

In the pic is my master fisher Kitty "13" Seems every one has their cats in the pick just making sure we do it right. The chiller was the first thing that was put in.Its a 1/3rd horse power sea-clear chiller, to help with the warm Tahoe days.Like we really have that many.(globle warming my a**)

The chiller is run as a closed loop system being driven by a iwaki md-40rlt. now that brings the tank flow too 4400 gph.

That will have to be it for now kelly is tired of me asking questions so i will leave it at that for now and let him watch survivor. Thank you again for looking and please any coments or problems you can see please feel free to let me know.

:wave:
Michelle

 

[meredith1985]

Looks great so far! I can't wait to see those pretty fish in there! By the way... great job making that stand appealing. It was pretty awful (or at least the back was) before you put your magic touch to it! good job!

 

[h2obaby]

Looks great so far! I can't wait to see those pretty fish in there! By the way... great job making that stand appealing. It was pretty awful (or at least the back was) before you put your magic touch to it! good job!

Thank you very much the whole stand looked like the back when we got it. It was the worst looking thing ever.But build like a brick sh*t house.

 

[Paulca916]

I always say you cant over build a stand.

 

[h2obaby]

I always say you cant over build a stand.

I think i could park my truck on that thing and it would hold no prob.I might even be able to park Kelly's truck on it.

 

[h2obaby]

updates

updates

now we have to see if it will all fit. everything must fit in the stand because we will not have much room on either end of the tank.

here is a list of all equipment that will be going in the stand.
The chiller,sump, and pumps (see above)
40 gal heater and reactor chamber, with 1000 watt heater.
medusa PHC-300 controller.(forheater and chiller)
2 two little fishies phosban 150 reactors.
30gal refugium w/coral life 2X65. This will be the only safe haven for a clean up crew. My fish tend to eat everything i put in the tank.

all electrictal was done in the stand with 4 4way boxes going through a GFI..but will 16 plugs be enough????
Lighting timers are paragon digital timers.
the sump will hold.
ASM G3 protien skimmer with a sedra 5000 pump.
2 7" sock holders
comercial duty bio filter
del zone eclipse 2 ozone generator controlled by a milwaukee sms 510 orp controller and we added a milwaukee SMS 122 ph controller for a kalk reactor.
I hope that will hold you over for a little while. Please any feed back is greatly appreciated. Have a happy thanksgiving if I cant post any more till then.
Thanks for looking
Michelle

 

[gjk]

Nice work going on here.

 

[h2obaby]

Nice work going on here.

Thank you very much I don't want anything to go wrong on this build so the hubby is doing all the main work for me. right after the pic with his back to the camera he had a male bear less then 3' behind him with people across the street taking pics. poor man has to deal with me asking a ton of questions and the local wild life.:love1::love1: what a man!

 

[powderhound]

i was over there yesterday, the tank looks fantastic. good luck with the tank and thanks for the great frags. see you next time
jason

 

[popper231]

sitting inside the tank sure makes one person look a lot thinner. lol

 

[popper231]

oh wait, that's 2 different people..lol..hahaha..

nice setup.

 

[h2obaby]

sitting inside the tank sure makes one person look a lot thinner. lol

hey now, i don't think my but looks half as big as his and i think his hair might be longer than mine. LOL thank you for looking

Michelle

 

[h2obaby]

moving the beast

moving the beast

With the stand almost done we had to move it into the house before bad weather set in. The stand was already in a rolly cart so getting it into the house was not too hard,getting this thing into the living room was another problem it had to some how come off the cart and up about a foot into the living room with carpet fully loaded. It sat im my dinning room for a couple of weeks while he contiuned the plumbing and electrical.He had the idea to move it like the egyptians he came home with 6 8' steel fence poles and layed them out on the floor.

All of the work (moving stand, tank and hood )was done by my husband, our 14 yr old son and me we had no other help with any of the move. Now with the stand in the living room my room was all moved to one side, we left the tank out about 4' from the wall so hubby could finish the plumbing.This in turn left the room in shambles.

My poor dogs have no idea where to lay down,both rotties weighing in at over 145 lbs.This has made it very hard to even use the room. so with the stand in and mostly done we move the tank and hood in too.

Now started all the mods for the tank.The had 2 1" drains down the center overflow, and 2 3/4" j tubes for returns. this just would not work with the amount of flow hubby wanted for the water so he drilled the drains to 1 and 1/2" and drilled 4 1" returns in the back with another 2 1" holes for the closed loop (the closed loop is the chiller and iwaki pump) Each 1" return turns into a 3/4" double loc-line with the hope that the master plumber/electricion/master builder/ handyman ( the hubby) will be able to put as much flow that he can without blowing the fish out of the tank.Thank god for the cover:lmao: Thats it for now it is bed time for me so good night and again thanx for looking
Michelle

 

[meredith1985]

Thats alot of work wow! I noticed that the access holes at the top of the tank are very small. Is that just the picture making it look that little? Will this cause you problems in the future when doing maintenance and placing sand and rock? or do you have a plan to get around this seeming obsticle?

 

[OldNemo]

Sweet! Tagging along. Can't wait to see it complete! What do you have for livestock? Adding to it?

 

[Paulca916]

Thats alot of work wow! I noticed that the access holes at the top of the tank are very small. Is that just the picture making it look that little? Will this cause you problems in the future when doing maintenance and placing sand and rock? or do you have a plan to get around this seeming obsticle?

If Michelle can fit into the tank then I'm sure they wont put rock in there thats bigger than her.
On the other hand who knows what Kelly will fit in there look at what he fit in the stand........ :dance:
In the past on a TruVu tank I had I had to cut big pieces of rock in half with a chisel and hammer then glue together in the tank.