Yes I'll be doing that, I've figured out that much of what I need will not be available through mail order... photosynthetic gorgonians and sponges, macroalgae, and seagrass mainly, but we'll see. I won't be at the stage where I'm ready to plant the seagrass, which will occupy approximately 1/3 to 1/2 of the tank, until 6 months after I have the tank set up and the rock, sand, and mud in the tank. By then it will likely be winter and I will probably have to wait to find the seagrass from someone who wouldn't mind shipping.

I don't think I'll mind waiting, watching all the things that survive the cycle with the uncured rock grow and take over a predator free tank will be interesting :biggrin:

So I was doing some measuring today, and the stand that I had intended on using... well not really a stand, but that's beside the point... isn't going to have enough room to have a very large skimmer at all. I have a total of 16" of height where I want to put my sump, so with the height of the sump (around 13" with the trim on the tank) that leaves me with 3" of headroom, not enough to remove the cup on a skimmer. AND I'll have to pull out the sump to do any maintenance, requiring me to have spaflex shipped to me...

ARGH! :redface: Why didn't I think of this before?

So, now I need to build a stand. This is actually a blessing in disguise though, for a number of reasons.

1. It will cut down on noise, having all the components enclosed in a cabinet.
2. I can hide ALL of the plumbing by drilling a short side of the tank.
3. I can build an overflow into the same short side, saving some space in the tank AND allowing the tank to be viewable from 3 sides.

Hmm this is gonna work out to be cheaper in the long run, because I don't need to buy good looking equipment... nothing will be exposed. I can also use both MH and T5HO, a la retrofit kits. I still need to do some research on reflectors though...

No that won't work probably too late with my response, but they make some silicone remover look for it at home depot.

Nope not too late, I'm drawing on the tank with a whiteboard marker to figure out where the holes are going and what my proposed aquascape will look like... I'll be ordering a couple glass drill bits once I get the stand built. Part of the system will now become a 'fuge, namely part of the surge tank... more on this later as I work out the details.

Thanks for the info, I'll ask at Can Tire or Home Hardware to see what they have.

So I spent some time in front of the white board last night, trying to come up with a basic idea of what I want to do with this build now that I need to build a stand... You all will think I'm crazy but here goes...

http://i633.photobucket.com/albums/u...rity/002-1.jpg

The plan for the sump has changed already, I've decided to build a passive skimmer... that one I drew on paper and couldn't get a good shot of it, but it's basically a couple of tall tubes of bioballs with ALL of the tanks flow going through them... more on that later.

Looks like you have planned things well. Going to be interesting to see this in action :)

Your white board reminded me that I have been meaning to go get one for the new tank. I want to keep better track of my ZEO and 2 part dosing. I figure I would use a whiteboard this time. I use paper now but they always seem to go missing.

Yup, that was the idea behind the whiteboard. Both a place to plan things now and a place to write instructions for dosing and feeding... both for myself and if I go out of town. Probably a good investment for any fish room :lol:

I've started a pico build (see my signature) so this build will be sidelined for a while... but I'll soon be receiving a 30 gallon FW system with a few small fish (whatever is left, the tank is terribly neglected). That tank will become this build. The few fish will move into a smaller system built from an ice cream pail :lol:

On that note, and since the tank will be notably larger, I can make a few adjustments to this build :biggrin: First I will probably change my choice of fish... Now the main species in the tank will be a larger species of pipefish... I've read that the Red Banded pipefish has interesting behavior as a pair. My choices for everything will change actually, though I'll still be limited to Halodule and Halophila seagrasses. I may build a 'shallow end' like a tank I read about (I was sort of planning something like this already), which will be lit evenly (T5), and the rest of the tank will be lit with either regular MH or a spotlight system (MH, Xenon, or LED). This depending on how much of the tank will be non-photosynthetic, which is something I've been researching.

Much of the reason for the pico build is experimental. I want to test my surge system on a smaller scale, which will be much cheaper, less work (no custom stand, though a lot more DIY... wait for my LED spotlight build thread) and take up the space I originally wanted the 20 gallon to occupy, before I started getting all geeky and experimental.

So this project is on hold. For now. :wink:

....you have very neat writing.


just so you know LOL

Lol... I get that a lot, thanks I guess. Do you mean concise, or my style? :mrgreen:

Oh, yeah, way to hijack my thread :lol: :wink: