FINALLY have the thing up and running in "one week" haha, wow... i wish.. so here's how it all went down:
I built my own sump with acrylic, it was a learning process, but it doesn't leak, so i guess i learned.
Here's the sump being held together with tie straps:
I was given a heap of 1/2 inch acrylic for $10 one day and figured i could make a sump out of it. I did, it had some special parts though. the bottom is one solid piece, and the sides are in 2 pieces, the overflow from my refugium works as a wall between the 2 halves for the side pieces: (this also shows why you should cut straight cuts on a table saw, i had to recut this TERRIBLE cut.). If anyone needs a hand building acrylic stuff i learned all kinds of weird tricks from the guys at the place i bought weld-on from.
And here's the sump in place in the stand, with the return pump partially plumbed in. I ended up insulating the wall behind the sump, and glad i did. The tank makes next to no noise, and should be silent once i skin the stand. The back wall has vapor barior to protect the insulation... and i carried it down across the bottom of the stand, it held up well with no leaks, so in theory i could flood my stand a couple inches and it should hold water with no damage.(i do not want to test this)
And here's the tank in... it was an adventure fitting through the hallway, i could only imagine what you guys with 200+ tanks have to go through.
The tank was originally with a painted background, that i scraped off.
I put up a frame around the tank, it might change though since we're adding wanescoting to that room and the tank just clips the top of it, i'll have to see how it looks.
And with everything in place, i filled it up, tested my plumbing for leaks. All was good, so i added salt. And anyone else doing this... test your tank with tap water, then use RO, took 3 days to fill my tank to test my plumbing and if it was leaking i probably would have lost my mind.
I figured to aclimitize my old stock i could use them being in the same room to my advantage. I ran one line from my new tank to old sump, and vice versa. It was about a gallon an hour, so i let it go for a day monitoring and adjusting flows.:
