In the next 6 weeks I will be doing some major changes to the tank. I have ordered a custom sump for under my stand. It measures 60"x18.5"x18" and will incorporate two 7" filter sock holders, a large skimmer chamber, and a good sized fuge. I will put a picture of the design from sketchup in the next few days. I will be pulling all of my old plumbing out from under the tank and redoing it all. The reason I am re-doing this is for two main reasons. One being that when I originally designed my sump I planned to not use filter socks. Now I use them religiously and really hate how cramped it is in my sump in order to change mine out. The other major reason is I have absolutely no room to work in my fuge. Because it is raised up higher than the sump I cannot fit my hand into it. This makes it extremely difficult to do any maintenance on it like trimming my cheato.
While I am re-doing my sump and plumbing I am going to drain the display tank half way. I will put my heaters into the display water along with my vortechs turned way down so my sand is not blown everywhere because of the low water level. I will also add a couple air stones and feed lightly. I have ordered a glass eurobrace for my tank which I will silicone on once the tank is half empty. I will remove the current black plastic brace that is on the tank now and put the eurobrace on. I will leave the tank half empty for 4 days to let the silicone cure. During this time I will work on plumbing in my new sump. I also plan on painting the inside of my stand white before adding the sump which is something I should have done originally.
While waiting for the silicone to cure I will also be re-doing my lights. I will be taking my current four 250w spider reflector metal halides out and putting in three 250w LumenMax Elite reflectors. I will also be removing two of the four 39watt T5 lights I have in the canopy for supplemental lighting. With the larger LumenMax reflectors I can only fit two of the four T5's. I will also be replacing my fans that are currently in my canopy with something much quieter as they are extremely loud!
The reason for adding the Eurobracing to the tank is so I can run 3 metal halides with good reflectors instead of 4 with crappy reflectors. Currently my tank has a 4" black plastic brace directly in the middle of the tank which is preventing me from running three 250's as I will not place one directly above this brace for obvious reasons. This will decrease the total power required to run the tank and also reduce the heat (four 250watts put out some mean heat on a 125g tank!).
This is definitely going to be a big project but I am excited to get started on it. Im heading to Cuba for 2 weeks on sunday so ill be preparing to start all of this as soon as I get back!
