My In Wall 150 Build

[Lampshade]

Most Recent Tank shot:


Tank Overview:
150gallon 72" tank (i thought it was 135 until i measured it....)
60 gallon custom sump

Circulation:
Reeflo Dart Gold
Herbie Return
3x Kora 4's

Filtration:
ATI Bubble Master 250
25g Refugium
Npx Bio Beads
Carbon/Vodka dosing

Calk/Alk
PM Calcium Reactor

Lighting:
2x250W MH - XM 10K bulbs
4x65W PC Atinic

Fish:
Bariene Tang
Flame Hawkfish
Lyretail Anthia
4 Chromis
Spotted Mandrin
2 False Perc's
Blue Damsel
Purple Firefish
Foxface
Lawnmower Blenny
Coral Beauty

And the build...


I've planned this build for a long time, we recently bought a house and i knew when i saw the place what i wanted to do. I've seen lots of nice in wall tanks, and although it was a lot of work, I've loved it. I had a 55 gal set up, it was my first salt tank, so it became a great learning experiance. I've had that tank balanced for awhile, and everything has been going great. I decided to go for 135 gallon 6' tank. Although it's one of the smaller 6' tanks, it'll give me room to grow if a need (that's what the hobbies all about isn't it?). I'm not too good at typing things out, so this is going to be mostly pictures, which are more fun to look at anyways:

Here's where we wanted the tank with paint testing going on aswell, busy house:


Now for the fun part of cutting a hole through the wall:


I used a waterproof coating on everything inside the "splash zone" but i'm still debating going a step furter and using greenboard or concrete wall board around everything. I was shocked taking my old tank down how little water actually got on the wall, but at the same time, while building it i might aswell spend the extra few bucks for insurance. This is where my tank setup's at today, should get finished next week sometime.

Does anyone think it'd be worth insulating the wall between my sump and TV room? My pumps and everything are reletivly quiet, but silent would be nice. Any recomendations?

[Skimmerking]

i did it and its a huge improvement do it.

[Lampshade]

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.:

[Lampshade]

I"ll have to post some running shots another time, Lights just went out and everything's closed up for the night. BUt as for reading after 3 days:

Nitite/Amonia: <0.1(unreadable on my tests)

Nitrate: 0 (I'm using the NPx beads in a TFL reactor, and an over sized skimmer that can't even pull anything right now... my old tank sat at 20-25 with the same bioload.)

Phosphates: 0

Calcium:400-420

KH: 8-9 (low for having high calcium, I have a calcium reactor that should dose equal, I'll have to keep topping off KH until things balance out)

PH: 8.1 (False high since i've been dosing seachem KH buffer that boosts PH, was about 7.7 before)

[Lampshade]

So here's some running shots to show how things fit in. The tank looks pretty open, i'll add a bit more liverock, but i'm planning on going pretty heavy SPS, so i'll leave room for stuff to grow.

[BlueTang<3]

Looks good very clean job.

[kien]

Wow tank is looking great Mike!

[StirCrazy]

nice build, but I do have one question... where did your cold air returns go? did you build new ones in a different area? I am assuming you didn't get a permit to build it other wise toy wouldn't have been able to just block them off as it looks like you did in your picture.

asside from that, end result looks nice, I wish I had a place that would work for an inwall myself.

Steve

[Lampshade]

The cold air was not an original install, so it was apperently not needed. I was happy about this, and also happy i opened up the wall before bringing in anyone to look at it, since this would have made it a lot harder to re-route. I'm not sure why it was added, but seemed to be added only a couple of years ago since the wood that was added seemed near-new.

I have the cold air returns beside the tank now, so they just got moved, not taken out completely, they still feed right into the furnace return the same as the old 1 did.

I'll have to update some photo's since things have changed a lot since my last picture, mostly ina good way :S.

[Lampshade]

So it's been awhile since an update, been very busy with a 2 year old and a 1 year old in the house. Being busy has taken it's toll on the tank too, everything's doing well, just can't give it the time I'd like right now, so some minor issues around. I've been battling some apasia and hair algae, seems to be under control, just not 0 the way i'd like it.

I hadn't realized how much stuff has grown until i read through my build again and saw where stuff was at 6 months ago, I'm pretty happy about where it's at now.

Anyways, the fun part, more pics:

FTS:


So for the longest time i had a monti that was showing a bit of blue, but was facing away from the light for a long time, i aquascaped and it started to pop some colors, nice ones, i think it's a rainbow monti?:


Bad depth of field, but i like this pic:


More pics:









And an Actinic shot of mushrooms: