kien's 150g Room Divider Mixed Reef & Stuff

[mseepman]

Sounds great. I would be surprised if those K2's could give you the flow you need though. I assume you are mostly sticking to softies?

[kien]

Oh those K2s are definitely getting swapped out. They are barely enough for my 90 gallon. I have a few SPS' :-) They will have to tough it out until I replace the K2s with at least one Vortech MP40. I thought about getting K4s but I know that I want the Vortechs eventually so I'm just going to save up and go straight to the Vortechs and try to live with the K2s until then. I might have to stick my hand in the tank and stir it vigorously every day for a bit..

[mseepman]

Originally Posted by kien

I might have to stick my hand in the tank and stir it vigorously every day for a bit..

Haha...At least you're willing to do the work.

I recently purchased a MP40W but I haven't installed it in my 70 yet. I might do so on Sunday and see how it goes.

[mike31154]

Yow, Mark you have an MP40W in your hot little hands but are able to wait until Sunday to install it? Talk about patience! They're so relatively simple to slap on, although take care with the alignment & spacer setting for glass thickness. I recently added a second MP40W to my 75 and it's great. I previously ran the single one at long pulse, full power and with a quiet room, it was quite audible ramping up to full speed. Now with the two, I'm able to run them around 75% power, making things noticeably quieter. Flow is much better at the previously 'other' end of the tank as well. When you get yours going, I'm sure you will see a lot of stuff getting kicked up that you didn't know was in there!

[kien]

Originally Posted by mike31154

Yow, Mark you have an MP40W in your hot little hands but are able to wait until Sunday to install it? Talk about patience! They're so relatively simple to slap on, although take care with the alignment & spacer setting for glass thickness. I recently added a second MP40W to my 75 and it's great. I previously ran the single one at long pulse, full power and with a quiet room, it was quite audible ramping up to full speed. Now with the two, I'm able to run them around 75% power, making things noticeably quieter. Flow is much better at the previously 'other' end of the tank as well. When you get yours going, I'm sure you will see a lot of stuff getting kicked up that you didn't know was in there!

Sweet! I'm really looking forward to picking up an MP40 now. Too bad I just dropped $500+ on a protein skimmer. Next paycheque maybe :-) Speaking of protein simmers.. I need to go pick that up. I got a call yesterday that it was in and ready for me. Its the Hydor 700. I will be picking up my QuietOne 6000 and a 55 gallon tank today as well in preparation for the sump build this friday/weekend.

[kien]

It was quite a debate.. black stand or white stand. In the end I ended up going with a white stand. Our living room has white leather couches and the stand being as large as it is would probably look like a huge black hole in the middle of the room if I went black.



While the paint on the stand dried I decided that it was time to tackle the sump. Fortunately all my sump equipment was on hand (very important when you are building a sump!). I picked up the skimmer first. I haven't even fired this thing up yet and I'm already in love with it. Hopefully it does not let me down.

Hydor Performer 700









Originally I was going to go with a QuietOnes 6000 but ended up walking out with a Mag18. I'm such a sucker for an upsell. This thing is heavy!





Now we just need some baffles. I decided to go with acrylic panels. They are easy to obtain and to work with. All you have to do is measure up your panels. Score your lines with a straight edge of some sort and a scoring knife. I like to run 5 scores on either side of the panel. Then, snap! If you're like me and not quite strong enough (or too chicken) to snap the panel (where you scored it) by hand, just wedge it in between two pieces of 2x4s and step on it.



It all went pretty smooth. Here they are, the baffles!

[kien]

Okay, so everything for the sump is read to go. At first I was going to go with a 55g. After getting it home and shoving into the stand I decided that I wasn't really happy with it. Even though I have tonnes of room under the stand I still found the 55g a tad tall for my liking. A quick google pointed me to the 45g. It is only 2 inches shorter than the 55g but those two inches made a difference. That's 2 more inches of easy skimmer cup cleaning!



Time for a dry fit.



From left to right we have the 'fuge, bubble trap, return section, bubble trap, the skimmer/overflow drain section. And here's all the equipment in their respective compartments.





Okay, looks good. Time to commit with some silicone.

*** DISCLAIMER: This will be the ugliest siliconing job you will ever see. Please don't judge me by the aesthetics of the result ***



Okay, so it is ugly but it gets the job done!



Overflow grill for the 'fuge.





But... will it hold water???



Fuge holds water!



So far so good.