Rishu's Really Ridiculous Reef: a 96x20x20 penny tank build

[rishu_pepper]

Originally Posted by daplatapus

Looking good. I've always been partial to white stands

Thank you sir, it does look very good.

Also looking good is today's weather, thank God for the sunshine, would hate to do the move in with raincouver weather, could have been dangerous.

Rented suction cups this morning, just waiting for the call now, any minute.

[rishu_pepper]

So... this morning, a bit of an adventure.

In the morning I went to grab some tools and rented a couple of the large 8" suction cups (I would have rented four but they only had 3 so..).

Joe (Wretch) arrived at about 10am and we chatted for a bit, before the truck driver showed up. I called up Andrew (Piscez) who also dragged his son Matthew out for the move.

Unfortunately, the freight company miscalculated the length of the crate slightly, its tailgate was NOT 8' at all, so it ended up like this:



The tank was literally hanging off into the air for a while when he lowered the tailgate. The driver was nice enough to use his jack to "deliver" it close to my patio entrance, up until a gravel section. We uncrated it there, used the suction cups, and carried it all the way in. The cups really helped with the lifting itself, with four of us guys (me being the weak one), we had no trouble moving the tank onto the stand.

Andrew and his son had to leave afterwards, so they couldn't enjoy the pizza party: Thanks so much for coming to help, you guys really made my life easier!



(boxed up pizza was Hawaiian. Eew pineapples, amiright?)

After we got the tank up onto the stand, however, we realized the sump could not be fitted in "normally" and had to be slipped in from the open end of the stand, which was already flushed against the wall. With that in mind, we (Joe, Joanne, and I) had to lift the tank off onto the floor, move the stand, move the sump in, and lift the tank back onto the stand. Not cool.

The end result, though, was a worthy sight to behold. See Happy the Octopus invading our tank and drinking a Steamworks pilsner.





So now the tank is getting wet for the leak test. Plumbing will be done tomorrow. I'm going to install the lights later today.

Thank you so much to Joe. The guy even helped me throw away all the garbage (smashing the pallet was sorta fun) and ate many of my pizza and beer Thank you to Andrew and Matthew for your grunt work too. There was absolutely no way I could have done this without help.

And now, onto the rest of the work.

[target]

Looks really good Brian! Sorry I couldn't be there to help load the tank into place, but had a painting job to do. Can't wait to see it filled up.

[Wretch]

Brian pleasure to meet you and Joanne. Thanks for the pizza and beer. Gad I could help. Enjoy the new tank. Looks real nice.

[Howie]

Looks great, I really like the stand that was made for it.

[Sharkbait-huhaha]

Time to get the tank wet!!

[rishu_pepper]

Originally Posted by Sharkbait-huhaha

Time to get the tank wet!!

Tank is 3/4 full, unplumbed. Doing aquascape at the moment. Will post pics/update later.

Tomorrow it will be plumbed.

[rishu_pepper]

Question: what can I use to hold down cable wires flush on top of the eurobrace? The Radions need somewhere to go to, and running along the brace seems to be the best option I have (do not want to run the wires on the ceiling), considering all things like length of wire, outlet location, aesthetics.

[Piscez]

Hey Brian, great to meet you and Joanne, Joe too! Glad my son and I were able to help you out, that was a heavy beast, but great looking, can't wait to see it up and running, guess I should get my act together and start publishing my build too! Glad everything worked out well, even the weather, have fun!