Mom’s 75 gallon Tank Build

[Midknight]

Now on to my master plan… “The Return from the Sump” (I know, sounds like a bad 60’s horror but what can I say)
Using Sketchup I came up with this mad plan. Now the big job was to figure out how to put it into play.


Everything looks better on the PC so figured I would do a layout on the tank to see how it would look or work.
(Well it ain’t pretty but hey it served its purpose)


Then add a little colour to help follow the flow and away we go.


So we start with the bracket to hang everything off of on the back.
(Also worked on the bracket for the lighting but that is for later)


Fit nicely into place and then painted black.
In this picture you can also see when I painted the back I taped off the overflow so I can see if anybody ends up in there.

[Midknight]

We laid the returns on top for positioning and found that there was a bit too much rolling around for what we wanted so…


My dad popped the top framing off and carved notches for the 45’s to fit into and there… No more wiggle.


Once we were happy with the position we started to cut the flex hose and decided the SCWD needed to be lowed so we added a bracket at the bottom and there you go.
One crazy flex hose octopus (well half octopus as there is only 4 legs) return.


A quick fill and with joy and relief all the water stayed in the tank and none on the floor.

[Midknight]

LIGHTS… ACTION… Aquarium!

I know my mom didn’t want too difficult of things to look after for corals so decided to go for T5’s
Got a great deal from Wendell at OA on a nice set 4 bulb unit (2 10K & 2 actinic)
Measured out where the middle was going to be and then had to figure out to get the lights out there.
One day I was wandering around Home Depot in the gardening section and found these…


Measuring them out the dropped an inch short of where I wanted to, so now I use the extra wood you saw before.
With a quick plumbing for vertical off we go…


With the 2 brackets in place my dad and I mounted the hangers.
The first one…


And the finished product.


We hung the light and plugged it and what do you know…


It lit up and didn’t fall down as shown by my daughter.

[mseepman]

Hey Good idea with the plant hangers. I can't tell but are you able to lift the light fixture up on those hanging cables? That is always helpful when you want to work in the tank.

I too am using a squid in my nano tank and I can attest to the "whack" theory. I've been running mine for a year now and only had to "whack" it twice for noise (not because it stopped).

[untamed]

I ran a SQWD for many years and can attest that they work pretty well. Sometimes, however, they will get stuck by a small grit of sand. When that happens, you can sometimes free it with a quick "whack"...but other times it requires removing the SQWD from the system and running water backwards through it.

You might find it helpful to place a couple of valves on the SQWD outputs, close to the SQWD. That way, you can close off the valves and more easily remove the SQWD for service/replacement.

I got about 2 years out them before they just wear out.