29G to 65G upgrade, pic heavy

[kookie_guy]

More progress.

The biocube has now been moved out a few feet from the wall, and the 65G is in it's final resting place. I've nearly finished all the plumbing, just waiting for it to cure now. I got the sand and rock from a local supplier of marcorocks.com. The sand is SUPER fine. Took a few good rinses to get it nice and clear. The rock (dry rock) is some of the most beautiful rock I've seen. I was able to pick and choose which rocks I wanted. I grabbed about 75lbs. The sump is also all complete.

Now some pics.....

Sump with the skimmer in place.


Here you can see the riser I made for the skimmer and the pump support platform. Basically glass panes on acrylic supports.


Pics of the rock. The pictures don't really show the beauty of it. Once I rinse it and get it wet, the pics will look better.



This is a snug fit in the frame. It's to prevent spills out of the sump. It can also hold a bit of water if the sump overflows for any reason.


Tank in it's final resting place. You can see the biocube in the middle of the kitchen now. lol. Gonna be there til I'm ready to do the transfer.


Shot of the sump and refugium under the tank.


Pic of the tank.


I lined the bottom with eggcrate. I don't want the rock sitting on bare glass.


I've also put all my sand in after rinsing it for several hours. It was too late so no pics. Will take some with sand and post them sometime tomorrow.

If all goes well, I will have water in it this coming weekend.

[kookie_guy]

here's a pic of the tank with sand in it

[kookie_guy]

Made some good progress, and also took a step back. I totally goofed on the return plumbing. I put my check valve right on top of my return pump, but I have tees above it. So if I don't break siphon up top in a power outage, the water will still flow back through the tee. So that needs some reworking to put the check valve right under the bulkhead.

Anyhoo, here are the progress pics....

Here is the ghetto canopy I made to hold the lights for the time being. I will be getting a custom one made, but not right away. This will do for now. The black box up top just brings all the fan/LED wires together.


The MH module of the fishneedit lights gets pretty warm, and people have reported the plastic warping on the sides. So I cut the grills, and mounted some fans that will blow air across the bulbs


Here's what it looks like


A few angles and top down shots of the aquascape. I used epoxy in key places to tie the rock together after my wife and I were happy with the results. We have a wall going up the overflow wil A LOT of little caves. Plus an island that has caves coming in/out from every side, and 2 little rock islands.






Filling RO water and checking for leaks as I go.





Some pics with the lights on. My wife's camera is terrible, so you can't really see the light output all that well. Let me tell you, these things are BRIGHT!




And finally finished all the electrical and cleaned it up. The 24vdc power supply stays on all the time, and runs the MH cooling fans and night LED's. One supply for both. I have 2 120v relays run by the timer that select when to fire the LED's and fans.



And finally, the T5 ballasts. Didn't want to extend the wiring, so just made a mount for them.


Plumbing should be done by end of this weekend. Hopefully she'll be up and doing a test run by Wednesday. I was also fortunate enough to score 2 controllable koralia 3's with the wavemaker 2 for $210 shipped, so that's what I'll be using for powerheads.

[kookie_guy]

Here are some long overdue updates....

Here's the sump. I have a lexan cover over the right side to stop bubbles from splasing salt all over the place.


Another shot. Yes the water is over the max, it's feeding time so the return pump is off. You can also see my refugium.


Skimmer working like a champ. It's the 220 model coralife.


Here's the frag rack I made. The tunze cleaner magnet was WAYYYY too strong, so I epoxied some eggcrate to it, and I have a nice frag rack. With the strong magnet I can really load this up.


Scored a used wavemaker 2.


Mounted under the tank on a custom extrusion shelf.


Bought a few nice coral pieces. They are in the 29G tank for the time being. The first has beautiful purple tips. The second one is more red than the pic shows. Also got an aussi hammer coral, but no pic.



This is the smaller island on the right side. Made from marco rocks. The brain coral is not doing too well.


This is the wall on the left, going up the overflow. Also marco rocks.


Bridge piece from my 29G tank.


Shot from the left side.


From the right side.


Marco rocks are starting to show nice coraline growth after about 2 months.


Full tank shot.


And finally my clowns still in the 29G along with they anemone. The are the last ones left to go in the big tank.



That's all for now.

[kookie_guy]

So that's all I have from other forums. I'll update soon. On another note, the monti pictured above (and below) has more than tripled in size within 1 year. Incredible growth. I broke a few pieces during the move to the big tank, glued em on frag plugs, and they took off like crazy. Sold them to big als for store credit.

Here's the original size again.

[Cliff]

Nice looking tank

[DCDN]

Looks great, love all the pics

[lastlight]

Livestock pics are not working but I think it's interesting what you did with that Bosch stuff. Is that cantilevered tank really sturdy that sorta freaks me out!

What's with that box of relays? Did you make that enclosure too or is that some sort of pre made device?

Lookings forward to the newest pics maybe your bandwidth was exceeded.