borns 125G

[born]

So I've upgraded from a 34G Red Sea Max(for sale) to a 125G.
Dimensions: 48"x30"x20".
The tank was made by concept aquariums. He did a sick job on everything, polished edges, drilled holes, all eurobraced, overflow.
He says he messed up on the silicon because when he asked me if I wanted clear or black silicon I said clear, but black got put on it. After explaining to me the difference between black and clear, im glad black was put on. You cant see any bubbles, and after a while clear silicon tends to show the algae on it and turns a yellowish color I believe. He alsos gave me HUGE deals on powerheads, heaters, plumbing supplies, skimmer. He's like a hardware LFS.



Lights: Hoping to get a 48" Odyssea MH Fixture(if anyone has any others for sale let me know)

Protein Skimmer: Going with a Bubble Magus 180-CS CONE SKIMMER.
its rated 180G-240G. So I figure it should be pretty good for a 125 gallon.


Return Pump: Mag Drive 12. Some people thought a 9.5 wouldn't be as great as the 12, especially for SPS.


Powerheads: I got 3x Hydor Koraila 1400 Im also gonna have the return pushing out some flow that gets plumbed back up through the overflow then out the side of the overflow. And also a small nano koraila that I may put in the tank in a certain dead spot.

Live Rock: Just picked up just over 75lbs off a canreefer for 200$. There's some really good flat pieces and all kinds of holes in the pieces. Definitely a steal. I wanna aquascape 3 big islands in the tank and have a more "open" look.


Sand: I bought 40lbs of white sand. 10 lbs of it is live. Hopefully 40lbs gives a good sand bed, may need more.


Overflow:Herbie Style. I heard it was ultra silent, and since the tank is in the main room downstairs it would be nice to have everything as quiet as possible. Any info on the herbie system would be much appreciated. How tall the drain standpipe should be, emergency standpipe, how many gate valves(where to put them, etc..). Ive been reading tons about it but any advice is good advice.

Sump: 65 Gallon. The drain will come down to the left side through filter floss/carbon, then into the skimmer in the left chamber, then go over/under/over to the refugium, then another over/under/over into the return side and pumped back up into the tank.
Hopefully going to get the sump built by next week so it can be plumbed, but I'm having trouble finding some acrylic for the baffles, anyone know where to get pieces in Calgary? I went dumpster diving behind an acrylic shop and found some, but its way too thin. I was thinking of glueing 2 pieces together to thinken it then silicon them into the sump tank

[edreinink]

looks awesome

[spawn]

Nice tank.industrial plastics in Calgary sells acrylic.

[fishytime]

sounds like a pretty sweet start.....looking forward to seeing this one evolve.....there's a whole whack of pics in the first couple pages of my tank journal thread, ( http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=40669 ) of how I plumbed my tank and the parts I used.....feel free to PM me if you have any questions

[lastlight]

Originally Posted by spawn

Nice tank.industrial plastics in Calgary sells acrylic.

Tank looks very nice. This is where I sourced my overflow cover plastic from as well. Think I spent $20 or something.

[chris121277]

Not sure if it's still there or not but when I lived in Calgary I used to get all my acrylic from GE Polymer shapes. And again if he's still there Johny the guy who ran the back is one funny SOB and great to work with, he'll cut it to any size you need.

Great start to your build, looks like they did a bang up job on you tank!

[born]

Whats the best way to keep your aquascaping stable? zip ties? or sticking 2 bits of epoxy to each rock then super gluing between the middle of the epoxy's?

[lorenz0]

I used epoxy and imo I wish I used rods as well, and zip ties

nice tank btw

[born]

Stand is built. Its really heavy duty and can definitely hold the weight of everything in the tank. I lucked out though, by making a 30" wide tank, the stand is 31" wide or somewhere around there. I didn't think to myself that I should have measured to see how big my doorway is to the room where this tank is going before hand. Luckily the doorway is about 31.5" wide and the stand is half an inch less then the doorway. So I am able to just barely squeeze the stand into the room. Or else I would have had to shaven off some of the doorway or something.

[born]

Got the tank set up on plywood, and bought a 48" Odyssea Light Fixture with 2x250wMH and 4x64w actinic's. with i believe 14k pheonix bulbs.



Finished the sump, just waiting for the silicone to dry.

Last thing to do is plumbing