Dr. B's 75 Gallon Build (56k beware?)

So now that my tank has started to get up and running, I thought I'd post some pics and a build thread.

I bought a used 75 gallon 48x19x19 with stand off of craigslist. It was older and hadn't been used in a few years. It had originally been a drilled tank but been plugged with a sheet of glass silicon over the drilled hole. I wanted a drilled tank since I didn't want to mess with siphons and HOB overflows, so step one was removing the glass that covered the hole. After some prying, it wasn't really feasible to do so I ended up drilling through the sheet of glass covering the hole.

-Drilling things makes me feel incredibly handy, and manly.

I figured that a bulkhead has a long enough stock to go through 2 sheets, so why not, and it was REALLY easy. Took about 15 minutes with a glass hole driller and some water.

I then stripped the old silicone off of the inside of the tank with a razor blade, found some old rusty nails (what? right!) in the molding on the top of the tank. Looks like someone put them in to hold something in place at one time. I pulled them out, sanded the holes down, drilled the holes out to remove any remaining rust and filled them with silicone. I then re-siliconed the tank with new silicone. I Also re-painted the trim around the top and bottom.

after this was finished, we set up the aquarium and noticed that the sump underneath wasn't in the right spot. And not lined up with the bubble trap. This was due to a lip on the bottom of the stand that I didn't see at first, so I had to dremel it off.

-Look at those (non)safety glasses.

After this was done, me and Kelly (better half) got it situated and set up where we wanted and lined up. We then set up some wild contraption with our RO unit to fill the tank all night while we slept. Hose from outside into the living room, where the RO line was taped into the aquarium, and the waste water funneled down some scrap PVC and hose and then outside again. You can imagine that this was pretty much a disaster waiting to happen. At roughly 3AM the duct tape somehow lost it's hold and the RO line flopped out onto the floor, the next 5 hours were spent filling the living room with RO water. Awesome. We're both crazy though and thought this was waaaay funnier than it should have been, so no harm no foul.

-shot of the living room post-flood

This meant we had to dry our carpeting with a carpet cleaner and then prop our carpeting up on boxes with fans to dry it so it didn't mold. Not fun. The wooden box to hold the RO line worked wonderfully afterward and seemed an infinitely better choice btw.

-wiener dog carpet mountains
​

After the tank finished filling I mixed up the salt in the aquarium (id post pics but I was shirtless, keeping this SFW), and then added sand. I didn't wash it because I didn't know how (hadn't heard of pillow cases) and my water turned quickly into milk by the time I was done. I added about 50-60 lbs.


-All of my fish constantly lactate.

I had a small pump in the tank circulating the water and let this settle for the next 24 hours or so. I turned my skimmer on for a while to help clear some silt. It worked PDG.

-Bubble Magus, great skimmer, hilarious user manual. A+

Here's a shot of my overflow drain plumbing. I used a design similar to melev's reef with the ball valve controlled dual flow into the skimmer section and fuge section. Also, we had to rip off the black plastic trim on the sump aquarium because it was pushing against the PVC and causing a leak in the bulkhead.


-I highly recommend everyone get a headlamp in this hobby.

I've since cut down the baffle wall to lower the skimmer section water level. I've also cut the teeth deeper on the weir in the DT since I didn't cut them deep enough the first time. Here's a shot of the DT taped up, post re-drill. Kelly helped me out a ton with brainstorming and small hands when needed on ton of post-setup issues. Without her help I'd probably still be standing in the living room with a question mark on my face. <3


-definitely not as pretty and straight as they once were. I'll take functionality over looks though.

Equipment list/random specs:
-Bubble Magus NAC6 skimmer
-Mag12 pump (with head getting about 1100 GPH (around 14x turnover per hour, a bit lower than i wanted but respectable)
-6 bulb 54 watt (3 daytime 3 actinic) T5 HO ballast
-30 gallon sump, with fuge.
-durso standpipe (tricky to dial in correctly)

Now that Kelly and I had finished post-setup construction it was time to get some live rock. I ended up getting about 55 lbs of non-cured and a few pieces of fully cured live rock. I wanted to get some fully cured to help kickstart "critters" in my tank, and hell, give me something to look at.


-uncured in the bucket, fully cured on the Garbage bag. They were kept wet.

After cleaning the uncured rock we set up the tank and did some quick and dirty aquascaping to get as much rock exposed as possible, and then it was time to wait, and test, and wait some more.


-First full tank shot, water is a bit cloudier than normal because i kicked up alot of silt that settled with the aquascaping, turned pumps on to avoid it settling on the LR.


-Full Tank Shot the following day. Much better. Water tested this day had ammonia at about 4mg/L or something else insane.

Next post will be some close-ups of the cured live rock which have an assload of stuff on them that I've been able to identify. And a some shots of the Oysters

Let me know if you have any setup/equipment questions or more pics of a specific process, I have a bunch.

Hope you enjoyed reading this.;D

-Dr.B

 

Very nice....looks like you're off to a great start.

 

Nice ...you have been busy!

 

looks great. K+ for the headlamp suggestion.

 

Thanks for the thorough write up. Looks good.

 

great start!

 

Thought I'd throw in a few updated pics.

I adjusted my photo period shortly after the last pics were taken and had a crazy outbreak of algae, even though there were no fish in the tank nor was I feeding. I cut the light back and re-aquascaped the tank. The Snails have been doing a good job so far.

Before:


After:


Recovering nicely from the algae outbreak. Been a 2-punch combo of raising mag and manual removal.

I also got one of the moonlights from R2, I highly recommend it. I installed it onto my t5 fixture by drilling 2 small holes, and then silicone-ing the LED moonlight over the holes. This created a silicone base that extended into the holes for a stronger bond. I didn't want to take any chances.



FTS: 2-1-09:



I also got a pair of black juvenile false percula clowns. "Samson" and "sir-smokes-a-lot". They've been an absolute joy so far. They both have a good appetite. I also performed my first freshwater dip with these guys, it went great. Have been keeping the feedings to every other day though with enough time for them to scarf down. Haven't noticed any change in water params since I bought them.

 

i like the new scape

 

nice tank..

 

Updated tank pics:

The byprosis outbreak has really been taken care of. A few problem areas on the substrate in places but otherwise looking good.

I also picked up 2 new fish!



Bi-color blenny(yet to be named) and sampson that i've had previously!

Blenny's are pretty much awesome. I wish I could have 10 of them.


Here is a firefish that I got the same time as the blenny, he acclimated well and haven't had any jumping incidents yet:



I also picked up a new Florida Ricordea since I needed to redeem myself for the Yuma not doing very well. I should also have a 2 part dosing kit from BRS next week at the suggestion of some people here to get alk, mag, and calcium in check. This should do nothing but help the situation. I already have my tests ready to go.


Here is some of the LR I have in my tank, it has several different types of macro algae growing on it that all look very cool. I trimmed some of this back tonight to make it look better. I'm also sure it's not going to have any trouble re-growing.


3 different types of red algae, plus some others that i've identified but forgotten the name of. Kind of sharp looking.


FTS (at feeding time): 2-12-10