drew's 75g tank thread

So this is the start of a thread of my 75 gallon RR tank. Below is a picture of the tank setup before I bought it. I took all of the 'live rock' out and nuked it.. most of it was actually calcified coral pieces that hadn't spent enough time getting pounded a lot of it was not very porous kind of worthless. I had 25 lbs of great base rock, kept some of what came with the tank and also am picking up an order of 40 lbs of base rock tomorrow.

I modified the stand.. I built a platform for it to stand on it now sits at 32". I redid the doors and stained the whole thing. I built on trim to cover the cheap plastic stuff on the tank and up to the sand line.

Next is building a refug from acrylic and plumbing I will post as I get it done.


This is it before I got to it..






This is with my stand modifications...

 

Much Nicer! Good job!

 

Nice! Can't wait to see the progress.

 

Just an update. Waiting on plumbing supplies and acrylic cement-- should arrive next week. I bought an Aqua C EV-120 skimmer.. really the only one that would work for me sitting outside of sump. Next weekend build the 11x15x18 refugium, have acrylic cut and drilled already.

I am actually building a 70g 36x18x25 tank for my dad at his office now also. So we picked up 75 lbs of LR that was in a large sump of a 110 display tank. It didn't have coraline on it but the rock should be well seasoned, came with many many bristle worms most of which I will flush out with high salinity water bath.

Also picked up 55 lbs of nicely seasoned and colored rock that came with a few corals.. frogspawn - trumpets - green star polyps - open brain - ricordea - polyps. Most of these will go in my dad's 70g.

I also finished nuking 45 lbs of rock and will be picking up 60lbs of base rock I ordered from the store I work at tomorrow. I am planning on 125-150 lbs of rock in my 75.. lot of corals, a few fish. Still kind of debating whether to go with IceCap retro 4x54 (4x85) or Tek 6 x 54 or 8 x 54.

here's 60 lbs of nicely colored rock with some corals in my 20 long for now.



I am planning on getting the two tanks up and running within 2 weeks, icecap retro t5's on the 36x18x25, canopy built. For my 75 I will be using the pc 48" Coralife Aqualite until I can afford the lighting upgrade.. should be soon though.

 

looking good! cant wait to see the progress

 

nice. I love watching new systems go up

 

Well, I have the plumbing done and tested, no leaks Hazaa. I used 1" PVC to go to the sump and also T off to the refug. I built the refug out of acrylic from Lowes .22" , cut it and cemented together using #3 and #16 glue. The fuge is 11x15x18H and I will have a deep sand bed in there. I got an AquaC EV-120 which I have room for sitting outside behind the stand. 3/4" from return pump to outlet. 3 double union ball valves.. 1 refug, 1 return and 1 main. It's very tight on space in there but if I take out the skimmer I can just barely wriggle the sump out of there if need be and then could take out the refug. I am using a CF 19watt 5100K bulb for the fug. Now I am waiting for my light I bought a Catalina Aquariums Solar T5 8 x 54 plus moonlights. The ballast has a five year warranty hopefully it will do its job. Probably will use the cheapo bulbs for a few month to save for them.. won't be much of corals there till then anyway. Only task left is to plum from the bulkhead on fug return to the sump return chamber. Here are some pics. Should be up and running in a week or so.

 

This is an update. I have it up and running with about 70 lbs LR and 50-60 lbs base rock. I built a canopy for it. Everything is running smoothly. After 2 weeks up and running and parameters in check I added 2 bar gobies along with live bacteria. Just this weekend I also added a royal gramma and canary blenny. This tank is going to probably be mostly SPS, zoa's and some LPS. The feature will be coral and invertebrates more than fish. With 4 small fish in there now there should be enough bio load to sustain a small clean up crew. Right now I have about 10 astrea + cerith snails and 15 hermits from my other tank. I also have more cerith, 1 fuzzy chiton and cheato coming this week. Right now I have some coral, a GSP, frogspawn and polpys that will be going into my dad's tank which has been recently set up.

For lights I bought a Catalina Aquariums 8 x 54w HO T5 with moonlights. The light works great, and I replaced the stock cheapo bulbs. I would recommend this light if you are going to hang it or use it in a canopy with lots of fans but if you're planning on using legs with this thing forget about it. It comes with cheap cheap plastic legs which connect with a terrible system I broke mine just moving it a little bit within 3 days before I had my canopy built.

For bulbs I have 1 10000K 2 actinic white 2 aquablue 14000k 2 super actinic and 1 other actinic.

For the canopy I am using 4 x 50 cfm ultra quiet fans which are really important because the light didn't have fans and is not meant to be in a canopy but with all 4 fans running it stays nice and cool. Oh yeah I also have a 7" wide x most of length of canopy vent cut in the top./


With actinics on





with all the lights on



canopy cut 5" front, hinged with lights 5.5" above tank plenty of room to work in tank

 

Looking real good... Love the rock work

 

Your tank looks awesome! Great handy-man skills.