Triplemom's and Jwin's 90 Gallon Upgrade

Progress from today:

Justin filled parts of the sump with tap water to make sure the baffles didn't leak. So far, so good (except it's sitting on my kitchen counter). He will fill the middle chamber (return pump) tomorrow, but wanted to make sure the silicone seal was good before filling all chambers. The left side chamber will have the skimmer, maybe the heater, reactors, etc. Right off the left chamber is the bubble trap. The right side chamber is the refugium.



He also painted one side of the thin acrylic panel I'm using for the tank background. Since I couldn't decide, one side will be the same blue as my existing tank and one side will be black. We can flip it if we want to change the look. Lowes had a precut sheet the exact size of the tank...it slides right under my canopy and props up on the back of the tank just fine. I love the idea of having a two-sided background!

 

Sumps looking good And you cant go wrong with a double colored background in case you get bored with one of them down the line.

 

Great idea to have both colors! Sump is looking good!

 

I think I'm going to add a piece of black poster board to see how it looks, then make something permanent if I like it.

 

Moving right along! We got the sump in the bottom...now that was an ordeal. We had to remove the top cross brace of the stand to get the darned thing in, so it's not coming out any time soon! The PVC was plumbed and fitted for the sump by =Jwin=. Last night, we filled the tank with tap water to make sure everything was working right. I really like the Diablo DC return pump. It's very quiet and I like that the water flow starts up gradually rather than gushing out (like mine does now)! We're going to let the tap water run for a day or so before pumping it all out.

Next week will be lots of saltwater making, rock rinsing, QT setup (which the fish will be going to while we're doing the swap) and fine tuning before tank transfer day, which is supposed to be next Saturday! I can't wait! ;D

My mail lady hates me. Each day for the last 4 days, I've received a 40-pound box of sand in one of those big plastic mail tubs...I'm sure she wonders what on earth we're doing!

 

Oops, I almost forgot the pictures!

 

looking good!

 

Making great progress I see That reminds me, I need to work on filling my tank up as well!

 

No tank work today! We had a college graduation to attend, specifically for =Jwin=!



Okay, maybe a little tank work...we're still running tap water through the system. =Jwin= has been fiddling with reducing the noise in the sump and made a few tweaks with vinyl tubing, which seems to have helped. I'm trying to get the heater calibrated so I don't have to worry about that next weekend when we do the transfer. The powerheads are up and running. We're pleased with the flow on the second speed of the return pump. We also set up the 20G QT, which is where my current fish will stay during the transfer!

We have a lot to do next week!

 

Today's fun and games:

Draining the 90 out the front door. The 24-hour freshwater leak test ended up lasting closer to a week, but that's okay. We're very pleased with how everything is working. I thought it was going to take all day to drain the tank/sump, but it only took about an hour thanks to a nice siphon from the garden hose!



=Jwin= drained the sump chambers out the window...the new tank will be across the room on an inside wall so draining it again would not be this easy!



=Jwin= washing the new base rock in the freezing cold with Miss Nosy Husky helping...