BIG Tank Build in Tiny Apartment

The shrimp tank is some ghost shrimp and giant amano shrimp with some planted tank substrate, some plants (right now it is ind of overgrown with widgon grass), and a small powerhead with an attached filter. The out put of the powerhead goes into some tubing with holes drilled along it and it runs around the top of the tank.

It's not used for growing any type of food. Just started out at our last apartment as something to look at in the living room prior to us getting into marine aquariums.

 

Love all the pics and the new tank. Nice score.

So how is the humidity in there?

matt

 

Humidity was through the roof with the 135. Need a dehumidifier here for the summer. The rest of the year is alright, wonderful breeze through here...

 

Sorry for the delay. We got the tank set up and running and left on vacation for 2 weeks. 120 is all set up and running. Our 4 clowns, 4 cardinals, our last remaining chromis and damsel, and our baby blue hippo tang are are swimming around fine and have been for a while. Spent the day taking off the latex paint from the 3rd side of the tank to make it a true peninsula tank again. Turns out the best way to take paint off of acrylic is Mostenbocker's Lift Off. Lifts the paint right off and I can scrape/rub the paint off with my fingers. It is literally as easy as spraying on the Lift off, waiting a few minutes, then wiping the tank with your fingers. Then repeat. It leaves the acrylic unscratched and unblemished.

 

haha I love this.. you even have a chain saw in around there. Following!

 

Build Update

So it has been a long time since we last updated, and a lot has happened since. School and work have kept us from updating because we spend most of our time on the build itself.

300 Gallon Tank
So the stand was built from rectangle and square tubing. We did most of the cutting and welding ourselves in a friend's garage. It's a simple truss design





We also have the top of the stand finished with 1 1/8 sub-flooring against the stand and 3/4 inch foam between the flooring and the 300 tank.



The back and bottom of the tank have plywood bolted to the stand and insulating foam glued to the inside of the frame.



The tank is also in place now. The top of the tank is 6 ft above floor level, so in order to be able to do maintenance in the tank we have about a foot of space on the top of the stand behind the tank that we can walk along.



We also have the overflow boxes in place. The overflow is a slightly modified coast-to-coast overflow. We had to split the overflows because TruVu aquariums bow so much. The 300 is made from 1/2 inch acrylic, and if we ever get a new tank to replace this one it will be made from 1 inch or wider acrylic.



We are now in the process of filling the tank with live rock and sand to start cycling. We are regularly dosing with Nite Out II to get the denitrifying bacteria started. We have no plans to put fish in it for a few months, not even damsels because we still have not hammered out the details of the sump system, down flow, and return pipes.

Out ideas for the sump are:
-build it into the bottom of the frame from 3/8 acrylic
-an algae scrubber system to sponge
-live rock area
-refugium
-skimmer and reactor area

We currently plan on using 2 of the 1200Lph Jebao DC pumps so that we can have control the flow back into the tank. We will post pictures of the sump design when we have a better idea of what we are going to do.

120 Gallon Tank
The 120 has been up and running very well since the last update. We have had amazing coral growth and there are lots of damsels, a couple tangs, clowns, firefish, and chromis swimming around making for a really nice view from the couch.

We had a problem with our lighting on the 120 though, our Kessil stopped working on morning, and never came back on. Thankfully the guys at Kessil are great with customer service and sent us a replacement.