First reef tank build, 75 gallons

Hello to everyone here on 3reef!!! I (well...my husband and I) are finally getting around to setting up my reef tank! This is definitely going to be a work in progress, but I've been saving up for this for a while. I want to try to do this the "right" way, but I want to be smart about spending the $$$. Because of this we are not afraid to DIY when necessary.

So first we bought a 75 gallon reef tank with stand from a guy that used to have it as a planted freshwater tank. Last week we drilled the tank with the glass-holes.com 1500 overflow kit. (I video taped my hubby drilling the tank, and I'm planning on putting it up on youtube.) It looks great ;D



We modified the stand because it was short, and I wanted the tank more eye level since we are putting it in our entryway.



Then we painted it black. We still have to paint a little more and put the polyurethane on it to waterproof it somewhat.



We tinted our front window a while back when we first bought the tank.

I ordered a Reef Octopus skimmer, an RO/DI filtration system (bulk reef supply chloramine filter since we have chloramines in our water), and an Eheim return pump. I found a guy on ebay selling two 30 gallon tanks with one stand for like $50, so we are planning to pick that up locally in the next couple days. We are going to use one as a sump, and we will probably end up using the other as a quarantine tank.

I am still not sure what to do regarding the lights. I would like to have LED lights, but there is no way I can spend $1500 etc on a set of lights. I am thinking about buying one light from reefbreeders.com to cycle the tank, then buying the 2nd light after 2 months or so.

Thanks for reading about our tank! I am so excited about finally getting into this hobby, it has been a dream of mine for a while. I originally went to college at A&M galveston to major in Ocean and Coastal Resources, but I ended up changing my major and moving over to UTMB to become a nurse. Now that I'm a nurse, I'm kind of missing the idea of working off a boat and around the ocean. Oh well, it is what it is. Nursing is rewarding in it's own way I suppose....So that's me. Nice to meet all of you

 

hey riverchel

welcome to 3reef , thanks for you sharing your project , it gonna look amazing am sure , am not going to ask how you end up a nurse with ocean lover dream loool , but as lots of us have , ocean dreams never dies

we will be looking into your progress on the tank and sure video and pictures
welcome again to 3reef where is the best place to answer your tanks questions .

 

Thanks for the reply ;D

I love it, "Ocean dreams never die," perfect! I'm looking forward to making some progress on my tank and uploading more pics/videos too!!

 

Hello and welcome to 3reef!
Nice looking stand you have there.
Take your time, have fun, and enjoy the journey.

 

hi and welcome

 

Welcome to 3reef!

 

Everything looking great so far. Welcome to 3Reef!

 

We finished the stand! YAY ;D


So far I am happy with it. We are going to put some sea creature knobs on the doors to add some ocean personality.

We stuck our protein skimmer into the 30 gallon sump/refugium, and, wow, it is very big! It practically takes up half the tank.



So, here is my question...
(edit out sump question)

Thanks for responding 8)

 

It's looking great! I'm going to let someone else answer your sump questions. I have no idea how they work, to be honest.

 

We are making progress!! ;D

We were able to get a longer 30 gallon tank, so it works much better as a sump (we traded it for a heater I bought that was way too big). This is our final sump design.

It's not very fancy, but we are going to test it soon. I think it will serve the purpose just fine.

We've been working all evening on the plumbing, and here is what we got so far
Note that this is only for the overflow, I will have pics of the return line plumbing soon. Husband is a pipefitter, so that is helpful...


This is a view from the bottom of the tank. We decided to hard plumb the system because it was a bit easier for us with all the different valves and size changes we had to make. I guess we'll soon find out how well this design concept works. We connected the two overflow drain pipes into a horizontal pipe. The pipe going to the refugium is 1" and has a ball valve so we can control the flow (have a slow flow), the pipe going to the skimmer is 2".


These are the cabinet knobs I am excited about from an artist on the web, Peter Costello. I love the detail


This is what it looks like from afar with the knobs and the overflow pipes. We just installed the return pipe, so I'll have pics soon.

Thanks for checking out our tank!!