Damon's journey

ok, so I said I'd post some pics. We are going to take a walk down memory lane, because I'm not so happy with my current set up. I have plans to make things better and will show it as I go, but well work up to that. I'm going to tell the story and then post the pics, all the pics are from after I started messing around with the second tank.
I'm going to start from the begging, about 4 years ago. I was doing pretty well financially and moved in with some friends in Tahoe. One roommate had 2 reef tanks (30g, 10g) that I fell in love with. After some time of kicking me out of his room because I would want to watch his tanks so much he mentioned me getting a tank of my own. I was happy to let him pick my stuff and he did a very nice job for me (little did I know how nice at the time, thanks Jim) picking a 36" 4xhoT5 current sundial and a ramora aquac hob skimmer for the 29g I got that came with a penguin 200. I ran that tank up there for a year before I started getting sick all the time :sick3: and had to move back to mendo county. The tank went through some ups and downs for a year at a friends house (as I got sicker and wondered why I could not get my life back on track).
I started my real education (in so many ways ) about 2 years ago when I move in with my brother here in Santa Cruz to try to find out why I was getting sick so much. Long story short on the sick part I ended up in the ER and found out I have End Stage Renal Failure (my kidneys don't work) and everything in my life changed. This is when my fish tank became a such a large part of my life . I started paying a lot of attention to it, and was given a second tank (40g) for free because it was scratched. Free is free so I started to play with the second tank, but after some time I found I did not like doing 2 water changes (I'm starting to see that I still need to work on my wc method) so I ended up with all the rock in my 29g and it got pretty full. I put a hob overflow on it and a 10g I got for free under it (more for room than because I knew what I was doing with a fuge) and put one of the cheap t5 lights I had got for my 40g on top of the 10g. There is one shot of the full set up at that stage. This is when I learned that I enjoy the working on the tank part almost as much at looking at a nice full tank, I may have even thought I enjoyed that part more at the time. Some where in there I was given a 3d tank (50g) and bought a rimless 10g, but the 10 has never really turned into much- yet .
My tank was full and I had hydroids that I had liked in the start, but became rampant and I decided to pretty much start over. I started thinking about the 40g and 50g and decided to make a stand for them. While I was building the stand I was given one cascade 1500 and got a second for 5$. Part of the idea for building my stand was to move it in my room (from the garage) so I could spend more time with it. Being the stubborn idiot that I am (getting a little better about research and listening) I just went for it and had quite the experience with trying to make my own bulkheads before I broke down and got some (I'll have to get some pics of the real bulkheads) and the rest of the plumbing has been fun to say the least. I never really noticed how loud the overflow was in the garage, but in my room it was crazy. This is when I started to realize how much the little things matter on a nice set-up and how hard a diy set-up can be. I started doing some research instead of just looking at people's nice tanks online. I learned about a system that I think is called a Deroso or something like that, it uses 2 overflows and a gate valve (learned ball valves and gate valves are not equal the hard way ) to make a quiet overflow. I currently have everything plumbed into a 10g and back through one canister per tank, but I will be building a sump/fuge for it soon, as well as many other things I have planed for it.
I have had some trouble with water getting on the floor, I'm not the best at staying out of the tank, and it's amazing how much water will drip off your arm if your in and out a bit. For this and few other reasons I have decided to take the set-up back out to the garage if not just to add to the many things I currently need to change about this set-up to make it work to a satisfactory level.
Well there is lots in there that I missed, but it's been fun looking at my pics and thinking about my journey, I hope you guys enjoy it and feel free to ask questions or comment.

 

the zoas I grew completely from my own frag, but latter died when I was not able to take care of the tank as much. I hope to grow this cup out like this again.

 

me whit my tank when I was proud of it, hope to get back there soon.

 

The tank is getting pretty full here. I had just a few more zoas before they took a turn for the worst.

 

The final stage of the 29g, and the start of the new stand.... that will get some work to make it more stable when I get ready to move it.

 

don't ask me what I was doing at this point because I really could not tell you why I drilled the way I did and this is the funky bulkhead attempt. The tanks need to go back out side for work and this is when I started to get frustrated (realized I was an idiot for trying to re-invent the wheel or tank in this case) and I stopped tanking very many pics, so I don't have much of putting in the bulkheads and plumbing.

 

more temporary insanity, and some rocks I glued together

 

More rock, just playing with my 10g, and the most recent pics of the tank:LolLolLol. I hope to take my time with the 10g and make something really nice now that I have a lot more experience, but I have a feeling it's going to be quite some time before I get to it.

 

Quite a journey, good to see your on the right path to setting up a tank. Good luck

 

Pretty awesome! Now I'm glad I made this, the pics on Facebook are not nearly as cool as these.