Monroe14s First Build - 65g (lots of pics)

Well, Here we Go!

My husband and I will be building our first saltwater tank ever. So, after months of research (and still feeling like we know nothing ) and weeks of waiting for our equipment to all get here, we should be ready to get wet this weekend. Here's what we're working with:

Tank: 65g Aqueon glass- 36x18x24
Sump: Aqueon Pro-Flex 3
Protein Skimmer: SC150 Cone Skimmer (read some great reviews about it, interested to see how it performs.)
Return Pump: Danner Mag 7
Overflow Box: Eshopps Overflow Box PF-800
Lighting: 2 AquaIllumination Sols (on their way, hopefully will be in next week)
Rock: 37 Lbs Marco dead rock; getting about 40ish more lbs of live rock
Sand: about 70lbs of live sand, not sure how much we'll use, we want about 2-3 inches depth

And here's some pictures

Tank (excuse the messy garage!)


Stand - After seeing lots of cheaply-made expensive stands at big chain petstores, we went to home depot with the plan to make our own, but found this pre-made, pre-stained kitchen cabinet that fit our dimensions pretty perfectly, we added more support throughout the inside to make sure it will hold all the weight. My favorite part- it has a functioning drawer that we will be able to hold all of the fish necessities in. The downside, my favorite drawer got in the way of the protein skimmer so we had to cut out half the inside of it lol, so we have a half functioning drawer


Sump inside stand


Tank placement will be in the corner of our living room in what was a pretty dead, empty spot. We had a few other spots throughout the house available for a bigger tank but they were in areas they would not be seen as much, so maybe if this works out, we'll think about a bigger one somewhere else


That's all I've got for now, our to-do list for now is wait for the back of the tank paint to be completely dry (will post pictures when complete), get the plumbing completed, and hopefully fill 'er up ! It's so exciting to finally be at this point after reading forums, blogs, books for months. I'm sure we'll still have plenty of questions and be doing things wrong along the way, so I welcome any opinions, we'll need your wisdom!

 

Decided to go with blue aqua background after loving the photos in a tank thread by Av8Bluewater, inspiration:



I tried to do a sort of gradient with these colors,



annnnd it didn't work at all, so I just went with a solid back using the color on the largest lid and here's the finished product

 

Looks great so far! Definitely like the background, blue is always a good color, very realistic looking. Especially with the fade. Look forward to updates :thumb_up:

 

Well yesterday was a lonnnng day of plumbing and trips to home depot (is 5 a record?) but we got into the lfs a little before closing today and were able to get our water and live rock





Of course the dog had to check everything out



Here is the rockscape that just kind of happened as I was fitting things together



Does anyone have any opinions on the scape? I really have no idea what I'm doing I was just going for stacking it as high as I could with some spots for flow to go through. I already moved one piece because I was trying to figure out how coral was going to grow because most of the rock faces were vertical so I moved one of the bottom ones to give it a more horizontal plane.

My only regret is seeing all the huge pieces of live rock in the store and thinking, that's way too huge for my tank, but now I wish I would have gotten one to give some height. Should I take it down and get some bigger pieces to make it taller or is this ok?

 

It's been about 2 weeks so I wanted to share some progress shots since I'm waiting for my cycle to kick in and don't have much else to do :

Here's the completed cabinetry, the front panel on the canopy is velcroed on to provide a modern look and easy access.



You can also see I redid the rockscape, I'm happy with it now, I really wanted a nice swim-through, except I might add a few more small rocks to the right side. We'll see!

Some other new additions:
Vortech M10


2 Sol Super Blue units, mounted in the canopy





I'm currently running my lights at the following schedule:

8 to 11 0/0/0 to 15/30/30
11 to 12 15/30/30
12 to 1:30 15/30/30 to 85/70/95
1:30 to 2:30 85/70/95
2:30 to 6 85/70/95 to 44/44/45
6 to 8 44/44/45
8 to 9 44/44/45 to 15/30/30
9 to 9:30 15/30/30 to 0/10/10
9:30- 10 0/10/10 to 0/0/0

As far as the cycle, it's been about 2 weeks and still have just traces of ammonia, from what I read throughout the forum this is still normal and may take up to week 4 to spike? All this waiting is tough!

 

Very nice looking tank and overall setup. I love how you had to cut out half the drawer so the skimmer would fit.
The rock scape is really good. Cant wait to see it progress.

 

Thanks Fischkid!

Ever since we started this hobby, the weekends seem to have gotten more expensive lol.. went to a different lfs today to check out their stock and get some ro/di water for top offs and came home with an ro/di system and a refractometer...

I asked the store owner about being 2 weeks into the system and not getting any readings yet to see if that was normal and he showed us some sort of nitrifying bacteria (it was a 2 bottle system) that we can add and he said the system would be cycled in 24 hours with no ammonia spikes or anything.. as good as it sounded, I just couldn't do it because that just goes against everything I've researched about the cycle. He said he has used it on all his tanks, including one he just set up 4 days ago and now has fish and coral in , and I believe him and all, but I just couldn't do it. I will feel better when I see the ammonia spike

 

Great progress on the build so far, awesome equipment choices, and good work not listening to the fish store guy. haha. You can probably induce the cycle more by putting in some mysis shrimp to rot and create amonia.

Have fun, I will be checking back on this one!

 

The tank's looking great!! I can tell you guys researched a lot and most importantly, you are following what you learned!!
I have a feeling that this tank will look awesome in no time, keep it up! Oh and welcome to 3reef 8)