My 180 gallon tank was awesome, but it had its drawbacks. It was really deep, making access very tricky for cleaning and if I wanted to reach the bottom I had to get my head wet. The Sump also was not cutting it. I needed baffles and room for an auto top off tank. It is time for an upgrade. I saw this in a store (used) for a decent price. The molding and paint job were very ugly, but a tank is a tank and I was up to the challenge. Getting this tank home was going to be a challenge though. This tank was very heavy. It is about 8ft long, 2ft deep, and 30in high. Fits very snugly. It was not until this point that the shop owner mentioned that they did free delivery. Oh well too late now, hope it doesn't fall into traffic. The stand needed a major overhaul, sanding and re-painting. After many coats of paint, its like the brown was never there... The drilling of the tank took over 2 hours. The larger holes are 2 inches. The tank needs a paint job as well. Due to the short height of the stand a custom sump was needed. I decided to build my own by cutting down the front side of an old 40 gallon. The front side was shortened by 6 inches to allow access into the sump. Now its time to add baffles, something my last tank did not have. The baffles will be diagonal. Less glass to cut and more surface area for water to travel over. The tank looks good in its spot. The projector screen needs to be moved though. The back of the tank was painted black. Starting the plumbing. Krylon Fusion spray paint is fish safe. Using the Herbie method of plumbing the drains. Each pump (Quiet One 4000) has a check valve, gate valve and a union for easy cleaning and replacement. After all that I broke down and ordered a massive custom sump from a local fish store. Put the sand in the tank because I sold my 180 gallon and had no where to put it. Still waiting on the custom sump. Ordered a few low power LED strips for lighting. I'm hoping that I can run these on a 12 hour cycle with minimal algae growth. A massive refugium in the new sump will also help with that. Still waiting on the new sump. The sump didn't turn out that bad, I may use it on a future (smaller) tank. The sump arrived! This time I opted for free delivery. The sump is rather large. To get the sump in the tank had to be removed from the stand. I love the sump, tons of room to work in it. I decided to add an overflow box rather than having the water drain straight into the pipes. The tank is almost ready for water. Re-painting the front of it. Plumbing almost finished, waiting on the gate valve to come in for the main overflow (Herbie method). Filling the tank took quite some time, while that was going on I started working on the lights. The lights are LED strips ordered from China, nothing too powerful. I want to keep algae growth to a minimum. I put them inside a rain gutter to make them look nice on the tank. The lights look great on the tank. I still need to paint the last cabinet door and mount them. Now that the tank is up and running i have found out that my protein skimmer (filter) died. It was too small for the tank anyway so I contacted a friend who owns a fish store and bought a skimmer right off of a huge display tank. I also got my first fish in that deal too. he came free with the skimmer! Not a cheap fish either. He is a 22" Zebra moray eel that i have named Maurice. The skimmer is a little too large to sit under the stand (I knew it would be) so it will sit next to it. The eel is in that bucket, he's not very happy. The livestock in the tank will be covered in detail on the next page. Link is at the bottom. Tank maintenance is never complete, as I am never happy with it. I decided to replace the 4 separate pumps with one pump that feeds everything. This led to some very complex plumbing and now I need a bigger pump. There are new silent pumps that I will be upgrading to in the near future. Everything is now running on the tank, a little slowly but still running.
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