My 125g in the making

[Jrod82]

Im starting to build my set up...I couldn't have done it with out all the info on this site.. I built my stand and staind it..just waiting on the doors..I took the example of Scubadude's stand and made my own. The tank is an all glass 125g with twin overflows...I also put tile on the floor where it will be sittting at...as you can see in the pics. This is down in my basement and I just got done finishing it....all I need will be carpet to complete it....Im just glad that's done...it prob took me 8-10 months...all by myself. I'm planing on putting my sump and refuge behind the wall were it sits...this makes it easy to do all my work in my utility room. I have a pic of where that will be at...I built a little shelf where i'll put all my goodies at.
I do have a question.....I have a 1/16 gap under my tank all the way across it.in the middle..its just sitting on the two ends...Im wondering if it will settle down when all weight comes in to play... the tank does have the two braces across it underneath....I dont know if i should put styerafoam under it around the parameter?......I need some suggestions please....
I had to shim my stand up to make everything level...probably like a 32nd in two corner's. I plan to put grout under it....Dont know if that would be a good idea or not....cause it sets up like concrete which would be good.. plus I'll leave the wooden shims under too. I knew they would probably compress a little over time, and my brother gave me the idea to put grout under it....I'll be up dating this thread over time...any suggestions would be awsome...heres some pics so far.

[ibefishy]

Nice stand, i made my own too. Keep posting pics so we can follow the entire build. Sorry dont have an answer to your questions though.

[denhay14]

That is really neat! Wish I could do something like that=p Good luck with your reef and keep picture updates.

[TimH07]

1 very nice stand, i'd like to learn how to make one of that quality

2 i would shim it as much as you can, fill it and let it sit with water for maybe a week or 2 to see if it gets stressed, that much weight should not have questionable support.

worst case flip the stand and jig the excess off? your talking about 1600 lbs ish you dont need a stress crack when its up and too much to break down.

[Jrod82]

Yeah I put some time into the stand...It cost me $130 in material which is way cheap compared to the LFS for $300 and my stand looks to hold twice the weight.....Looking at the woodwork at the LFS stand looked as if it would fall apart after a years time....but I'm really not worried about the stand being stressed..but like you said I will shim it up as much as possible and then shove grout under it..if I can...it's a really tight squeeze....like I said like a 1/32....Yeah it would be around 1600-1800lbs...but is spread over 12 square ft...puts it like 150lbs every foot.....I'm more worried about the tank having the gap in it than anything?...thanks for the comments

[TimH07]

well, i'd water test it before any sand or rock for a week or 2 just to say, hey it hold the weight with no issue, which would be my guess after shimming it up

[Jrod82]

That's what I'll probably do...I've read some issues regarding that same issue about the gap between the tank and stand and since it being so little I'll just fill it up like you said and let it sit for a week or so and see how everything holds up and hopefully see that gap deminish.

[Jrod82]

Well its been a week and the tank has had just fresh water in it and the gap has went down in some spots....so I'm going to go ahead and go with it. I've been busy since then, trying to get all the plumbing done and extra's. I used a little giant 4 mdqx-sc which puts out 1225gph at 3' of head for circulation. I'm also using a ASM G-3 skimmer and two 300 watt heaters....I set the sump directly on the concrete floor so that would at as a chiller by itself...hopefully to draw heat away from the sump in the summer months...thats if I have heat issues....My light is a 72'' ODYSSEA which has 3-250 watt HQI 15000K and 4-96 watt 03 Actinics PC's and 16 Blue LED Moonlights..all in all produces 1134 watts....and it sets about 6'' off the water....a guy at the LFS has the same light and he didn't have any heat issues so hopefully I dont....I have 2-20 amp dedicated lines going to the aquarium...one is for the lights and the other for everything else. I wired up a panel for all of my equipment....its similar to Melevsreef...same concept. Same goes for the refugium, I used his light set up....I had a extra sump that I got off a freind and I just used it for that....it holds 22 gallons which I thought would be perfect...I also used a Level-Loc auto top off unit which has 2 floats, ones a back up....and is connected to a 15g resavor....I hooked up a Dual TDS meter to my RO/DI unit and the inlet meter continuously shows between 180-200 reading and outlet of course shows 0ppm...Now I know Louisville has the best water in the country but I thought that was pretty low to be coming out of the faucet...dont know why so low? I know its usually around or close to 300.
Well my next step is to drian the system and add my sand...I bought 240lbs and sand...3 bags of aragonite and 3 bags of live sand....bought it at the LFS. I plan to wash out the aragonite before adding to the tank though..ANY SUGGESTIONS OR QUESTIONS to better my set up feel free to chime in....as for me I'm still a bigginer...I need all the help I can get..I'll keep posting updates and pictures

[Seige]

I bought 240lbs and sand...3 bags of aragonite and 3 bags of live sand....

umm... You bought the live sand in the sealed bags? It's pretty much worthless. What you want is the live sand from a "live" sand bed.

You can order it from Inland Aquatics

[Jrod82]

I did infact buy the live sand in the sealed bags..but I also bought it for the benafit that it was a finer grade and I was just going to mix it up w/ the aragonite...to get me the texture I might be looking for....oh welll I guess ...Live and learn....It did cost the same as the aragonite at the LFS...so I didnt lose any $ ....

[Seige]

Be careful what LFS's try to sell you and do your research before you buy.

It'll save you money and this hobbies expensive enough to get started.

[Jrod82]

yes indeed....I dont even want to start counting numbers on how much I've spent already

[Seige]

I had originally figured on $2,000-$3,000 for my 55g. I blew by that, so far about $3,900.

I figure it'll end up at $6,000

I do have extra costs then y'all do in the States though since I'm in Canada. It costs more to ship and theirs less competition to keep prices down.

[Jrod82]

yup.....my wife has already nagged on me enough with time and money I've spent on my hobby...plus finishing the basement and we have a 6 month old..so my time w/ them has been short sometimes....but my lil boy loves to look at the 46g I have upstairs so its worth it to her....
But I put the sand in tank yesterday and I'm starting to fill it up....its just going to take a lil while to fill up as for my RO/DI unit only produces like 25g a day...I'm kinda disgusted w/ it considering I paid $130 at lowes for it and it was just a RO system....let me remind you I was just getting into salt water at that time, like a year and a half ago.. so I didn't know any better...and now I look online and I see 100g a day system's for $100 all day long...I guess eventually I'll break down and get one.

[Jrod82]

Here's an update on the process...I had put some of my fully seeded live rock from my 46g in the tank to help cycle it as well as some damsel's too..It took about a month too cycle....Then I took the damsel's out and started the process of transferring everything from my 46g over which took about a week or more....I didnt want to put any of my corals in stress....but now it is complete In the process of this I went to the LFS and got a Powder Blue Tang which he seems to like it.
Question: Far as the corals going from PC lights to MH lights...I know ur suppost to gradually get them used to the lights....but how long should it take???? I had them in the tank for bout a 10 days now and I started with 6 hours of MH and then every 2 days I bumped it up an hour...but like the first 4 days I kept it at 6 hours. I'm at 9 hours of MH now....My lighting schedule is
10:30AM actincs on
12pm MH on
9pm MH off
10:30pm actincs off
LED's on at night
I'm guessing I gave the corals enough time to get used to it
reason being, one of my candy cane corals my have had some signs of stress....dunnno

[Jrod82]

Oh yeah... here's some pics forgot to add....had to remove some other pics to make room

[NanoReefer1]

What an absolute success...love that tank.


That is the tank of my dreams right there...plenty of room.

[Doodaa]

Question: Far as the corals going from PC lights to MH lights...I know ur suppost to gradually get them used to the lights....but how long should it take???? I had them in the tank for bout a 10 days now and I started with 6 hours of MH and then every 2 days I bumped it up an hour...

Not an expert on this, but if they seem to be doing fine, I think you've succeeded...sounds like you did a good job

LED's on at night

Turn them off, unless you have some sort of lunar cycle timer for them. Those don't do any good for the corals or any of the inhabitants, they only look "pretty" for the viewer. I don't think it'd hurt to turn them on once in a while to create some mood, but if you want to see the night-time creatures in action, use a red flashlight and you'll be a lot more surprised in what you find. Blue or white LED's, like most fixtures have, are what all nocturnal creatures see...it's like daylight to them, they'll hide from it.

I'm guessing I gave the corals enough time to get used to it reason being, one of my candy cane corals my have had some signs of stress....dunnno

I'm guessing that since only one of your corals is showing signs of stress, that you're light schedule might not be the problem. It may just be that that particular one isn't happy where it's at. Could be light, could be flow, could be chemical related...nitrates, nitrites, or ammonia...hard to tell, but if everything else is happy, I wouldn't change much. I'd try changing it's location to match what it was happy with before...or maybe some critter is harrassing it...hard to tell from here.

[Jrod82]

thanks for the info....I moved my candy cane earlier today, out of direct light and it surprisingly liked it's new location...hardly no stress sign..plus I backed my MH lights to 6 hours and my actinics to 8 hours and now I'm going to try to raise it very slowly over the next couple of weeks...I don't want to take chances.....I'll do like you said about the moon lights...I'll just turn them off....I've seen some of my coral bloom out at night, probably cause of the moon lights....Thanks again

[Trickster]

I say your gonna need more rock, led's should NOT be on all night they are a mood thing & creatures need dark. Although you might delay turning on the moonlight after turning off daytime lighting.
Going back to original post 2/24 - your gap in the middle is fine it's the ends you wouldn't want gaps on.

Nice job