Taylorhardy1 Posted February 18, 2018 Share Posted February 18, 2018 With taxes coming back any day now, my aquarium has already set out on a mission to spend 100% of my return, plus some. I figure now wouldn't be the worst time to show you all where I'm at. About 6 months ago I had just joined this forum, and I lucked out when this awesome 93 cube, stand and canopy popped up. I immediately jumped on it, drove up later that night and picked it up. Spent about a week after that scraping all of the Coraline free from the acrylic, and then a whole lot of buffing. Wasn't able to get it looking guide as great as I'd hoped, but as long as you're not looking for scratches you hardly noticed them. At this point I was also packing up, and getting ready to move from Albany to Salem. Got 70lbs of dry sand, moved the tank into place and started plumbing it. Instantly I realized the biggest issue with the 93 cube. With only a 30x30 footprint, having a sleek stand, and a nice large sump directly under it is nearly impossible. Spent a lot of time talking with some custom acrylic builders about cube sumps, and other possible options that would allow me to fully utilize my current stand and room limitations. Found its very hard to design an easy access cube sump when you only have one entrance to the stand. In the rush of the move and everything else going on, I decided to just throw my diy 20l sump underneath it until I could figure out a more permanent solution. After a whole lot of creative thinking and problem solving, I realized I was quickly developing a need for a frag tank. Jumped online and found an acrylic builder from Texas who builds awesome custom tanks, and sumps. I told him I wanted a 48x24x12 frag tank, and as large of a sump as possible to put underneath. Something that will be able to handle over 2000gph turnover rate, and hold all the water from a back siphon when/if power is cut. We decided on a 48x18x20 sump. The plans for the sump are essentially a very tight drain chamber, something just large enough to fit 2 filter socks, into a 12x18x11 equipment chamber (for skimmer, heaters, dosing, etc.) flowing into a very large fuge (24x18x10), and into a return chamber just large enough for my return pump. Currently I'm using a radion xr30w g2, and supplementing with 2 24w blue+ t5's. I wasn't quite sure if I was going to like the t5 and led combo, so I made a quick little housing out of wood, mounted them up and WOW. The t5's really really help the coral colors explode, and really mellow out the kind of disco ball shimmer led's can give off. Needless to say, I love them, and plan on going to a 4 bulb hybrid fixture on both tanks as I move forward with the upgrades. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taylorhardy1 Posted February 18, 2018 Author Share Posted February 18, 2018 Some more current pictures! Pardon the cyano bloom, it sparked up after I rescaped, but its clearing up fairly quickly! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tyler E Posted February 18, 2018 Share Posted February 18, 2018 Picked up some frags from ya a few months back love this tank not a cube fan but looks great good luck man 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taylorhardy1 Posted February 19, 2018 Author Share Posted February 19, 2018 6 hours ago, Tyler E said: Picked up some frags from ya a few months back love this tank not a cube fan but looks great good luck man Thanks man! I really appreciate it. Hope those frags are doing good for you! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bladedrummer Posted February 20, 2018 Share Posted February 20, 2018 That's a fun tank! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taylorhardy1 Posted February 27, 2018 Author Share Posted February 27, 2018 Finally got a new used sump to temporarily replace my DIY 20l sump that fell apart. Thanks again Ron! Water instantly looked better once I got it running. Hopefully I'll get all of my small issues fully under control by the time the new stuff starts getting here, and installed. In other news, I've decided to go with a 60"x30"x12" frag tank in order to just link the 2 systems together neatly. I decided to go with a larger frag tank simply because it will cost roughly the same due to the size of acrylic sheets he got for it. New sump design is essentially just a really oversized Triton style sump. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taylorhardy1 Posted February 27, 2018 Author Share Posted February 27, 2018 Some more pictures! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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