Brian Tesch

Looking even better. My dad has a big work bench in the garage thats on a simple pully system so he can easily lift it up vertically towards the ceilng to park a car underneath. Would be cool if you did something simular to your work bench over the sump, so it could go stright up a few feet towards the cieling in a uniform fashion so you can access the sump without moving anything / the table.

Really liking this build, something like this room is the dream. What are you putting underneath the right frag tank? Depending on how tall your planning on having that tank, couldn't you put a QT tank underneath it. Perhaps putting it up against the end of the tank near the door and frame it in so you can look through a window in the stand. Or even better have it half recessed under the right frag tank and half sticking out. (Still having the cabinet framed in around everything). You could fit a 40G~ish 1.5' sticking out just below and 1.5' under the tank. Kind of a crazy idea, but if you could pull off the stacked tank look it could be pretty sweet.

Thanks, Greg! As you know inspired by your red sea I was wanting to do an epoxy coat on this thing, however, I decided to do 2 layers of regular white paint first. (What you see in the photo) and at this point, I'm going to stick with just the painted finish. With an epoxy, you always risk going down a rabbit hole after the perfect finish (a hole I know quite well). I'm also building a new coffee table and I'm epoxyed out.

Getting closer... Planning on getting this thing wet either Saturday or Sunday. Put the final coat of paint on the bottom portion of the stand today to finish it off. I also drilled the tank and installed the overflow. I don't know about you guys, I always psych out before I drill any glass It seems. I start every glass drilling with a silent prayer, but its so easy and I've drilled so much glass with literally nothing going wrong ever. Finally, I finished off the evening with a bit of electrical. For my electrical, I ended up purchasing a standard 14 gauge 50ft extensions cord with 3 sockets on the other end. I plan to cut it in half. The male end will go straight to the main panel (in the photo) and power the first switch on the top left which will control the entire tank. From their, the switch will power the middle 2x double duplex switches and the receptacle on the top right. The 4 switches in total will power 1 of the receptacles below. The other half of the extension code will also be powered by the main switch and thread it way up into the canopy of the stand and power my lights and wavemaker. (Only need 3 sockets in the canopy so it works perfectly. ~~~~~~~~~~ I've been thinking a lot about my ATO. First of all with everything inside the cabinet (sump) I will be left with a 9.5"x18" space. I really do not want to throw the rest of the space away to an ATO reservoir, and there's a chance I'm selling my house this summer, so, for now, I will refrain from tapping a few holes in the wall for my water line. What I preliminarily decided on is two small reservoirs. One tall but skinny reservoir that will sit directly next to the sump that will measure 3.5"x18"x22" which I will make out of ABS except for the front which Ill get a clear piece so I can see into it. It'll hold about 6gallons~ For the second reservoir, I will build it horizontally underneath the tank. The tank sits on plywood which sits on vertical 2x4s (refer to early photo) so I have a lot of 3.5" unused space horizontally above the cabinet. I will build my second reservoir 24"x15"x3.5" that will fit inside the "rafters" It will connect with the bottom reservoir via a tube and a float valve. The top reservoir will also be fed by a line going over to the side of my tank to the upper door. From there it will have a quick connect fitting where I can plug in my tube coming from my RODI water. In total both the reservoirs will hold 12 gallons~

I'd love to take a chunk off your hands if there are any left.

Congrats! Looking good. My tank will be getting wet as well very very soon.

Wow, that's a lot of birds nest! I am looking for corals for my new DP and would greatly appreciate if you set a healthy peace aside and bring to the next club meeting. I don't have anything to offer in return but myself, my wallet and my tank will greatly appreciate it!

Looking Good! Excited to see the sump all plumbed in and working, and the aquarium operation in this room grow! You've got a lot of space for more frag tank!

I'm down if you find another 998 people for a group buy.

Thanks! I definitely have a good amount of time in the next few days set aside to finish this thing, however, the Seafood & Wine Festival is this weekend in Newport and.. uh... I love Seafood and wine.

Finally, got around to building the bottom half of the stand yesterday/today. Originally I was planning on having the front just be 2 big doors. But I ended up scrapping that idea putting a 4-inch border on each side of the doors. Also, I originally thought I wanted the doors to go from basically floor to tank (and I built it that way) (see the first picture) but I wasn't happy with the look so I trimmed the doors and threw up a permanent board along the top of the doors the better frame the doors in. Didn't like the look above doors were too tall and didn't look finished. End Product: Still, need the build the left side of the stand and finish the hood, not to mention sanding and painting the whole thing.

Like I said before, I love the main rock structure. And the tank stand came together nicely. Only I would do either now or in the future is to add a few smaller rocks around it so its not such a drastic change. Although if your planing to put corals on the ground that may do the job.

Be sure to post a picture of the new gorgonians once they are acclimated in the tank. Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

Now that midterm week is over and my life has a few hours of free time again (*inhales) I was able to build the frame of the hood today. Nothing two crazy, simple frame made out of 1x2's with 3/4" plywood over the top. The roof, of course, hangs over on the left side to slide into the main portion of the stand. Decided to trim some wood off the front area of the frame where the door is going to create a larger access. In total there is 9inches above top of the tank inside the cavity for the lights which will put them 8 inches over the water level once everything is in place (Water level will be 1inch below the top of tank). The total height of the access door is 7.25" when the door is flipped open which will allow me to do anything I want day to day. It will be really easy to slide off during maintenance if I need more space to work during cleaning. Next step will be to install the panels on the right side of the hood and the door in the middle.

I would be interested to see what can survive in the tidal zone area. I don't think you need two pumps. I would install a 2 pipe overflow at the drop off a portion of the main overflow. Dial in pipe #1 so that it creates a siphon and handles say 95% of the flow. The second pipe handles the 5% difference. Simple when you want the tank to fill back up you simply close the valve, maybe get a sprinkler valve. Then that 5% flow will slowly fill the tank till it reaches the top overflow. Then when you reopen the small pipe #2 it will drain back down. If you have pipe number 2 constricted you could have a really nice smooth and slow fill-up and drain system based on just opening and closing a valve on #2 not a lot to go wrong and actually fairly simple.

Love the aquascape, really enjoy the large arches and I think it will provide good places for coral while still allowing for plenty of swim space. How many lbs of rock does your structure use?

Just looked at your build for the first time, impressed by your polish job and your overall build, looks great overall and I enjoy looking at the precise attention to detail. The 110G is going to be a nice addition, excited to see the new sump design in the 110.

Your stand is coming together nicely. Looks like you got a thin wood project board over your main stand/ the wood corners/ are you planning on staining the stand or is that just to clean things up? Looks like you've got a lot of nice tonga pieces for your hardscape, and the LED fishing weight will make a perfect centerpiece. Glad someones working on their build I haven't had time to do anything to mine the past few weeks.

I use these bulbs https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01GFWK69Q/_encoding=UTF8?coliid=I2E5M81LKTPRKK&colid=IOGAP1RD998Y&psc=0 with good success and would recommend. But any sort of LED grow light bulb with a simple socket will probably be your best bet for a 4"x4" area. If you are unsure how to mound the socket a standard socket will fit more or less inside a 1.25" PVC pipe if you build a little PVS frame, spray painted it black, and put a dab of glue inside the pipe to secure the socket it would look cleaner than getting that cheap clip on reflectors. And also would be a lot smaller. Not sure how much space you are working with or if it is going to be concealed. Or how much you even care about the look of it at the end. Another option, depending on how deep would get a few of those cheap submersible bars to place inside the cheato area itself. Or maybe mount the 20W ish light at the top, and place a 10W led bar for a combined super Cheato grow chamber.

The tank is 60 gallons odd ball really tall. The pod population stays fairly cut back with 2 mandarins, 5 seahoreses and shrimp eating as many pods as possible. The tank gets fed mysis twice daily. Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

I have a blue mandarin and a target mandarin in a seahorse tank. Needless to say, the pod population isn't huge but stays at a decent level because of the little refugium. Both mandarins began eating Mysis shrimp within a maybe a week. The target mandarin was given to me by a friend, the fish was tiny and very unfed so I decided to give him a shot in my tank. 6 Months later he's about 3x the size, thanks to that mysis diet. The blue mandarin I bought from Woodys Seahorses and he was visually eating mysis in the store. Not sure if there's a trick to get them to eat mysis but if you can find one in the store already eating mysis there would be nothing you need to worry about.

I have pod culture jug and primarily feed them spirulina works well, it's fairly messy and easy to overfeed. I've tried culturing phyto but also seem to forget about them and crash the culture. Spirulina is easier then phyto.

Homedepot and Lowes sell sheets 2'x4' of "light diffusers" (egg crate) for $15 usually in stock next door to the ceiling drop tiles. Home Depot sells a grey version online for $25. Also, my local discount building supplies store carries it so there's definitely a lot of places to buy it.

I feel like Tonga branch is 2x harder to aquascape, but if you can pull it off its going to be sick.

Beautiful tank, jealous of the deep colors of the powder. How long have those mangroves been in your sump?