My 90g Build Thread

Ok time for some pics. It's my first time so be patient if I don't get it right

Here is the stand after using some paint stripper to get the paint off. It must've had a couple different coats because it took a lot of work and sanding to get this paint to budge.

And here we are with the stain on.





And with the doors now attached, it's ready to be moved to my office, much to the delight of my wife.



The extension to the stand is almost finished. I'm also halfway through the hood. I don't have pictures of them yet, but I'll get some on here soon. Let me know what you think!

p.s. Still have to do a little finish work around the stand but overall I'm happy with how it's coming along. Also, I'm not sure how I'm going to plumb this thing, so I'll need help with that. I'm planning on a refugium underneath, but I also want an auto top-off because I can't keep lugging water around my office.



Edited by Luckedout - December 22 2009 at 11:32pm

Looking good, cant wait to see more! 

It's coming along nicely. My brother was here on vacation from Basic Training so I grabbed him to help me move the tank and get things set up. I wish I had more pictures, but I forgot my camera so these are from my phone.

Here is the tank in place. You can see the stand has been secured to the base that I built for it. I added the step to just make it easier to get into the tank. You can see the hood on top, which isn't finished yet.





My brother is about 5' 11' so I'm pretty happy with the height of the tank. You won't have to stoop to look at it. I'll try to get some pictures of the sump and finish up the hood. I also have to start figuring out my plumbing.


Edited by Luckedout - December 28 2009 at 11:45pm

I would paint the inside of the hood white to help reflect light and protect the inside of the hood from salt spray.

That is great.  I like the step.  It will help short persons, like kids, see in better and give taller people a differnt view.

Its looking real good.  I really like the height of the tank.  Will you be able to run a waterline through the wall for your auto topoff?

When I raised the tank up, I also took out the bottom of the stand to give myself a bit of room. I put in a larger sump then what came with the tank. I'm also thinking about putting in a small shelf to store some equipment, but that might happen later down the road.



Jeff Morrill built the sump for me. Instead of putting the refugium space in the middle I had him put it to the side. I'm going to T off my return so I can control the flow in my refugium a little better. I saw a similar concept on skimace's refugium and really liked it. So kudos to him for the idea.





That sump is 40ish gallons so this pic gives you an idea of how much more room I have by lowering the floor in the stand,

Yeah, that is my main concern with it. On skimace's tank he has his return coming up under the water level to bubble and create some movement. I'm leaning toward trying that and then if I notice a buildup I have a little maxijet 600 I can put in there. 

Ok. I finally mocked set up my plumbing. It took me a while to get here because I was thinking of adding a small frag tank to the setup, but I decided against it at the 11th hour because it was going to make plumbing the tank a LOT more difficult. Plus, the tank is at my office and I don't want it to be too cluttered, so I want this build to be pretty clean.

Forgive me for the crappy phone pics

Overall picture. The overflow is draining into the line on the left and the return flow is on the right.




Here is the refugium line. I made it like this hoping for it to bubble up into the refugium. I think this will be better for oxygen exchange and to create water movement. I won't glue these pieces just in case it doesn't work how I'd like it. What do you think?



Here is the other overflow return line. Since my sump doesn't have a comb next to the refugium I put in a little shelf and I'm going to add eggcrate to keep macro algae or whatnot from getting out. I might buy a 90 deg elbow to clean up the look, but for some reason I didn't have another 90 deg but I had 2 45's so that works.



Here's the area for the return pump and skimmer. This skimmer might be too big for the area I have, but we'll see if it works. I used the braided flex tubing to attach to the return pump. I heard that it will minimize vibration noise from your pump, so we'll give it a shot.



Dursa return on the left. Water coming back in on the right. This was how it was set up by it's previous owner. It only has a single return line into the tank. I'm thinking adding a second one, but not too sure if it's necessary. What do you think?



Here's FTS with the new hood that I built. The hood isn't finished how I'd like it, but this tank has to get up and running soon so I'll fix it up a bit more later on. Overall I'm pretty happy with the look considering I'm not very handy and I only have very basic tools to do the job.



Let me know what you think of the plumbing. I haven't glued anything yet so I can change it up if you think something would work better. Thanks for looking!

-Ben