75 Gallon Tank Build!!!

So for the past few months (actually since about July of last year) I've been working on a 75 gallon tank to replace the 40 gallon breeder that I had set up. A little over a month ago I finished it, set it up and now it is fully running with a few more additions then the 40 gallon had. Mostly some corals, but a few new fish as well. Links are at the bottom of the post.

The stand is the same one that the 40 was set up on that I refurbished awhile ago, adding more support and a top for the stand. I also added a nice dark mahogany stain and new hinges on the doors.

This setup started with a 75 gallon tank that I got from a garage sale for $15. Damn good price for a tank that needed a little work and I was going to do a few other things to it as well. I got it all cleaned up and the first step was to get all the silicone out and put a new seal on the tank since I didn't trust it and had no idea how old it was.

20 Gallon Long Stand Build

Now here was a fun project. I built this up a few months ago because I was running out of room in the 10 gallon frag tank I had and wanted to upgrade to a 20 long. The thing I like about this stand is because I custom made it to my needs, I got to built it out of whatever I wanted. So I decided to go with pallet wood except for the 4 4x4's for the corners.

Dimensions were a little hard to decide on. I wanted something that was going to be sturdy enough to handle the amount of weight I was going to put on it, yet look nice and even possibly be used for an upgraded tank later on in the future. I decided that I would make it big enough that, if I wanted to later on, I could put up to a 40 gallon breeder on it. 

It sits at just about 72" in height and about 37" wide and 18" deep. 

The inside can hold two 5 gallon jugs and the shelf on the inside is holding fragging supplies and chemical tests.
Total Price on this stand was around $25- $30.

$4 Anemone frag/ Mushroom Frag Basket

So at the last frag swap I went to I found a RBTA that I just couldn't pass up buying. The seller had accidentally fragged one of them and was selling both frags for the price of 1 haha.  In the past I've kinda stayed away from buying anemones because I had a mixed reef tank and didn't want to add them to it just to have them move around and kill a few corals before they found their spot. Rock Flower anemones are a different story though since they usually don't move around a lot. Well since I couldn't resist buying the RBTA I had to come up with a spot to store them in the frag tank without them roaming around. This is what I came up with: a $4 basket that hangs on the side of the tank.

Long Overdue Update

So it's been a long time since I've done anything with this blog. In my defense things got a little busy... I got a job offer from a company in Chicago, had to find a place and move within a month, go to some training within that month, take down all the tanks and get everything ready for the move. All while still working and going to school haha. It's been about a year since I've actually posted anything. There have been some losses and some gains during the whole process. I lost the vast majority of frags I had in the frag tank from the move. My fish died from being kept from new water for to long. My banded brittle starfish almost kicked the bucket, but I got to him just in time. Here's the newish setups.

40 Gallon Breeder
This tank has mostly remained the same. Same corals, same livestock, everything. The few changes that were made include moving the hang on breeder box that was on the 20 gallon over to here as a refugium, building a small frag rack for the side of the tank and keeping all the surviving frags over here. The fish have been replaced and are all doing amazing. Yes, I know... People will say that a blue tang belongs in a bigger tank. Well there is plenty of room for him to swim around, plenty of places for him to hide and we've become very good buddies haha.

40 Gallon Tank Update!!

So for awhile I've been trying to update this page with the 40 gallon setup, but haven't had a chance to. Today is the day though!! I'll try adding a little video later, but I've created a new page showing off some of the tank. Unfortunately, one of my clowns died so I traded in the other one for a pair of black clowns which seemed to be paired up. Only time will tell though haha. I'll probably end up changing the aquascape at some point just to be able to do a little more coral wise. I tend to not epoxy coral to the rock, but I'm going to with this tank. I've got a lot of coral on the sand but not to much on the rock 

Tank Upgrade: Stand Refinishing

The stand that I got with the 75 gallon was still a nice stand. No cracks, missing pieces, or rotten boards. Just a lot of salt and crud caked on to the inside. With me being the handy man I am I figured I could refinish it and add some more support to it to be a good stand again. And that's exactly what I did. Here's some pictures of what it looked like when I got it.

Tank Upgrade

Well this was kind of a spur of the moment decision. I've been looking to upgrade the display tank for a little while now and was thinking of getting a 40 breeder or maybe even a 55 gallon and build a stand for it. A couple weeks ago I made a trip to my LFS and to my surprise I found my upgrade or at least I thought I had. A 75 gallon tank with a pine stand and sump/ external overflow and wouldn't you know... the price was perfect. At $75 I couldn't pass it up!! The stand needed to be sanded down and re stained, the sump and overflow weren't cracked or scratched and need to be cleaned. The tank though... This is the sad part. It seems the guy who owned it before me used some extremely hard water. This led to the front and back panels being etched... Well there went that. No 75 gallon tank for me. This brought me to the realization though that a 75 was a bit big for me right now anyways. So now it's just sitting here in my room waiting to be resold to someone who can use it for something else.

I started looking around on line and thought that maybe a 40 gallon would work. I have a buddy who has two of them so I went and took a look at them. They wont exactly fit the stand, but they will work and it just so happened that Petsmart had them on sale last week! So after all of this excitement and sadness I have my tank, stand, overflow and sump. Now all I need to do is finish staining the stand, clean the overflow and sump, and get the plumbing set up and I'm good to go. I'll have a page up shortly to follow my build of this tank. It'll be my first build page so we'll have to see how it goes. If I like it I might even post it to a forum haha.

Stay tuned! I'll have a few more posts and pages coming out here soon including my DIY acrylic frag stand, a hang-on-side frag rack and an update on the tanks!!