So, I'm reentering the hobby. 6 years ago I broke down my reef and sump room. The sump room, in the basement, became a gym. My wife hasn't had to deal with RO/DI filtering in the laundry room, package after package showing up at the door, electrical bills, and the occasional tank overflows.... not to mention the amount of time I spent tinkering with the tank(s)...
About 7 weeks ago, I was listening to my 8 year old daughter, tell her two younger sisters about the "cool" aquarium Daddy used to have. In detail, she was telling them about the corals, the fish, the starfish, the crab's this and that... I was amazed that this 8 year old, could articulate, in such detail something she remembers when she was only two years old and hasn't seen since... It was that very moment that I said to myself "I'm setting up an aquarium again.
So 7 weeks later, I've been cleaning and curing 100+ pounds of what was my Fiji live rock. Threw it into a brute 44 gallon garbage can, covered it with water, threw in some salt, made a counter current protein skimmer with part's I had laying around... In all I spent $4 on some new limewood airstones and the rock is cleaning up real nice... It's amazing to look at this Fiji dead rock and be able to remember the splendor that this rock once was. In hind sight, I should have never of stored it in the shed... I should have sold it, but then again, I wouldn't now have 100# of Fiji base rock... Plan on throwing most of this rock into the 100g sump and attempting to really bring this back to life by seeding it with more fresh live rock... in time though due to costs...
Over the same 7 week period I've been specing out a "small" system. I'm trying to do this on some sort of a budget, but we all know that when it comes to this hobby that the word "budget" is still costly... Also, I realize that a 20g long isn't going to satisfy me for very long so my thought is to build a display with only a 20g long, but the "guts" of the system will be able to handle 200+ gal system. So I'm going with a 100g Rubbermaid Stock Sump and all the other equipment that goes with it, skimmer, calc reactor, UV, controllers, etc. etc... Basically creating a 20g display tank (to limit live stock costs) into a 100+ gallon system between the sump and and additional 20 gal refugium. With the plans that this filtration system could easily handle a custom 120g display at some point in the future... but right now I'll tell the wife that it's a small aquarium and start building my live stock once again... At one time I was an SPS frag addict, having over 20 species and 150+ mounted SPS frags in a 75g frag tank. (If you've purchased a Green Bali Stag coral in northern NJ at a local fish store, good chance that it came from my mother colony.)
Anyhow, I've been prepping a pine 75gal stand that I never threw away to be the stand for the 20g long. I've also made a DIY hood which contains 4x24"T5 bulbs running on an ICECAP 660 ballast. I've decided to go with T5, rather then hallides, as I had good success running VHO back in the day and I'm attempting to be energy conscience this time around. Not to mention that with a sand bed the tank will only be about 10" deep. If I ever do go with the custom 120 my thoughts are to go with whatever "Solaris LED" lighting system is hot at the that time and eliminate the need to repurchase lighting as I can always use a 660 ballast on a frag tank later in life... not to mention I had the 660 ballast laying around...
So, I'm hoping that I can start running water through my system in the next week or so... I've already sent a PM to see if I can get my hands on some live sand and some few #'s of "live rock" to seed this system and begin the process.
I'll plan on taking some pics tonight of where I'm at and try to use this thread to document this build...
Looking forward to making some new friends... Forums like this really do add to a hobby like this... back in the late 90's we had the beginning's of reefcentral and such, but it appears with technology a local site is much better.
Thanks for reading,
Mike
About 7 weeks ago, I was listening to my 8 year old daughter, tell her two younger sisters about the "cool" aquarium Daddy used to have. In detail, she was telling them about the corals, the fish, the starfish, the crab's this and that... I was amazed that this 8 year old, could articulate, in such detail something she remembers when she was only two years old and hasn't seen since... It was that very moment that I said to myself "I'm setting up an aquarium again.
So 7 weeks later, I've been cleaning and curing 100+ pounds of what was my Fiji live rock. Threw it into a brute 44 gallon garbage can, covered it with water, threw in some salt, made a counter current protein skimmer with part's I had laying around... In all I spent $4 on some new limewood airstones and the rock is cleaning up real nice... It's amazing to look at this Fiji dead rock and be able to remember the splendor that this rock once was. In hind sight, I should have never of stored it in the shed... I should have sold it, but then again, I wouldn't now have 100# of Fiji base rock... Plan on throwing most of this rock into the 100g sump and attempting to really bring this back to life by seeding it with more fresh live rock... in time though due to costs...
Over the same 7 week period I've been specing out a "small" system. I'm trying to do this on some sort of a budget, but we all know that when it comes to this hobby that the word "budget" is still costly... Also, I realize that a 20g long isn't going to satisfy me for very long so my thought is to build a display with only a 20g long, but the "guts" of the system will be able to handle 200+ gal system. So I'm going with a 100g Rubbermaid Stock Sump and all the other equipment that goes with it, skimmer, calc reactor, UV, controllers, etc. etc... Basically creating a 20g display tank (to limit live stock costs) into a 100+ gallon system between the sump and and additional 20 gal refugium. With the plans that this filtration system could easily handle a custom 120g display at some point in the future... but right now I'll tell the wife that it's a small aquarium and start building my live stock once again... At one time I was an SPS frag addict, having over 20 species and 150+ mounted SPS frags in a 75g frag tank. (If you've purchased a Green Bali Stag coral in northern NJ at a local fish store, good chance that it came from my mother colony.)
Anyhow, I've been prepping a pine 75gal stand that I never threw away to be the stand for the 20g long. I've also made a DIY hood which contains 4x24"T5 bulbs running on an ICECAP 660 ballast. I've decided to go with T5, rather then hallides, as I had good success running VHO back in the day and I'm attempting to be energy conscience this time around. Not to mention that with a sand bed the tank will only be about 10" deep. If I ever do go with the custom 120 my thoughts are to go with whatever "Solaris LED" lighting system is hot at the that time and eliminate the need to repurchase lighting as I can always use a 660 ballast on a frag tank later in life... not to mention I had the 660 ballast laying around...
So, I'm hoping that I can start running water through my system in the next week or so... I've already sent a PM to see if I can get my hands on some live sand and some few #'s of "live rock" to seed this system and begin the process.
I'll plan on taking some pics tonight of where I'm at and try to use this thread to document this build...
Looking forward to making some new friends... Forums like this really do add to a hobby like this... back in the late 90's we had the beginning's of reefcentral and such, but it appears with technology a local site is much better.
Thanks for reading,
Mike
