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Doc's Moveing on Up to the big time (sorta)

best Placement of the over flow chamber

  • Center of the tank

    Votes: 8 34.8%

  • Back wall to left or right far corner

    Votes: 14 60.9%

  • left or right side wall

    Votes: 1 4.3%
  • Total voters
    23
Jeremy Brito

Jeremy Brito

Hey guys gotta a new build in the works and its gonna be slightly uncharted waters for me so in this tale of the tank unlike my previous im gonna go threw the whole build to finish process step by step, hopefully lol thats the plan at least.

So and away we go...
I recently acquired an nice gently used 72 gallon bow tank and stand from Madreefer (thank you!) from the start the original plan was to just move everything from the 40 breeder to the 72 and just continue on .... how ever i decided to scrap that idea and do it right. The tank isn't "reef ready" and after double checking and the nice label the manufacture attached to the tank I know that the glass bottom is tempered how ever the back of the tank is not so with the purchase of a intank overflow chamber and a glass cutting hole saw i plan to drill the tank and install the over flow chamber bulk heads and plumbing for both intake and output.

Step #2 is going to be building a 3 chamber sump to be housed with in the stand and plumb from the tank to the sump and back to the tank.

Step # 3 is to build some sorta top/ covering

in addition to just setting up the basic planning of the tank a few other things that need to be done is a good solid cleaning of the tank and refinishing of the stand, Also my current light bar will have to be suspended some how and in addition to it i was thinking of adding two goose necked pendant LED style bulbs to the tank i would prefer something like a kessil a160 but unfortunately thats way out of my price range at this moment so possibly and chinese led style light bulb.

Step # 4 is going to be some custom rock work i saw a couple of pictures floating around the net of Zoa Trees in which people epoxy'd rock together in a tree like structure and then installed it into the tank that i thought was pretty cool

So thats the initial plan of action.. all these is gonna be done on a pretty tight budget unfortunately but i plan on getting this all going quite quickly

A quick question on cleaning a tank what do you guys use thats marine safe and cleans glass and salt crete well?
 
ecam

ecam

President
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Salt creep. Fades away with regular rodi water. With no streaks
 
Trio91

Trio91

Administrator
Staff member
Moderator
2x black box LEDs may be your best bet as far as lighting goes, unless you go t5...
 
njtiger24 aquariums

njtiger24 aquariums

Officer Emeritus
Article Contributor
I use water and white vinegar to clean my tanks. I would use about 1gal (maybe 1.5gal of vinegar on that 72g) and let it soak for a hour or so and then wipe it clean. This worked great on my 54 and my 36
 
Jim

Jim

nice ; good luck on it. i used all sch80 fittings inside the box; but in retrospect wish i used the white stuff (painted black) so that it wouldn't have taken up as much space. I dread the day a fish gets in there.
I also left more vertical distance btw the siphon and the durso intakes than I should have, figuring it would make a happy zone that I could tune the flow at 100% to the siphon. As it turned out eh not really, and it wound up acceptably noiseless with a small bit of steady flow through the durso. Bothersome result is I've got a bit of ebb and flow to the volume in the box that confuses my top-off. but not high on my list yet of things to fix.
 
Jeremy Brito

Jeremy Brito

**update** so today I brought the tank inside and began the process of stripping it down and cleaning it. using a mixture of white vinegar and hot water and a soft scrubber (glass safe) I cleaned the inside of the glass removing as much of the salt crete and built up hard water stains its not perfect but its close enough for government work. During the process I noticed that t he silicon seams had started to peel in places and could use replacing so I scraped the factory excess away and went out to home depot and picked up a tube of Marine safe/ aquarium safe silicon. I re-caulked the seems with the silicon and now the tank is curing over night. The next step will be to scrape the peeling paint of the back panel of the tank and depending on how the glass looks I will either re-paint it or leave it clear. any benefits to having the back wall painted aside from the obvious hiding of plumbing ??

Tomorrow (today) I will do a little work to the stand, I picked up a few cans of gloss finish black spray paint and plan to give the stand a nice new coat of paint.

I have had a few thoughts about other additions to this project one of them was to find a canopy top or build a custom one for the tank and I was wondering if any of you have any ideas of were I may acquire one
 
Jeremy Brito

Jeremy Brito

So today i spent most of the day cleaning up the stand for the 72 gallon bow tank, i sanded, primed, and repainted the stand with a nice black gloss paint and over all i am happy with the results and have kept the cost so far on the prep work to only 7 dollars and change which included the purchase of aquarium safe silicone sealant and home depot special black gloss spray paint and primer for 97 cents a can! cant beat that price.
Unfortunately a large part of the pace is going to be due to making room for the new tank and stand and getting rid of a rather large L shaped office desk that the previous tank was on. With that issue in the way i have to basically find a replacement for what the desk currently houses which is a another 30 breeder reptile set up and books and arts and craft supplies. Once i find the replacement ill begin the process of taking that all apart and moving the stuff to the new smaller unit. The only other issue with this is ideally the new tank set up needs to be ready to be set up at the same time the desk comes down because the old 40 gallon which will still be in use until the day of the transfer is currently sitting on the same large desk that needs to be removed from the equation.
So to sum all that boring stuff up for you guys I need to finish purchaseing all the equipment for the new tank set up, i need to find a new housing unit for the stuff from the old desk, then i can begin the transfer.
 
Jeremy Brito

Jeremy Brito

Hey guys I got some exciting news on the 72 gallon bow build. A few days ago I ordered a internal overflow box and return kit from Glass-holes.com, the other day they both came in the mail. Hesitant at first because, 1. this was the first time I was ever taking on a project like this and 2. If something went wrong well it wouldn't be a small thing it would be the most likely the loss of the tank.
I pushed threw my fear mounted the templates and successfully drilled two holes in the back wall of the tank rather easily I was surprised how quick it went. I put the overflow box in,the center and the return in the far left, so now the tank is almost ready to be set up I just have to wait for two pieces of equipment thAt some of the members here were able to help me out with and finish the plumbing but I expect to have the tank running in about 3 weeks or less.
 
Jeremy Brito

Jeremy Brito

Jim said:
That’s picture worthy


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Lol so heres what happened I actually had plans on putting photos up but had some phone trouble so the pictures of the project kinda aren't there but I will have photos of the finished work soon
 
Jeremy Brito

Jeremy Brito

Big update. so today I picked up the last few pieces of equipment I needed to get the tank done, and began the plumbing project. New to the world of PVC it took a little research but I think I got it down 0101182031.jpg 0101182031.jpg 0101182030b.jpg 0101182030a.jpg 0101182030.jpg
After finishing the plumbing I began adding fresh dry sand and some dry base rock I also aquired today. I figured if I got about 50% of the water I was going to have to,make,in the tank first and gave it about 12 hours to settle and be brought up to temp tomorrow when I begin the transfer from the 40 to the new tank it will go much smoother and the water it will have time,to acclimate and clarify from all the stuff stired up after adding the sand. Tomorrow is the big day I am still nervous cause a lot of hard work in,the 40 is going to a new home and I am hoping,all goes of with out a hitch fingers crossed tomorrow I am gonna add bio spira for good measure just to help boost the eco system. Still looking for some bigger lights if anyone has any they are willing to give away or At Least let me borrow for alittle while please let me know. Ill update tomorrow as I start the transfer if you have any last minute tips please send me a message all advice is helpful
 
Mrx7899x

Mrx7899x

Should add some unions to the plumbing make it easier take apart for cleaning and maybe a 45 at the end where the filter socks are might splash all over. But other then that looks good
 
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