Journey to my 120 begins

[Yates273]

So I have finally decided to begin the transformation from 120 cichlid tank to 120 reef tank. I figured today was the day to transform all fish to my sons 75 and begin the breakdown. I have plenty to do but I already started doing all the tedious wire airline routing and running an outside fresh air line. Now I just need to start plumbing everything along with everything lease. Sump comes on Monday. This is going to be a slow process since I don’t want to kill anything off during the swap. I have the luxury of having my other tank running while I cycle this. Thank goodness
Here it is so far. Not Much but dirty water since I removed all the sand. I will continue to post as I make progress. Thank you all for checking this out. I’m pretty stoked

 

[amado]

That’s how I started. I took a 125 gallon tank I had with African cichlids I sold all the fish and started a salt water tank.

Good luck with the build and I am following

 

[MadReefer]

I had a 55g and received store credit years ago to start my saltwater hobby.

 

[Deleted member 27248]

About time

 

[Yates273]

About time

Lol I know, I know. Lots of work to do but I enjoy doing it.

 

[Deleted member 27248]

Lol I know, I know. Lots of work to do but I enjoy doing it.

Absolutely!!! It’s all part of it!

 

[DEL]

nice !!

 

[Yates273]

Woohoo!! Sump was delivered today.

 

[Deleted member 27248]

Woohoo!! Sump was delivered today.

Mmmmmm noice

 

[diana a]

Wow nice!

 

[Yates273]

Spent last couple days tinkering around with plumbing. Still need my gate valve and pump to install down below then I have to install my flow meter on the top. Also built the manifold and ran lines for AWC and fresh air connect and hung hydra mounts. .pay no mind to the sloppy wires that will all be neatly arranged when everything is ready Here’s a few pics

 

[Yates273]

Installed most of the plumbing below. Tried
To use as many unions as I could to make taking apart easy if I need to. Man, pvc is no longer cheap but I want to make sure I don’t have any issues once it’s all glued up

 

[Deleted member 27248]

Installed most of the plumbing below. Tried
To use as many unions as I could to make taking apart easy if I need to. Man, pvc is no longer cheap but I want to make sure I don’t have any issues once it’s all glued up

Yea pvc is anther thing threw the roof

 

[diana a]

nice work on plumping

 

[Yates273]

nice work on plumping

Thank you. Can’t wait until everything is hooked up so I can make all wires and hoses nice and neat

 

[Yates273]

So all plumbing is officially done I think. Still have to plumb reactors but that’s in the future. Don’t need those now. Here is how I ended up running my external return with the Neptune 1” flow meter. Painted my pipe with flat black spray paint.

 

[jd120988]

Nice work on the plumbing and you weren't kidding when you said we had a similar build. The 120 and a trigger sump, love it hahaha. What size sump is yours? I was leaning more towards braided vinyl tubing for my return but I'm liking the pvc with the manifold ur doing. I do have a uv sterilizer that I'm plumbing in so the manifold would be ideal. I think I'm going to look into doing a pvc return as well but I'll use my overflow instead of external return since i have 4 1" holes already.

 

[Yates273]

It’s the Ruby 36 gallon. I thought about the braided but I like the idea of hard plumbing. I made it so both return lines can be removed if needed. They are not glued into the bulkheads on the sump.
Yeah, your lucky enough to have 4 holes. Instead of drilling the rear of my tank which would use up more space in the rear I decided to go over the top. As far as a Uv sterilizer I never thought of doing one but I did put an output for the just in case. What benefit does a uv really provide. Never had one used one on my pond for 1 season and didn’t notice any difference water is crystal clear.

 

[jd120988]

It’s the Ruby 36 gallon. I thought about the braided but I like the idea of hard plumbing. I made it so both return lines can be removed if needed. They are not glued into the bulkheads on the sump.
Yeah, your lucky enough to have 4 holes. Instead of drilling the rear of my tank which would use up more space in the rear I decided to go over the top. As far as a Uv sterilizer I never thought of doing one but I did put an output for the just in case. What benefit does a uv really provide. Never had one used one on my pond for 1 season and didn’t notice any difference water is crystal clear.

I went with the sapphire 39 and I'm hoping it's not too big for my stand I'll find out when it comes in. As for the uv sterilizer from my understanding depending on how much flow you run through them they can be used for a couple things like killing parasites in the water column (Idk how effective this actually is), clearing cloudy water from bacterial blooms and from my personal experience to assist in fighting ostreopsis dinos and maybe other stuff.

 

[Yates273]

Yeah 39 is nice when I did my layout I looked into that one but the 36 suited my needs and left me room under the tank for other items I will most likely need.