Max's Shallow Reef: An epic adventure of corals, fine beer, nonsense, and general insanity.

[MaxDamage984]

Chapter 1: "It's not a touch tank!"

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, gather round.

As you all are aware, my last epic build thread has become slightly lesss ehhhh epic towards the end as the tank went to complete ehhhh %#$&.

So I decided to shut it down and forever shun the reef keeping hobby and never speak of it again, and forbid my children and in turn their children from ever mentioning the hobby under the threat of their fathers' curse.

Precisely three days later an idea was born.

Why not do something unique that will challenge me and stand out from your typical tank. (And also make maintenance infinitely easier as I am short and hate climbing half way into the tank to clean the glass).

Behold the birth of a new tank!!

Ladies and gentlemen: I present a 45 gallon shallow reef. The idea is to make it into a lagoon with a dual island setup and have the rocks break the water surface. It will be primarily a coral and invert tank.








Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[njtiger24 aquariums]

nice man. Can't wait to see this up and running. Maybe create a Mangrove to cover the overflow to give it more of a lagoon look as well?

 

[mnat]

The siren comes calling again, welcome back and good luck with the new build. AO has a really nice island lagoon tank in the shop, some really good ideas.

 

[Trio91]

Chapter 1: "It's not a touch tank!"

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, gather round.

As you all are aware, my last epic build thread has become slightly lesss ehhhh epic towards the end as the tank went to complete ehhhh %#$&.

So I decided to shut it down and forever shun the reef keeping hobby and never speak of it again, and forbid my children and in turn their children from ever mentioning the hobby under the threat of their fathers' curse.

Precisely three days later an idea was born.

Why not do something unique that will challenge me and stand out from your typical tank. (And also make maintenance infinitely easier as I am short and hate climbing half way into the tank to clean the glass).

Behold the birth of a new tank!!

Ladies and gentlemen: I present a 45 gallon shallow reef. The idea is to make it into a lagoon with a dual island setup and have the rocks break the water surface. It will be primarily a coral and invert tank.








Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hooray!

 

[MaxDamage984]

Chapter 2: A slippery slope

Ok ladies and gentlemen of the jury. We have a rather annoying issue....

My floor is less than ehhh perfectly level as is evident from the following photograph:

... the beer is for reference


... and also for drinking due to the floors being so ****ty

.... I tried shimming with the enlisted help of Trio91 himself and even at full thickness shim it's still a quarter inch off. I'm running out of ideas other than maybe get a 1 inch thick plywood, paint it black, put it under the stand and shim the f$&k out of it?

The idea being that I'd rather shim under the plywood instead of the stand itself so that the stand can be on the plywood and evenly distribute the weight.

Thoughts boys?




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Trio91]

I really didnt help, I more less drank your beer, watched and laughed while you pulled your hair out

 

[NyteGTI]

... the beer is for reference
... and also for drinking due to the floors being so ****ty
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

whoa whoa whoa.. we were promised FINE beer, what is this nonsense?

 

[njtiger24 aquariums]

The plywood may not be a bad idea. Just make sure you protect it from getting water on it unless you treat it

 

[MaxDamage984]

The plywood may not be a bad idea. Just make sure you protect it from getting water on it unless you treat it

Well I was gonna paint it


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[diana a]

whoa whoa whoa.. we were promised FINE beer, what is this nonsense?

Hey at least it's not Piels

 

[MaxDamage984]

Got the platform ready for the tank to stand on. Will level it with shims and then the stand will go on top of this. Then can finally start the "Max's patented world famous rapid cycle of extreme rapidness"

Children will sing songs about it world wide for ages to come.


.... this time around my wife will 100% throw me out of the house

... if not sure what I'm referring to look up the " salmon incident" from my previous build thread.

#gonnadoitanyways

 

[Trio91]

 

[mnat]

Don't forget when you will the tank, it can make imbalances even more obvious. With that much shimming to do, I would fill the tank first and re shim before you really setup everything. We ran into this issue in our old apartment when we setup our cube and it was a pain to reshim.

 

[MaxDamage984]

Chapter 3: what sort of evil is this?

Guys I discovered a curious contraption in the overflow. It is like some sort of a shield that can be set higher or lower. Am I to assume it is to control the flow? Why would I want that and what benefit is it to not have it fully open?

Noob questions but I have only dealt with Red Sea stuff previously and their overflows did not have this.

Images attached of said infernal device...

Inside view

Outside view.

Anyone have a deep blue tank that has one of these?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[diana a]

Water level drops you can lower the door

 

[danferd2002]

It's to adjust the water level in the display tank once you have it running.

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

 

[reefsandrotts]

I had an 80 shallow and took it off,I wanted more flow so no need to have it

 

[MaxDamage984]

Chapter 5: avoiding death by electrocution


Ok kids. I have a dilemma. Do I bring all my electrical plugs and all inside the stand? Or keep them outside?

Reason:

Current configuration of the stand. The sump is on the right so it doesn't block access to the wall plugs.

My fear is if I put all the electrical stuff on the left. If the connection up top was to fail water will go straight all over the power strip and such.

Am I overthinking it?

Also said water connection for reference. Please critique:

Also I sealed the stand with silicone:

Beer for scale

 

[Trio91]

Add plastic hose clamps to the connections, to avoid the metal ones rusting. Either shift over the sump a lititle to the left to make a drip loop or do what I did and add an outdoor outlet cover to your outlets. Also may wanna go gfi on those outlets....

Or you can just stick your finger in there and electrocute yourself.....whichever is easier for you

 

[mnat]

+1 To getting rid of those metal clamps, it is more a question of when they will rust not if. I know its uglier, but I would leave the plugs outside. Any spills or mini floods and boom you fry your electric.