fatoldsun
NJRC Member
I’ve decided it’s time to put my other tale of the tank to rest since it referenced a sunroom that is no longer relevant, so this is, as it is titled, Zip’s 90 – ver.2.0
For the purposes of setup I’m focusing on the changes and I’ll fill in with the carry over stuff as I bring it on line.
So here’s the story, the tank was about 2 years old when we moved. I really went back and forth between keeping the tank and selling it as the notion that we were selling our house materialized. The move was, itself, odd to say the least. We are literally across the street from our old house. If I look out my front door I can see the side of the sunroom that housed the tank. Anyway, we listed our house and it sold in less than 2 weeks – with a closing only 4 weeks after that. I never thought that I’d be trying to break the tank down and sell it off in 3-4 weeks. I tried but that’s just not enough time unless you plan to dump everything and since I had no intention of getting out I didn’t want to dump and run. I thought it would be easier to put the cash aside and after things settled from the move and changes to the house it would be a welcome distraction to start from scratch. So once it became clear that I couldn’t sell it quickly I began the scramble to move it knowing that I was on my own. We moved the Friday of Labor Day weekend so needless to say all those neighbors that are always around to help in exchange for beer – all were on vacation or taking their kids to college.
Fortunately I was able to borrow a stock tank (thanks Jose) which I’ve had FAR too long, by the way (sorry Jose) and I was able to move all the livestock in there a couple days before the move – that whole rig was then moved to a mutual neighbor’s garage to wait until after we had access to the new place. Transportation was accomplished by putting everything in various drums and buckets and using a small 5’x8’ utility trailer towed by a friend’s lawn tractor. It was a sight. That process went smoothly and at that point I lost only 1 fish – a casualty of breaking the tank down to the stock tank.
Skipping ahead, the stock tank is in the basement of the new place and the tank and stand (which barely fit down the stairs – one of the movers said one more coat of paint and it wasn’t getting down…) are in place and leveled.
Basement had to start getting "reef ready". Step 1: move water making out of the driveway and into the basement. There is no plumbing down there - just access to the supply lines for utilities so a first step was setting up a place to hook up my RO/Di. (I rather enjoy sweating copper, especially with my buddy’s acetylene torch)
Step 2. Run lines for ATO - I'll borrow this to do the initial tank fill up
Step 3: break down the 40b sump to reconfigure from a split drain with a center return to a drain/skimmer- fuge - return set up. Notable changes were a larger drain to better accommodate my skimmer
Step 4 was plumbing. This and the fuge are the biggest changes. I am going from a mag 9 to a 24 with a manifold to manage all my reactors and such. I did 5 1/2" murloc fittings. That should cover bio pellets and GAC and if I go back to GFO plus some fuge flow and a player to bd named later. That eliminates 4 MJ12s.
I'm going to try done tapatalk pics to show the sump and plumbing.
For the purposes of setup I’m focusing on the changes and I’ll fill in with the carry over stuff as I bring it on line.
So here’s the story, the tank was about 2 years old when we moved. I really went back and forth between keeping the tank and selling it as the notion that we were selling our house materialized. The move was, itself, odd to say the least. We are literally across the street from our old house. If I look out my front door I can see the side of the sunroom that housed the tank. Anyway, we listed our house and it sold in less than 2 weeks – with a closing only 4 weeks after that. I never thought that I’d be trying to break the tank down and sell it off in 3-4 weeks. I tried but that’s just not enough time unless you plan to dump everything and since I had no intention of getting out I didn’t want to dump and run. I thought it would be easier to put the cash aside and after things settled from the move and changes to the house it would be a welcome distraction to start from scratch. So once it became clear that I couldn’t sell it quickly I began the scramble to move it knowing that I was on my own. We moved the Friday of Labor Day weekend so needless to say all those neighbors that are always around to help in exchange for beer – all were on vacation or taking their kids to college.
Fortunately I was able to borrow a stock tank (thanks Jose) which I’ve had FAR too long, by the way (sorry Jose) and I was able to move all the livestock in there a couple days before the move – that whole rig was then moved to a mutual neighbor’s garage to wait until after we had access to the new place. Transportation was accomplished by putting everything in various drums and buckets and using a small 5’x8’ utility trailer towed by a friend’s lawn tractor. It was a sight. That process went smoothly and at that point I lost only 1 fish – a casualty of breaking the tank down to the stock tank.
Skipping ahead, the stock tank is in the basement of the new place and the tank and stand (which barely fit down the stairs – one of the movers said one more coat of paint and it wasn’t getting down…) are in place and leveled.
Basement had to start getting "reef ready". Step 1: move water making out of the driveway and into the basement. There is no plumbing down there - just access to the supply lines for utilities so a first step was setting up a place to hook up my RO/Di. (I rather enjoy sweating copper, especially with my buddy’s acetylene torch)
Step 2. Run lines for ATO - I'll borrow this to do the initial tank fill up
Step 3: break down the 40b sump to reconfigure from a split drain with a center return to a drain/skimmer- fuge - return set up. Notable changes were a larger drain to better accommodate my skimmer
Step 4 was plumbing. This and the fuge are the biggest changes. I am going from a mag 9 to a 24 with a manifold to manage all my reactors and such. I did 5 1/2" murloc fittings. That should cover bio pellets and GAC and if I go back to GFO plus some fuge flow and a player to bd named later. That eliminates 4 MJ12s.
I'm going to try done tapatalk pics to show the sump and plumbing.