75G New Tank Diary

fish4me

fish4me

Member
Sometime back in May, my husband and I decided to get a 24G AquaPod. Overall, that has gone well, but as a few of you may have experienced, I soon felt the urge to upgrade! The result was that we purchased a used 75 gallon tank, stand, MH lights, and chiller. A picture from the day we went to get it is below.

Since I've never set up or run a large salt tank before, I figured I'd keep a diary of this one. With luck, some of you can get some amusement out of the process! Thus far I've only "watered" the floor twice!
 
fish4me

fish4me

Member
Step one:
Because I know that water will be spilled over time, I decided to line the inside wooden floor of the stand with vinyl/linoleum. I went to Lowe's, asked for the cheapest linoleum they had, and for $4 total, they sold me 20 linear feet of this wood toned flooring. After some cutting and some adjusting, the bottom of the stand is lined. I'm pretty proud of how that went! The picture below shows the end result.
 
fish4me

fish4me

Member
Step 2: Plumbing.
The tank came pre-drilled, with a sump, however there was no plumbing. The sump is an EcoSystem sump/filter. After a lot of reading here, I decided to run it as a traditional sump, instead of as an EcoSystem filter, since I didn't want to deal with miracle mud getting kicked into my DT.
The challenge that presented is that the EcoSystem is awfully large for the size of the stand, and takes up about 2/3rds of the floor space. That didn't leave much room for plumbing. I also wanted to use the pump that returned water from the sump to send water to the chiller.
This was my first attempt at plumbing, with the pump outside the sump, and enough elbows to make it all fit and align correctly:

Here's what the line from the tank to the sump looked like:
 
fish4me

fish4me

Member
And here's the tank with its first occupant:

(Please note, no actual ducks were harmed in the building of this tank.)
Alas, the pump was extremely loud, and there was a leak in the bulkhead because we didn't use enough PVC glue. So, we moved to plumbing solution #2: submerged pump and braided vinyl tubing. I think this is what it will look like for now.

The pump is still extremely loud. It's a mag drive 24. Does anyone have any recommendations how to quiet it down, or on a pump that's submersible and still quiet enough to have in a room where you want to be able to carry on a conversation?
 
fish4me

fish4me

Member
Progress continues. Last weekend I ordered live rock from swf.com, and it arrived this week. The boxes were in pretty bad shape - wet and torn on the corners. The rock, however, looked great. Here's a picture of it, now that it's in the tank.

One more:

It's got some beautiful colors on it. I did spend quite some time scrubbing it, but it looks great now.
 
fish4me

fish4me

Member
Most exciting of all, I've got the rock in, the aquascaping done (for now), and the lights up and running. Here's the final package:

I am VERY excited. Now it's time for the cycle! So far ammonia and nitrites are still at 0, two days after adding the rock.
 
azfishgal

azfishgal

Active Member
You have a very nice set up and the rock work looks great!
Ordered 100 lbs of live rock from SWF and same happened to me, the boxes where terrible looking all wet and everything. But like you said, the rocks looked great, after scrubbing of course. Look forward to seeing this tank come together.
 
fish4me

fish4me

Member
Woo-hoo!
Spotted my first 'pods on the glass tonight.
Thanks to everyone for all the positive feedback!
 
fish4me

fish4me

Member
Hmmm. Day four after adding rock, and 10 after adding live sand, and my ammonia is still at 0.
I may try ghost feeding or the "shrimp method" if it stays at 0 all week. There's no way rock that traveled 2,500 miles is fully cured, or that the tank has already cycled. That would be seriously wishful thinking on my part!
 
nietzsche

nietzsche

Active Member
you have such an awesome tank. maybe you mentioned it, but what company made the 75g tank? and how much did it cost and did you and your husband make the stand and canopy??
 
fish4me

fish4me

Member
Alas, neither of us have the skills to build a stand or canopy. At least, not if we wanted the stand to actually hold up the tank!
I followed some of the advice on this board about buying used, and got the entire set-up (lights, tank, stand, chiller, sump) used via craigslist.
 
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