Another Build Thread You Won't Read

[twentyleagues]

NICE TRY ISIS! LOL kidding.

I'm in Sandpoint. We are moving here into a WAAAAY bigger house much much closer. But here is the thing. I have a huge warehouse. With a loading bay. We get HEAVY crap all day long. We get private freight, Fed Ex, UPS, USPS freight. I am unwilling to work with a company that can not make use of this. I had the tank delivered directly to the house so I wouldn't have to transport it, but a box of live rocks should be able to be brought right to our loading bay where one of my guys can shove it in the back of my car. One company had no problem shipping directly to my business. Tampa never got back to me about it, and that Hawaii place never got back to me (it appears they are out of business). So KP all day!

We are contacting movers. None of them seem to want to work with the tank. I have friends but none of them I want to bother with a tank. Last time I contacted the people that claim they move tanks it was frustrating. I told them it was a standard rimmed 90, 48 x 18 x 26 with 1/2 inch thick glass 296 pounds empty. And they wanted to know all this crazy crap. I might be a snob but I was like don't you move tanks all the time, it says you do, why do you need all these weird photos of the tank, its a freaking standard 90. So after taking 10 photos of the tank, them wanting to come by the house to look at it, all this for 15 feet. It was moving from one room to another, I decided to lose their number. It wasn't a custom build into a wall, just take this off the floor put in another room on stand.

I might have to find some crackheads or something.

Wow thats crazy! I have a moving company near me I have used a few times they will move just about anything any where. I had them move me to this house I needed help with my 180, the 125s and smaller I handled myself. I had them come unload the truck when I moved my mother in with me ( crazy idea lol) they had the 17' truck empty in a little over an hour. I just called them to get an idea if they could move an all in one washer and dryer over a pony wall from my kitchen to the dinning room (the walk ways are too small to get it there any other way) they said yeah just pay us an hour and itll be done ( my mom cant get up and down the basement stairs well anymore).

 

[Devisissy]

Wow thats crazy! I have a moving company near me I have used a few times they will move just about anything any where. I had them move me to this house I needed help with my 180, the 125s and smaller I handled myself. I had them come unload the truck when I moved my mother in with me ( crazy idea lol) they had the 17' truck empty in a little over an hour. I just called them to get an idea if they could move an all in one washer and dryer over a pony wall from my kitchen to the dinning room (the walk ways are too small to get it there any other way) they said yeah just pay us an hour and itll be done ( my mom cant get up and down the basement stairs well anymore).

I called a CDA company that claims they do heavy items. I said hey, I have everything else taken care of just need a fish tank moved. They were like nope we don't do that. Then times that by 5. So I was thinking maybe a Spokane company.

 

[Mhamilton0911]

There's a reef store that just opened up in Sandpoint, maybe ponderay?

Maybe they can help? Or know someone, or can gather a few individuals that know enough about tanks that can help move?

 

[Devisissy]

Found movers. But the insurance doesn't cover crap unless I pay for the huge deductible that is half the price of the tank. So if they drop it, they drop it. Three weeks no lights. Most dinoflagellates and hair algae are dead. Diatoms coat the bottom of the sump. The only thing that survived was the pom pom algae and I think it actually spread. This tank is getting torn down in a week. Rock will be bleached into oblivion sand in the garbage. I will order some live rock and sand and mix that in with my Marco.

So the way to get rid of dinoflagellates. No lights for 3 weeks, dose silicates and diatoms.

 

[TangerineSpeedo]

BTW, Zooxanthellae, the life blood of coral. Is a Dinoflagellate... So there is that....

 

[Devisissy]

Tank is torn down. The hair algae came back within three days and then the dinos as well. So it was a short lived victory. I took out all the rock and put it in bleach bath. It sat in the bleach for five days on the back deck. When I dumped off the bleach to pressure wash the rock I noticed the dinos and some hair algae was still alive. Barely. Pulling off what I could showed that the algae was deep within the rock. So back into the bleach they went. It's been another three days with no change. I might toss the whole lot and start over again. I have never seen anything like this. It should just sluff off at this point. I can't figure out this massive root system. Fish are living at a friends house in a nice QT to themselves.

I decided the new set up will be bare bottom. I am done with sand. That and I am tired of spending money on it. It just collects algae and fish poo and looks like crap. I was going to do live rock but I have been watching you tube videos. All the tanks from Tampa Bay look identical. Huge sponges and macro algae on concrete chunks. Then one guy had Bobbitt eating all his fish. Tampa pretty much told him well that's what you get, suck it up.

I am completely getting out of the freshwater hobby. I am so tired of CO2 and lighting being such a joke in the planted world. Just the BS you have to deal with on the daily. I found a local guy and he came and took everything. Even the shrimp. I kept my mangroves and ordered one of those fancy lights for it. And a nice container to toss them in. It will look very bouchée. So probably the next time you hear from me will be in the new fish room.

 

[Devisissy]

OK so new fish room. Here we goooo!

Still going bare bottom. Done with sand. So today I finally got to the boxes labeled, "more expensive than cocaine".

The movers were stupid and it made me angrier than a Karen over a residential parking permit in an HOA. So let me set this crap up. The new house is an hour away from the old place. The plan was they were going to take the aquarium off the stand so I could drive ahead of everyone and get the stand set up EXACTLY where I want it and get it level. Then they would come and just put the tank on the stand. BOOM easy. Then I would drive back, help grab some more stuff and that would be that.

So I pull out my yard stick, for the kids that's a stick that is 3 feet long, for the catholic school people, sorry for the flashbacks, and get it exactly centered, then level it. Perfect. I drive back, let them know that part is done and all they have to do is put the tank on the stand. He says OK!

At the end of the day the guy tells me to come check out the aquarium. The stand is now in the corner of the room up against the wall. So it was pointless to make an extra trip. I made them take the tank off the stand again, I had to move it back and relevel it. It's still not perfect but for now it's fine I guess. Waste of a trip.

So I think I am going to do Govee lights under the stand to go along with the PC. It should look pretty dope. Make it part of the whole room. Still need to put up the rest of the lighting, unpack all this reef stuff, wire management. Put up all my stupid game room crap.

Also, when you are fat af and old, don't buy a three story house.

 

[805Reefing]

University drop out old lady here that picked the wrong year to stop drinking. Nobody cares about my stupid tank, but here it is. My build thread. It's like losing weight, if you don't tell people you are trying to lose weight then you have no accountability and you stay fat. Right? Or something like that.

I have had this 90 gallon Custom Aquarium Brands tank and a Trigger sump for years. They were free. However they didn't come with a stand. So for years it just sat there.

At this point most everyone has tuned out. Not enough photos, too much talk. Let me tell you something if you haven't moved on. Custom Aquariums Brand tanks are U G L Y. This thing is sooooo ugly. I hate it. It's the stupidest messing thing you have EVER seen. Their overflow is stupid, the intake is stupid, the frame is stupid, their sumps are stupid. I hate this tank. However, this thing is a freaking ugly butt TANK tank. Like inch thick glass, aluminum frame, 3 inches of globbed on black silicone RTV40 in their stupid ugly thick frame. I hate this tank in equal amounts of the peace of mind I have that I could shoot a Blackhawk with 454 casull at it and probably be OK. If Custom Aquarium Brands read this, they won't, but if they do, your tanks suck and your sumps suck, and could you make your intake a little bigger and uglier? I mean it already looks like toilet waste plumbing I'm sure you could up your game and make it even uglier.

I rest my case.

If you willingly bought this tank and it's not in an office building, I would like to know what your drug of choice is and ask you to share it with me.

Why use this tank? Because it was free and knowing what I know now I would have never loaded this 200 pound chunk of silicone and toilet plumbing into my car, then this thread would have never happened, and maybe I would have a life.

First things first I removed the toilet plumbing. Since the man who bought it before me had it plumbed like a literal toilet there is only one bulkhead for a 90 gallon tank. So I am forced to use undersized overflows. Which I don't know what happened in the last 6 years, but there is like 2 companies now? So go with undersized crap that looks good or flushing toilet. So I got the Eshopp Medium. Will it clear the MASSIVE BLACK ALUMINUM 2 INCH WIDE RIM? Probably not, but that's for another post.

So the Trigger Sump is a Ruby. It was abused. Man who had it before had that bad boy straight piped like a Ford trying to run a 6 in a redneck's backyard race track. Imagine Niagara Falls. Now imagine Niagara Falls in your living room. I bet they were hoarse from all the screaming. So he cut out the acrylic. It looked like a small muskrat got caught in a trap and tried to make their way out. Or maybe not a muskrat, maybe just a dude that didn't own a Dremel and only had a chisel and a will. A will to have the world's loudest aquarium. So me being stupid decided, oh all these scratches and defects, I'll just buff them out with all this crap I have lying around the garage. Realizing about 3 hours in I'm closer to death then I have ever been, I gave up. I also decided cordless drills might not be the best for the job at hand. Maybe if Tesla had his way we would never need to charge these things.

This is what defeat looks like.

I got on the world wide web and surfed on over to Trigger and bought the same sump but the Crystal model. Now, I dunno if it's the red color or what. But there is a MASSIVE difference between a 9 year old Ruby Trigger sump and a brand new Trigger Crystal sump. There are more defects in the acrylic, nothing structural, but just ugly spots throughout. And whatever wax they use is just one giant lube mess. I had to wipe this thing down with a microfiber every time I touched it. It's got cloudiness, scratches, crazing, all sorts of garbage. But it was cheap so there is that, and it came with socks so WOO HOO!

I had this old JBJ 45 that I sort of liked, I do like some things, but learned to hate the AIO. It was always a challenge to do anything. I have man hands OK? This last crash I almost gave up. After tearing it down I found my MP10's magnet has been rusting into the tank. And the ATI test shows that. So maybe that was it who knows. I live in a tiny house so I have to make room which meant getting rid of this old tank. I put it on Facebook market place. I don't know why. Maybe because I like to hurt inside and have lost all self respect. After weeding through all the bullcrud people asking stupid questions I found a normalish person.

The guy who came to get it looked so bewildered. He had NO CLUE what he was picking up. All he knows is his wife wanted a "small" tank. He looked scared. He said, "I wasn't expecting it to be this nice, or big." It was LITERALLY in the ad. Here is what he got. For free. It's like The Ring. You remain cursed until you, oh wait if you haven't seen the movie skip this, /spoiler you have to make a copy of the video and give it to someone else. Same with tanks, I was cursed with Custom Aquariums custom crap tank, so now I have to pass it on. He is what he got.

I think he got the better deal.

So now with that gone we took all the furniture out of the room, painted, and today an engineer is putting in a 2,000 dollar beam so this giant messing glass box and aluminum frame don't fall through the floor, and then keep falling through the floor, down through the crawlspace, the ground, past the earths core, right on to the other side of the earth. So essentially I'm not protecting the aquarium, I am protecting my house from the aquarium. So next week new flooring goes in to cover this new massive beam.

I have some fish and some corals from the old tank. I threw the corals in the macro tank and they hate the Tuna Sun, cause it's not Tuna Blue so fingers crossed they don't all die one buy one. Fish and the old rock, snails and urchin live in a Tupperware. They have a window for light, a sponge filter, heater, and a skimmer. And dang it, that's what they get for the next month and a half. And they better like it.

It is the best scape I have ever done.

Equipment is two MP40's and one MP10. Yes, I ordered a new wet side. Sheesh. I got the stupid outdated Ecotech live box thingy to control them all too. Two reef breeders 24inch because I already have them so yay. Bubble magnus that came with the 90 gallon and was surprisingly not in crappy shape. My Loop DC return pump. My stand is custom because stupid Custom Aquarium Brands puts the world's largest rim on their tanks with the thickest glass ever it won't fit on a standard 90 gallon stand. It's aluminum just like the frame of the tank. I stood on it to paint. I have no idea how I am going to skin it yet. I can tell you right now it won't be with fabric, you all know who you are. Stop it.

Oh and because I am generic in life without any single unique vision or will, red with gray plumbing. JUST LIKE EVERY ONE ELSE. At this point places should just charge double for those two colors.

Stay tuned for all my failures.

Love it!

 

[Devisissy]

This is so slow going. But I decided to streamline this plumbing. I had over bought all the parts I needed first go around so I have all these extra fittings. I got rid of the check valves because the last set up air broke the siphon immediately since the returns were up so high. I got rid of the algae scrubber. It worked, maybe too well, was a pain to get to in my small sump area. Gave the reactor it's own little pump. Tonight is wire management. Then it's time to mount the lights. Then I'll work on rocks. I'm going to try for the arch again. I really liked that arch.

 

[twentyleagues]

Looks nice and clean! Easy.

 

[Devisissy]

So I am in waiting again. I just can not ignore this seam. I don't like that it is much larger than when I first noticed it. Also now gravel is stuck under the panel of glass and I was unable to get it out. SCA was not helpful when I first bought the tank and noticed the seam after a test fill (it was not visible until the test fill). He is also not helpful now. He want's a photo of the other side which is painted black and the other pane of glass is on the bottom resting on the stand. I can not move a 260 pound tank myself. I have tried, thing is the photos won't show anything. It is the sort of issue that down the line the seam is going to become compromised and dump water all over my floor.

I was thinking I can hire someone to help get this tank flipped over for a photo that will most likely show nothing. It's a defect, I just want it remedied. So if it's on my because I can't move a tank then I guess I have to eat it.

I went back and forth on getting a new tank. As you have read in this tank thread diary, I have been out of the hobby for a bit and just wanted to start up again with something fun and nice. This whole thing has been a challenge. The lid debacle, now the tank issue, and then my getting overwhelmed with algae. I have had these fish living in a Tupperware for most of their life.

I thought well maybe I'll get a new tank. It's not the money, it is, but its the principal. I have a tank that had a warranty and the owner poo pooed my concerns. Now I have a $1,000 tank I can't use for fear that seam will eventually let loose. I don't want to spend another 2 grand on a tank because there is no reason SCA shouldn't make good on this one? Right? I'm just tired of it I guess. If it's not gouging people with the insane costs of everything it's the crap customer service.

Business is doing well and life is good maybe I will just get out of the hobby for a while and then see where things go in a few years. In a meantime I have some fish that will need a home.

Signing out kids.

 

[Fenral]

University drop out old lady here that picked the wrong year to stop drinking. Nobody cares about my stupid tank, but here it is. My build thread. It's like losing weight, if you don't tell people you are trying to lose weight then you have no accountability and you stay fat. Right? Or something like that.

I have had this 90 gallon Custom Aquarium Brands tank and a Trigger sump for years. They were free. However they didn't come with a stand. So for years it just sat there.

At this point most everyone has tuned out. Not enough photos, too much talk. Let me tell you something if you haven't moved on. Custom Aquariums Brand tanks are U G L Y. This thing is sooooo ugly. I hate it. It's the stupidest messing thing you have EVER seen. Their overflow is stupid, the intake is stupid, the frame is stupid, their sumps are stupid. I hate this tank. However, this thing is a freaking ugly butt TANK tank. Like inch thick glass, aluminum frame, 3 inches of globbed on black silicone RTV40 in their stupid ugly thick frame. I hate this tank in equal amounts of the peace of mind I have that I could shoot a Blackhawk with 454 casull at it and probably be OK. If Custom Aquarium Brands read this, they won't, but if they do, your tanks suck and your sumps suck, and could you make your intake a little bigger and uglier? I mean it already looks like toilet waste plumbing I'm sure you could up your game and make it even uglier.

I rest my case.

If you willingly bought this tank and it's not in an office building, I would like to know what your drug of choice is and ask you to share it with me.

Why use this tank? Because it was free and knowing what I know now I would have never loaded this 200 pound chunk of silicone and toilet plumbing into my car, then this thread would have never happened, and maybe I would have a life.

First things first I removed the toilet plumbing. Since the man who bought it before me had it plumbed like a literal toilet there is only one bulkhead for a 90 gallon tank. So I am forced to use undersized overflows. Which I don't know what happened in the last 6 years, but there is like 2 companies now? So go with undersized crap that looks good or flushing toilet. So I got the Eshopp Medium. Will it clear the MASSIVE BLACK ALUMINUM 2 INCH WIDE RIM? Probably not, but that's for another post.

So the Trigger Sump is a Ruby. It was abused. Man who had it before had that bad boy straight piped like a Ford trying to run a 6 in a redneck's backyard race track. Imagine Niagara Falls. Now imagine Niagara Falls in your living room. I bet they were hoarse from all the screaming. So he cut out the acrylic. It looked like a small muskrat got caught in a trap and tried to make their way out. Or maybe not a muskrat, maybe just a dude that didn't own a Dremel and only had a chisel and a will. A will to have the world's loudest aquarium. So me being stupid decided, oh all these scratches and defects, I'll just buff them out with all this crap I have lying around the garage. Realizing about 3 hours in I'm closer to death then I have ever been, I gave up. I also decided cordless drills might not be the best for the job at hand. Maybe if Tesla had his way we would never need to charge these things.

This is what defeat looks like.

I got on the world wide web and surfed on over to Trigger and bought the same sump but the Crystal model. Now, I dunno if it's the red color or what. But there is a MASSIVE difference between a 9 year old Ruby Trigger sump and a brand new Trigger Crystal sump. There are more defects in the acrylic, nothing structural, but just ugly spots throughout. And whatever wax they use is just one giant lube mess. I had to wipe this thing down with a microfiber every time I touched it. It's got cloudiness, scratches, crazing, all sorts of garbage. But it was cheap so there is that, and it came with socks so WOO HOO!

I had this old JBJ 45 that I sort of liked, I do like some things, but learned to hate the AIO. It was always a challenge to do anything. I have man hands OK? This last crash I almost gave up. After tearing it down I found my MP10's magnet has been rusting into the tank. And the ATI test shows that. So maybe that was it who knows. I live in a tiny house so I have to make room which meant getting rid of this old tank. I put it on Facebook market place. I don't know why. Maybe because I like to hurt inside and have lost all self respect. After weeding through all the bullcrud people asking stupid questions I found a normalish person.

The guy who came to get it looked so bewildered. He had NO CLUE what he was picking up. All he knows is his wife wanted a "small" tank. He looked scared. He said, "I wasn't expecting it to be this nice, or big." It was LITERALLY in the ad. Here is what he got. For free. It's like The Ring. You remain cursed until you, oh wait if you haven't seen the movie skip this, /spoiler you have to make a copy of the video and give it to someone else. Same with tanks, I was cursed with Custom Aquariums custom crap tank, so now I have to pass it on. He is what he got.

I think he got the better deal.

So now with that gone we took all the furniture out of the room, painted, and today an engineer is putting in a 2,000 dollar beam so this giant messing glass box and aluminum frame don't fall through the floor, and then keep falling through the floor, down through the crawlspace, the ground, past the earths core, right on to the other side of the earth. So essentially I'm not protecting the aquarium, I am protecting my house from the aquarium. So next week new flooring goes in to cover this new massive beam.

I have some fish and some corals from the old tank. I threw the corals in the macro tank and they hate the Tuna Sun, cause it's not Tuna Blue so fingers crossed they don't all die one buy one. Fish and the old rock, snails and urchin live in a Tupperware. They have a window for light, a sponge filter, heater, and a skimmer. And dang it, that's what they get for the next month and a half. And they better like it.

It is the best scape I have ever done.

Equipment is two MP40's and one MP10. Yes, I ordered a new wet side. Sheesh. I got the stupid outdated Ecotech live box thingy to control them all too. Two reef breeders 24inch because I already have them so yay. Bubble magnus that came with the 90 gallon and was surprisingly not in crappy shape. My Loop DC return pump. My stand is custom because stupid Custom Aquarium Brands puts the world's largest rim on their tanks with the thickest glass ever it won't fit on a standard 90 gallon stand. It's aluminum just like the frame of the tank. I stood on it to paint. I have no idea how I am going to skin it yet. I can tell you right now it won't be with fabric, you all know who you are. Stop it.

Oh and because I am generic in life without any single unique vision or will, red with gray plumbing. JUST LIKE EVERY ONE ELSE. At this point places should just charge double for those two colors.

Stay tuned for all my failures.

I no longer dread doing a build thread - thank you so much for this. (I think my coworkers have called the men with white coats for all the laughter…)