JCOLE
Grower of the Small Polyps
**UPDATE** - New tank is here and the old tank is shutting down. To skip ahead to the new tank process then click here.
New Tank FTS as of 10/30/22
Old tank FTS as of 04/01/2022
New Tank FTS as of 10/30/22
Old tank FTS as of 04/01/2022
Hello everyone,
My name is Josh. I recently got back into the hobby a year ago after taking 8 years off! Moving from Florida to North Carolina for a job transfer forced me to sell my 150 gallon reef tank :-(. I moved into a rental for 4 years and was unable to have any pets, fish, etc. Bought a house in the country with my wife but was not looking to add a fish tank because we had subfloors and I was worried about the weight. After a year of painful back-breaking work renovating the entire house from floors, stairs, kitchen, bathrooms, etc we decided to sell the house. We sold the house a year later and bought a house in the same neighborhood we were originally renting
. With that being said....I finally fixed the urge and bought a 55 gallon aquarium. The aquarium is going strong. Learned and tried some new things after stepping away for 8 years. I just recently bought an Apex controller (2) weeks ago(Where has this been my whole life!!), plumbed my tank into the garage a month ago(always wanted to do this), and started dosing Kalwasser, etc.It's time to upgrade the 55 as I want to start throwing in some SPS and the 55 is already getting crowded as it is. I purchased a used 125 AGA tank over the weekend from a guy getting out of the hobby for now. He bought the tank to move his 75 gallon into and a month later had a crash and lost everything in the 75 gallon. He doesn't have the time or money to invest in starting over again.
2/16/19 - Picked up the tank from the previous owner
I feel like a got a good deal as this included the tank, stand, canopy, and large sump. He also threw in 6 bags of sand, 200 lbs of dry rock, calcium reactor, older skimmer, dc pumps, about 5 media reactors, 5 stage RO/DI filter, Cal-ALK-Phosphate Hanna Checkers, (3) 150w halides, APEX Classic system, and misc supplies.
Now the fun part. Cleaning everything and painting. The tank was sitting in his house for 8 months without water. A lot of dust and found a couple of kids toys, hot wheels, etc in the overflows. Bought 5 gallons of Cleaning Vinegar and spent all day yesterday using some elbow grease to clean the tank. I removed about 95% of old calcium build up on the dual overflows and glass. Filled up the tank and let it sit overnight. No leaks and everything seems to be holding water well. I am going to let it sit for a couple days to make sure. After I drain the tank then I am going to try my hand at removing some of the scratches with Cerium Oxide. Never done this before so it ought to be fun.
2/17/19 - Filling the tank with water for the first time. No leaks!
The stand and canopy color aren't ugly but it just isn't a color that goes with our house. I picked up a quart of Semi-Gloss black cabinet paint this weekend. Going to start sanding and painting stand and canopy this week so hopefully, I can move it into the house this weekend or next.
I will post pictures of my room that the fish tank is in now when I get home from work today. Would love to get some advice on moving the existing tank around for this tank, etc.
This is my first tank build thread so any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks everyone and I will post pictures.
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