My little Juwel, 53 gallon tank.

[Saltish]

Finally starting my built thread. Tank is already running since september 2020. Been taking it slow. I had been a lurker on reef sites for many years always wanting to set up a saltwater tank. In the fall of 2020 my SO incouraged me to just stop lurking and set up a tank. So I bought a Juwel Lido 200 which is a 53 gallon tank with a built in filter. I live in Iceland and the saltwater hobby isn’t that big over here and at that moment my LFS didn’t sell tanks with sumps. So we set the tank up and also bought a skimmer from Juwel that fitted in the tank. (Really awfull skimmer, extremely loud. I had to modify it to quiet the skimmer down)

This is the tank cycling. With the stocklight and bulbs for freshwater… later we got led bulbs for reeftanks. After the tank had cycled we waited for the next saltwateranimal shipment. When it arrived we bought CUC and some fishes.

After a few months we put in some easy corals. Since then we have lost some corals and some fish, bought new corals and fish, rearranged the aquascape put in more rock, bought new flow pumps.

We went through the usual trouble people have with new tanks. Now we are planning on installing a sump. We have bought the eclips overflowbox from eshopps, Nyos 120 skimmer and a Theiling fleece roller. We also bought the Kessil ap9x and we have already installed it.

Now we just have to empty the tank, drill it, built a sump and do some plumbing work. We are just waiting for the last plumbing pieces to arrive that we ordered online so we can start operation sump! This is the latest photo of the tank.

 

[Sebastiancrab]

Welcome and good luck!

 

[Saltish]

Welcome and good luck!

Thank you

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Best of luck with your tank!!

 

[Saltish]

Best of luck with your tank!!

Thank you

 

[Saltish]

Today I started “operation sump” A few weeks ago I bought some glass shelfs in Ikea to use as sides in the sump but I had to buy the bottom glass from a Glass making company. Must say siliconing the tank together went horribly wrong. Might have to re-silicon it together later. It was harder than I thougt siliconing it. I’m gonna see if it holds water.

Yikes haha hmmm

 

[Saltish]

Test fitted the equipment with some cardboard baffles. Please comment if you see some obvious mistakes I’m making in this beautiful design hehe The first baffle is 22 cm high (8.66inch) second baffle is 21 cm (8.27inch) that’s the waterhight the skimmer needs to sit in. The last baffle is 20 cm (7.87inch) The return chamber can hold maximum 10 liters (2.64 us gallons) Not sure if I could make it bigger at the cost of having the baffles in the bubbletrap closer together. I want to have slow flow in the sump.

 

[Saltish]

Two days after I testfitted the equipment in the sump my 4 year old twins and my 4 year old nephew poured all of my dry food in the aquarium. Five cans of flakes, pellets and sinking pellets and coral food powder. It only took them like one minute! I mean six hands… The tank went all cloudy, I panicket hehe. Only photo I got of the situation, my wife taking out live rock.

Mixed new salt water in a big container (just used the hot tap water to get the right temp), threw everything in the container. Cleaned the tank, threw out the sand, it was full of sinking pellets and dirt. Took like 5 hours. Cords everywhere…

Then I mixed new saltwater in the tank, heated it to the right temp and put everything back in the next day. So I’m going bare bottom for now until I drill the tank and connect the sump. Everything luckily survived. I clearly have to do some aquascaping, which I will do when I install the sump.