Hi y’all,
so where do I start. Basically staying home for covid got me restarting my ig and one of the first posts I saw was a friends puffer fish and let me tell you is was love at first sight. After that day no matter how long this lockdown takes I know I won’t be bored. Every day I would wait to get off work after wearing masks for 10hrs at a time to go home and watch aquaruin builds.
So after looking in OfferUp and at least 20vids of how to restore a tank. I finally found a tank, a 120gallon beast (I say beast bc I was waiting for the $/gallon Petco sale to buy a 55gal but the sale never came lol). So I brought the tank hole two weeks ago and the guy was running it as a freshwater with a sump setup. I want to turn it into a saltwater with about 10 fish and sps tank.
So far I have extensively cleaned everything from that tank with razor blades and bar keepers friend. I got it shinny again. I removed the blue back paint. I sanded down the stand and painted it matte black. I cleaned the 40g breeder and took out all of its dividers.
I was at the point of deciding on a overflow system and how to modify it and this is when I joined r2r. My tank came with a L shaped tower weir at the left corner of the aquarium with a 2.5” hole. I won’t get into to too much detail on how I made my decision bc I have an entire thread on that. But basically I was thinking of adding another coupl hole on the bottom and making the weir bigger but thanks to talk to awesome r2r members like @Anchor and @Beau_B I decided to go with the Marine Modular external overflow. I ordered the 1600gph (the more the better bc I know I’ll upgrade later) from amazon and gotta wait 3 weeks for it to arrive.
Question 1: would it be ok if I put the box in the middle under the glass brace?
Currently I will be resealing the 40g breeder hopefully tomorrow after work or Tuesday night. I am also going to remove the L weir and close up the 2.5” hole. Debating whether to close it with a bulkhead and plug or a 1/2inch glass.
Question 2: u guys who have done both...what’s better? It’s on the bottom so there won’t be a visual problem I’m just concerned about leakage due to being on a second story apartment. Next up after reseal is deciding on sump set up of the 40g breeder.
Question 3: what skimmer should I get and any recommendations aa to where to buy it?
I have been looking into the reef octopus models but I wanted blue pvc set up and RO is red (I know not a big deal).
Question 4: Live/dry rock recommendations? I’m think100-120 pounds of dry rock. Should I buy and start curing now?
Anyways sorry for the long post but I am VERY excited about this and very involved with the process. Going from knowing nothing about fish, aquarium or tools to learning everything with one giant project. I love it and will produce a beautiful masterpiece
so where do I start. Basically staying home for covid got me restarting my ig and one of the first posts I saw was a friends puffer fish and let me tell you is was love at first sight. After that day no matter how long this lockdown takes I know I won’t be bored. Every day I would wait to get off work after wearing masks for 10hrs at a time to go home and watch aquaruin builds.
So after looking in OfferUp and at least 20vids of how to restore a tank. I finally found a tank, a 120gallon beast (I say beast bc I was waiting for the $/gallon Petco sale to buy a 55gal but the sale never came lol). So I brought the tank hole two weeks ago and the guy was running it as a freshwater with a sump setup. I want to turn it into a saltwater with about 10 fish and sps tank.
So far I have extensively cleaned everything from that tank with razor blades and bar keepers friend. I got it shinny again. I removed the blue back paint. I sanded down the stand and painted it matte black. I cleaned the 40g breeder and took out all of its dividers.
I was at the point of deciding on a overflow system and how to modify it and this is when I joined r2r. My tank came with a L shaped tower weir at the left corner of the aquarium with a 2.5” hole. I won’t get into to too much detail on how I made my decision bc I have an entire thread on that. But basically I was thinking of adding another coupl hole on the bottom and making the weir bigger but thanks to talk to awesome r2r members like @Anchor and @Beau_B I decided to go with the Marine Modular external overflow. I ordered the 1600gph (the more the better bc I know I’ll upgrade later) from amazon and gotta wait 3 weeks for it to arrive.
Question 1: would it be ok if I put the box in the middle under the glass brace?
Currently I will be resealing the 40g breeder hopefully tomorrow after work or Tuesday night. I am also going to remove the L weir and close up the 2.5” hole. Debating whether to close it with a bulkhead and plug or a 1/2inch glass.
Question 2: u guys who have done both...what’s better? It’s on the bottom so there won’t be a visual problem I’m just concerned about leakage due to being on a second story apartment. Next up after reseal is deciding on sump set up of the 40g breeder.
Question 3: what skimmer should I get and any recommendations aa to where to buy it?
I have been looking into the reef octopus models but I wanted blue pvc set up and RO is red (I know not a big deal).
Question 4: Live/dry rock recommendations? I’m think100-120 pounds of dry rock. Should I buy and start curing now?
Anyways sorry for the long post but I am VERY excited about this and very involved with the process. Going from knowing nothing about fish, aquarium or tools to learning everything with one giant project. I love it and will produce a beautiful masterpiece