Emery's 120g Build

Emery · Jun 28, 2017

What's up everyone, I just started collecting equipment for my 120g build and I figured I'd start a thread for my build. So I had a 72g bowfront tank up and running for about 2 years. Long story short, it was my first tank and I cut every corner and did everything I could the wrong way. Completely rushed the process and the tank suffered because of it. Once I finally got the tank stable and looking good, I had to rip it down because we got our floors redone in the house. Figured it was a perfect time for an upgrade, especially because I absolutely hated the Bowfront look and it would've killed me to set that tank back up. Really distorts the look of things in there if you ask me.

Anyway, I got a great deal on a 120g that I couldn't pass up, and recently started building my stand and canopy, aswell as bleaching and acid dipping my live rock. Totally starting from scratch on this one. Here's a couple pics of the stand build.

Here's one with the canopy guys I top of the stand.

And here I threw the canopy over the tank just to make sure she fit. I'll eventually have both side doors on hinges, aswell as the front. Think I'm going to keep the back and top open for airflow.

Prettied her up here with some 1/4" maple

The tank will be right next to my beer drinking station on the couch, so I figured I'd add a beer shelf that will double as a phone charging station aswell.

Stand door

Emery · Jun 28, 2017

Going for a 24-48 hour bleach bath to kill off everything. Then I'm thinking of doing a muriatic dip to strip the rock of any phosphate and copper that maybe be stuck in the rock.

Also sent the stand and canopy off for paint. Going with a nice and clean white for this one.

And for father day my wife got me "that stupid light thingy you keep talking about". So I'm also making a DIY Par meter using a multimeter and an Apogee SQ-110 quantum sensor.

Emery · Jul 1, 2017

The Par meter is complete and the stand is in the house. Next step is to add door hinges and make a 40 breeder sump. Then I can finally plumb this thing.

Oh, and the beer shelf works as intended!

Emery · Jul 29, 2017

Rock is bleached and dechlorinated, now for a bake in the sun for a few days

Emery · Aug 9, 2017

Finally getting around to some plumbing. The little guy with the front row seat has been eating up my time like crazy!

Culater94 · Aug 9, 2017

Glad to see you have a helper! Looking really good so far, can't wait to see it wet!

Emery · Aug 16, 2017

Emery · Aug 20, 2017

Emery · Aug 20, 2017

Finished the return and drain plumbing. Now I'm trying to fit 10 pounds of crap into a 5 pound bag!

iemsparticus · Aug 20, 2017

Emery said:
Finished the return and drain plumbing. Now I'm trying to fit 10 pounds of crap into a 5 pound bag!

It's like 3D Tetris!

Looking good so far! Looking forward to seeing this tank develope!

Emery · Aug 21, 2017

Getting some aquascaping in tonight. Kind of hard to see what's going on in the pics because of the lighting and all the rocks being the same color.

I used Aquaforest stone fix to bond the rocks together. Gonna give it the night to set before I pick any of the structures up, but so far this stuff feels like it has a really strong bond.

Antics · Aug 21, 2017

Love stone fix. Super easy to work with!

Daniel@R2R · Aug 22, 2017

Looking good!

Emery · Aug 28, 2017

This weekend I moved the rocks over to the display and filled her up. I added salt and Prodibio Start Up. I'll be testing throughout the week to make sure the Start Up does what it claims before I put any fish in.

Emery · Mar 27, 2018

So it’s only been 6 months since I gave an update... The Prodibio Startup didn’t work for me, I was getting ammonia readings and didn’t feel safe putting a fish in. So I decided to take the long route to be safe and added a couple table shrimp. Cycle took a little over a month. After the cycle I had the fight of a lifetime with insanely high phosphates. I was getting reading upward of 0.95 on my Hanna tester. So I decided again not to add anything to the tank because I figured I’d compound the problem by feeding the tank. So I started running GFO and it took me several months to finally get my readings down to the .05 range where it sits now. So about two months ago I started stocking the tank.

Emery · Mar 27, 2018

Currently I have a pair of clowns, yellow tang, khole tang, hippo tang (wife brought him home on Valentine’s Day. Ill rehome him once he grows to big for my tank), purple dottyback, and a long nose hawkfish. For Coral I have a handful of zoas, acan, chalices, lepto, cyphastrea, torch’s, RBTA, frogspawn, and a couple montis in there now. Since I started with dry rock, I’m really waiting and taking it slow to see how the montis do before I start dumping money into the sticks that I love. Here’s some of the latest pics under actinics with an orange gel filter.