Hola! Como Esta?

OldOnTheInside · Aug 31, 2015

New member joining. I'm a veteran with the scars to prove it. I've been keeping captive reefs for about 17 years now and I've made nearly every mistake I've ever heard of. I'm determined to do this right and not end up in rehab. Because of a job change and work demands I found myself in the Nashville area and was without my aquatic obsession for quite some time but I have recently rebelled against this status and spun up yet another insane temple to the tropical seas. My current system is a 65 gallon reef ready glass display sitting on a custom PVC frame I built using 1.5" PVC with a 7 gallon bucket of aragonite for the center support which all sits inside a 150 gallon Rubbermaid stock tank full of live rock which is pumped up into and is surface skimmed from another 100 gallon Rubbermaid stock tank with a protein skimmer, a calcium reactor and MORE live rock and coral. All in all it's 315 gallons of crazy with over 240 lbs of live rock. I am running 2 Radion XR30Ws over the 65 Gallon display and a Hamilton 250W MH system over the 100 gallon stock tank. All are mounted using a custom 3/4" PVC light rack I built which mounts on the rims of the stock tanks. In case it isn't clear yet, let me state openly that I thumb my nose at convention and I'm all about optimization and care very little about aesthetics. I also have a 240 gallon acrylic display with oak stand and canopy sitting in my garage that I'm eventually going to setup as a FOWLR for my reef fish that outgrow the 65 gallon reef display. I've recently been battling some new tank hair algae but the calcium reactor has been temporarily re-purposed as a GFO reactor and it plus my cleanup crew are steadily clearing up the issue. My name is Jeremy and I have a problem. Pleased to make your acquaintance.

Paranoiattack91 · Aug 31, 2015

Unconventional for sure but I love it!

pickupman66 · Aug 31, 2015

wow, talk about unconventional and COOL!

Jimbo · Aug 31, 2015

That is awesome! Love it man, one of a kind set up for sure! Welcome to the area, new here also .

schooleyosis · Aug 31, 2015

Welcome and thank you for posting! Very cool setup and great job on thinking outside of the box on this one!

joshbbert · Aug 31, 2015

So awesome!!!

rcmike · Aug 31, 2015

So that tank is sitting on a PVC pipe stand? That kind don't of scares me.

bknapp · Aug 31, 2015

Pure awesomeness man! Love the look of the mangroves in the second sump.

Welcome back to the game, to Tennessee and to MTRC!

steve&mari · Aug 31, 2015

Welcome and really cool setup

OldOnTheInside · Sep 1, 2015

rcmike said:
So that tank is sitting on a PVC pipe stand? That kind don't of scares me.

It scared me too at first. The PVC frame is built using 9 legs. The center leg is planted right in the middle of the bucket of aragonite (all the way to the bottom) and provides a lot of lateral stability as well as extra center support. A filled cylinder is very strong. The sand comes right to the rim of the bucket and the horizontal pipes that make the top center of the stand actually sit on the rim of the bucket. It actually carries the majority of the load.

All the other joints use 4 way T's or 4 way elbows. All the legs are tied together with joints at the tops AND the bottoms. All the joints are cemented thoroughly. Before putting a tank on it I had some large friends help me load test it. Using a couple of 1x6 planks we had over 1000 lbs of people on top of it shaking their moneymakers. Not so much as a creak.

And that was without the arogonite bucket (which also doubles as a deep sand bed -- bonus). The toughest part was getting all the joints lined up with the cement so it would be square and level. The other bonus was that I drilled some strategic small holes in the stand allowing water to move through it but VERY slowly allowing the inside of the stand to become an anoxic zone or plenum (see GARF).