swervinscoot
Community Member
Well, I have been wanting to do this for a long time. This tank stems from my passion of the ecosystem and this hobby. Being from Florida and growing up here I’ve spent as much of my time in and on the water here as possible. In turn I’ve seen the degradation of our ecosystems. Now be involved with organizations that our fighting to protect that and a fiancé that is a sea grass biologist we wanted our own full “ecosystem”.
Anyways, sorry for the back story. The fish tank is an acrylic tank that sat for sale at my lfs for a while, struck a deal and brought it home (many weeks of debating it). Once the tank got home I started looking for some good used components, lights, pumps ext. Ended up getting 4 Red Sea 50’s (worked out as I have 3 on the 125 reef) and an ecotech vectra s2. Ordered a Luna acrylic sump around this time. I wanted the sump(Refugium) area to be completely open and be a part of the display. It will also have NO mechanical filtration at all. The refugium is going to have a full sand bed and rooted macro algae’s also 2 different sea grasses Halodule and Rupia also two grasses native to Florida. Will also have a mangrove or two down there, corals, scallops, clam, starfish and all of your typical CUC.
With mangrove growth in mind when I built the stand for the tank the sump portion is built out from under the tank on the overflow box. Once the stand was built and we stained it it got very hard not to bring it in and get it ready to set up, so that’s what we did. As we waited for the sump to get built started getting more anxious. Talking with my lfs who I ordered it through, the sump kept getting delayed. So with a trip planned for collection of some fish (coming up soon now) they let me borrow a 50 gal sump to get water in it. Well, this turned into me draining all the water from my 125 reef into this tank and transferring everything into this system. As you can see in pictures the sump that is being made is much longer and I can not complete my plumbing completely until that is here.
Currently the system is fallow because week or so after the transfer there was an outbreak of velvet that couldn’t be left in this system and unfortunately claimed the lives of quite a few of my fish.
Anyways, sorry for the back story. The fish tank is an acrylic tank that sat for sale at my lfs for a while, struck a deal and brought it home (many weeks of debating it). Once the tank got home I started looking for some good used components, lights, pumps ext. Ended up getting 4 Red Sea 50’s (worked out as I have 3 on the 125 reef) and an ecotech vectra s2. Ordered a Luna acrylic sump around this time. I wanted the sump(Refugium) area to be completely open and be a part of the display. It will also have NO mechanical filtration at all. The refugium is going to have a full sand bed and rooted macro algae’s also 2 different sea grasses Halodule and Rupia also two grasses native to Florida. Will also have a mangrove or two down there, corals, scallops, clam, starfish and all of your typical CUC.
With mangrove growth in mind when I built the stand for the tank the sump portion is built out from under the tank on the overflow box. Once the stand was built and we stained it it got very hard not to bring it in and get it ready to set up, so that’s what we did. As we waited for the sump to get built started getting more anxious. Talking with my lfs who I ordered it through, the sump kept getting delayed. So with a trip planned for collection of some fish (coming up soon now) they let me borrow a 50 gal sump to get water in it. Well, this turned into me draining all the water from my 125 reef into this tank and transferring everything into this system. As you can see in pictures the sump that is being made is much longer and I can not complete my plumbing completely until that is here.
Currently the system is fallow because week or so after the transfer there was an outbreak of velvet that couldn’t be left in this system and unfortunately claimed the lives of quite a few of my fish.
