ScottBrew
Active Member
It seems somebody left the back door of R2R open. I snuck in and headed right for the reef-pi thread where I hid out for a while until I realized there was a large screen TV, X-box, wet bar and a comfy couch here as well. Have made myself at home now and figured I better bring some groceries and wash the dishes and maybe even mop the saltwater off the floor!
It's not quite a new build... well, sort of... not entirely
I had a FOWLR setup, an oddball at that. It was a undrilled 75 with a 4" PVC "fish bridge" to a drilled 55 and a sump with skimmer. It is built into a wall with my wife's office/storage/dungeon room behind it. I was thinking about giving the 4 remaining fish away and taking the whole thing out but she enjoyed watching the fish and said she would like to keep it. In a quest to gain some room, I was going to get rid of the 55 and hang an overflow on it to the sump. I went to one of the LFS on a Saturday. There was an Aqueon 90 drilled tank standing on end in the packaging. Mind you, this is not a store that carries tanks normally as it's a smallish store. I inquired about the price and it was an excellent deal due to the fact that they ordered it for someone else and after it was delivered, they had changed their mind. It was taking up valuable real estate in the store so I adopted it and brought it home. That was the easy part, my wallet wasn't even smoking from the encounter. What started out as a bargain buy has turned into something else!
When I started the upgrade, it sounded like a simple plan, move all the live rock and dead coral heads and fish to the 55, add a couple 90's to the return plumbing and disconnect the 75. The sump was already under the 55, how hard could it be? First off, had way more rock and such than I thought, especially when trying to move into a 6" smaller tank that also had quite a few pieces in it. In full disclosure, I must mention, I started this endeavor at about 9pm, on a Sunday night, it's never been said that I was a brain surgeon! After playing Tetris with the rock and getting it all into the other tank, we had to wrangle 4 fish (daughter and I). The net that I knew was in a bin under the tank, was not. The engineer gobies were a whole lot bigger than the last time I had seen them in their entirety. So here we are at midnight, using her 3 gallon sized tank net, trying to catch some very unhappy, 9" long gobies in extremely murky water in a tank that was about 5' tall at the rim. We eventually caught them and the 2 yellow tail damsels and dropped them in their temporary accommodations.
The next night we started breaking down the 75 to get it moved out and the 4" taller 90 into its place. 3 - 5 gallon buckets were filled with the crushed coral, what, was this stuff procreating? My homemade 2X4 stand was easily up to the task of an extra 15 gallons, so that was the only thing not needing modification. had to cut the wall up 4" on the house side of the tank, it was built in and all access was from the back side. It was made of 3/4" plywood and drywall over that. The studs in the wall are 48" and the 75 fit between them. Unfortunately, I didn't measure the 90 before sliding it up on the stand to find it was 48-1/4" wide at the trim. Pulled the 90 back off the stand and made notches for the trim to fit. My final clearance could have been measured with feeler gauges. In the process of clearancing the studs, I neglected to look at the drain and return plumbing locations in the new tank. the stand has 2X4 diagonal members to keep it from racking and one of them was directly under the plumbing holes, GRRRR! What was I saying about my stand not needing modifications? 4" taller tank on an already tall stand, now the rim is five and a half feet off the ground. Had I a crystal ball, I would have junked that stand and built one designed for the new tank, especially now that I want to upgrade the sump.
There are times that I wonder "Why did you do that?". I spent a bit of time rinsing all the crushed coral and putting it back in the new tank only to decide to switch to sand a few weeks later, after putting the tank all together and breaking down the 55. Would have been far easier to just do it then! <facepalm>
The tank has progressed nicely, went through an ugly stage with algae and cyano while it recycled. Now have too many snails and need to thin out the population since it has no algae but some film algae on the glass. Hate having to break out the snail sized menu's and getting their dinner orders. The gobies have been gleefully bulldozing sand, lost one of the yellow tails but he didn't look too healthy before the reconstruction. Have now added a few lemon chromis, a yellow tang, a blue tang (that has doubled in size in 2 months), snails (also got HUGE), a cleaner shrimp, an urchin and now, finally as of last night, some corals frags!
Here's the pics, more details to come.
Check out the reef-pi page here: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/r...tank-controller-based-on-raspberry-pi.289256/ It's awesome!
Check out my reef-pi build page here: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/scottbrews-reef-pi.497789/ Not bad, if I do say so myself.
It's not quite a new build... well, sort of... not entirely
I had a FOWLR setup, an oddball at that. It was a undrilled 75 with a 4" PVC "fish bridge" to a drilled 55 and a sump with skimmer. It is built into a wall with my wife's office/storage/dungeon room behind it. I was thinking about giving the 4 remaining fish away and taking the whole thing out but she enjoyed watching the fish and said she would like to keep it. In a quest to gain some room, I was going to get rid of the 55 and hang an overflow on it to the sump. I went to one of the LFS on a Saturday. There was an Aqueon 90 drilled tank standing on end in the packaging. Mind you, this is not a store that carries tanks normally as it's a smallish store. I inquired about the price and it was an excellent deal due to the fact that they ordered it for someone else and after it was delivered, they had changed their mind. It was taking up valuable real estate in the store so I adopted it and brought it home. That was the easy part, my wallet wasn't even smoking from the encounter. What started out as a bargain buy has turned into something else!When I started the upgrade, it sounded like a simple plan, move all the live rock and dead coral heads and fish to the 55, add a couple 90's to the return plumbing and disconnect the 75. The sump was already under the 55, how hard could it be? First off, had way more rock and such than I thought, especially when trying to move into a 6" smaller tank that also had quite a few pieces in it. In full disclosure, I must mention, I started this endeavor at about 9pm, on a Sunday night, it's never been said that I was a brain surgeon! After playing Tetris with the rock and getting it all into the other tank, we had to wrangle 4 fish (daughter and I). The net that I knew was in a bin under the tank, was not. The engineer gobies were a whole lot bigger than the last time I had seen them in their entirety. So here we are at midnight, using her 3 gallon sized tank net, trying to catch some very unhappy, 9" long gobies in extremely murky water in a tank that was about 5' tall at the rim. We eventually caught them and the 2 yellow tail damsels and dropped them in their temporary accommodations.
The next night we started breaking down the 75 to get it moved out and the 4" taller 90 into its place. 3 - 5 gallon buckets were filled with the crushed coral, what, was this stuff procreating? My homemade 2X4 stand was easily up to the task of an extra 15 gallons, so that was the only thing not needing modification. had to cut the wall up 4" on the house side of the tank, it was built in and all access was from the back side. It was made of 3/4" plywood and drywall over that. The studs in the wall are 48" and the 75 fit between them. Unfortunately, I didn't measure the 90 before sliding it up on the stand to find it was 48-1/4" wide at the trim. Pulled the 90 back off the stand and made notches for the trim to fit. My final clearance could have been measured with feeler gauges. In the process of clearancing the studs, I neglected to look at the drain and return plumbing locations in the new tank. the stand has 2X4 diagonal members to keep it from racking and one of them was directly under the plumbing holes, GRRRR! What was I saying about my stand not needing modifications? 4" taller tank on an already tall stand, now the rim is five and a half feet off the ground. Had I a crystal ball, I would have junked that stand and built one designed for the new tank, especially now that I want to upgrade the sump.
There are times that I wonder "Why did you do that?". I spent a bit of time rinsing all the crushed coral and putting it back in the new tank only to decide to switch to sand a few weeks later, after putting the tank all together and breaking down the 55. Would have been far easier to just do it then! <facepalm>
The tank has progressed nicely, went through an ugly stage with algae and cyano while it recycled. Now have too many snails and need to thin out the population since it has no algae but some film algae on the glass. Hate having to break out the snail sized menu's and getting their dinner orders. The gobies have been gleefully bulldozing sand, lost one of the yellow tails but he didn't look too healthy before the reconstruction. Have now added a few lemon chromis, a yellow tang, a blue tang (that has doubled in size in 2 months), snails (also got HUGE), a cleaner shrimp, an urchin and now, finally as of last night, some corals frags!
Here's the pics, more details to come.
Check out the reef-pi page here: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/r...tank-controller-based-on-raspberry-pi.289256/ It's awesome!
Check out my reef-pi build page here: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/scottbrews-reef-pi.497789/ Not bad, if I do say so myself.
Last edited:
