There's a reason that we leak test. I found that reason a couple days ago. After getting the plumbing dry fit, I did a fill test on the tank. As soon as water hit the overflows, it started raining inside my stand. Fortunately I had a sump tank and another (eventual) frag tank in place to catch the water. All four bulkheads leaked. Oops! Interestingly, it took far more tightening than I've ever had to do with this style of bulkhead to get them to stop. But with the help of Stephan (R2R - scason) and his gigantic pipe wrench we were able to tighten them without having to teeter the tank on the edge of the stand.
While the 180 was filling, I drained out the 120 and set everything up in its temporary home. A 100 gallon Rubbermaid trough holds almost all of the water and rock. The fish are still in their 40 breeder hospital tank for the time being. I ended up half-filling a 32 gallon Brute as well, which holds the remainder of the water and the rock from the sump.
We got the 120 outside and laid out for cleaning. Fortunately it's going away tomorrow morning so it's not going to anger my HOA too much...I hope.
Moving the 180 was a bit more difficult than we anticipated. We didn't have suction cups, so Stephan and I had to hand carry it. My brother-in-law (Brandon) was with us to give some extra help, but thin doorways and a hallway meant that he could only help so much. Stephan's son and my wife teamed up to move a set of collapsable sawhorses along with us, so when we needed a break they were immediately in place. Suffice it to say, we needed a few breaks for the trip from the garage, through the front door, down the hallway and then onto the stand. Then, once the tank was finally on the stand we had to manhandle it into position. The front trim of the tank kept us from being able to easily put it in place if the back of the stand was against the wall, so we left the stand sitting out in the floor until the tank was in place.
There's still a lot of work to do, but things are getting closer.
- I realized this morning that I hadn't tested the flow rate on the Dursos yet, so I might have to make the air holes bigger. Not a huge deal, but something that I'd have much preferred to do in the garage versus my living room.
- I'm crawling under the house later today to solve the "big tank running along the joists" bounce. Fortunately it's on an outside, load-bearing wall so things actually aren't as bad as they could be. Just a little wiggle. But I want far less wiggle before I put water in this thing. The advantage of this tank over the last is that it's a full stand, with a lot of contact area. My previous stand was 4 points, on the corners, and always made me a bit nervous.
- A LOT of wiring work needs to be done. I picked up an Apex Jr for a steal (new in box, $75 shipped) so that will control the heat, Kessils and refugium light for now. (I think, anyway. I need to make sure that the 3 Kessils won't overload the 8 amps if I plug them to a single outlet.) I'll be adding an EB-8 soon, doing away with the de facto DJ power strip. But for now the power strip will run the RW-15s, WP-40, skimmer and return pump. My goal is to make the wiring look as clean as the plumbing, so I've got a lot of "under the tank" time to do today.
Fingers crossed, it gets wet tonight! Oh, but I do need to find another 30 or 40 lbs of sand...
it must be beautiful!
