Bay Area Reefers

Well I've been using every minute I can spare to work on building out my new set up but I haven't had a lot of time to document the step by step progress like I would have liked. Any who, here is a shot of the old Hagen tank I picked up from Dyngo (Matt).

You might be able to tell that it used to have a top brace but it came off when I was cleaning the tank and I liked the way it looked so I left it off. It's an odd size at 26 inches wide for about 19g. Since it's an older tank the glass is way thicker than any regular 20g. The thicker glass made me feel comfortable with leaving the top brace off and cutting an external overflow (the cuts turned out ok but I was just glad I didn't break it since this was my first time cutting glass) into the back and I built an acrylic box and siliconed it on (onto the back of course) with dual drains. I also cut a 1/2 inch return and I MIGHT use the accelerator in the picture. I say might because I thought a 1/2 inch accelerator would be smaller than the normal 1 inch models but it's not, just the threaded piece of lock line is 1/2 inch so it is WAY bigger than I hoped. I'll see how it looks with water before I decide. I still have to cut a piece of black acrylic to black out the over flow box. That black acrylic will also have teeth to keep fish out of the OF. Oh and all the glass was but with my dremmel.

Here is a pic of the progress I have made on the stand so far.

The left side will be a door (or maybe just removable) so I can remove the sump if needed and I'll have a box closed off for all my power strips and timers and what not. The idea with the box is to keep the electrical stuff away from the water as much as possible. I started the stand by building a simple stick from made from cut down 2x4's that I had laying around. I still need to add a top and bottom to help spread out the weight and add some detail. Not sure how the doors are going to look yet but I'm leaning toward just leaving them solid. Oh and it's 36" wide, 18" deep and 40"
tall. That will give me 6" around the tank to help with maintenance. At 40" tall it seems high but both my kids are teens now so I don't need to accommodate short viewers and I wanted to be able to see it from my desk which is crowded with monitors so I have want to look over them and see the tank.

I picked up an old TruVu from Mike that I'll be using as a sump. I cut 4 inches off the top then separated the top so I can reuse it to keep it sturdy.

The plan is to have a fuge/macro section in the middle.

Skimmer is TBD. Lighting will be T5 sitting off the tank. I may build myself or buy a fixture, not sure yet. I'll be starting it with all dead rock. There won't be a lot of rock in the display so I plan on having a good amount in the sump if I can. I'll have an MP10 for flow.

..... I think that's most of it for now.