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Anathema's 120G Rebuild.

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anathema

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I decided to edit my first post to give the back story, as my thread is becoming larger than I'd thought it would.

Once upon a time my tank looked like this:
IMG_0404.JPG


Then I came home to this:
deadtank.jpg


So there is the reason this is a rebuild.

I've been busy this week:

Post crash, I let the tank sit without any livestock for a couple weeks while deciding what to do.
emptiness.JPG


Then I decided to notch the back of the tank and rip out the Oceanic overflow completely. I'll be putting on an external overflow.

drill.JPG

hole.JPG

sawzall.JPG

notched.JPG


This pile of glass scraps may look large, but it's much smaller than the one I made making my own sump dividers. I bought a new glass cutter and I have to say if you ever play around cutting your own glass: BUY A NICE GLASS CUTTER. Holy crap it's a huge difference.

scraps.JPG


I also made a new overflow strainer with a drill press and table saw at work. It turned out alright but I forgot to take a pic, oops.

Now I'm posting this while I wait impatiently for the first section of silicone to dry...

dryfaster.JPG


Now that's I've posted this I bet it's dry enough to move to the other side, more later...

Whoops all my pictures are sideways, but I've got to get back to work. Sorry, I guess tilt your head. :(
 
Game of Thrones said:
What is dead can never die, but rises again, harder and stronger.
Click to expand...

It's exciting to see that you're picking up the pieces from your tank crash and moving forward.

If I have any corals you'd like as you restock I'll be really pleased to offer them for your new tank.
 
Also I wanted to thank everyone for the offers of livestock. At the moment the main thing for me is to get a fully functioning large, stable tank up and running asap so I have a place for my surviving animals. Mario was kind enough to loan me a 40G breeder, and the corals and fish that survived are all crammed in there. It's bare bottom, and a maintenance nightmare with no dosing, no auto top off, no sand, and up until a bit ago a bunch of stuff with sections dying off. I was siphoning out goo daily for a while to save what I could.

Things have stabilized, and oddly enough some of the monti's are already putting down new growth, but I want to get things back into an automated system because all the extra tank work doesn't mesh well with my job. A total of three fish out of ten survived as well, my rabbitfish, fridmani, and a small black blenny from my frag tank. I plan to put this system together for the survivors, and let it stabilize over the winter before I restock in the spring.

This plan only works if Aquatic Central stops getting crazy cool coral in their shipments. :love:
 
sfsuphysics said:
Dude, did you just cut through the glass with a sawzall?
Click to expand...

Shhhh don't tell anyone. :X

There was another 120g for sale on craigslist for $150 and I wanted to see if it worked. It actually worked very well, with a diamond blade meant for steel. It has no teeth, and looks very much like a diamond hole saw, only straight. I did put one nasty chip(still less than dime size) in it, but that was because I made a newbie idiot mistake. The blade was brand new, and the thick factory paint coat didn't let it seat fully into the blade locking mechanism. Halfway through the cut I heard a *KATHUNK* and thought, "hmm well that's it then." Actually the blade had fallen out, mid cut. Unfortunately, it had worn off the diamond coating on the section I was using, but not the tip. When I tried to put the blade back into the cut, it jammed solid and freeing it up caused the chip. I had to put the blade in on the original start of the cut and slide it down on the worn section to get started again, if I hadn't done that it would have been a clean cut. After I sanded the edge it still came out fairly nice, and that section is under a 1/4" reinforcement now anyways.

Obviously you need to keep a very firm grip on the sawzall and use a low speed so you don't get ANY vibration...

Also, one of the reasons I put in the thin reinforcement to hold in the strainer as seen in the pick above is so I could silicone the cut, but it really doesn't seem neccesary, it came out way cleaner than I was expecting.
 
A tile sanding block, looks like an old school knife sharpening stone. You have to be careful to go the right direction or you'll chip it.

I also forgot to mention that since I used a 5/8" glass bit and the sawzall blade is 1", I had to start each cut with a hacksaw. I did this with a carbide tile blade, which works but has to be done very slowly as it's a rougher grit than the glass bits. I started each cut with the hacksaw until I could get the sawzall in there without the top of the blade hitting the glass. If you look closely you can see that the cut is uneven because of this, I had to sand down the side I started the long cut on to make it an even cut, if I'd used a bigger bit I would have had an easier time, but I didn't want to spend the money for one project.
 
I stayed busy this weekend, no partying for me. :(

I built a spider out of PVC. Actually I hope this is what a Sea Squirt manifold SHOULD look like, I just guessed...

pvcspider.JPG


Here is my first thought on how the outlets for the closed loop should possibly go:

outlets.JPG


Some more shots of the now dried and almost finished overflow box:

teeth.JPG

overflowback.JPG


I pick up the back panel for the box tomorrow when the glass shop calls and tells me it's in. Also need to figure out how to put in a black panel cheaply for the background, can't really paint the back with a box on it. If a thin plastic sheet is prohibitively expensive I might paint the inside, but I'd rather not have paint on the inside for many reasons.

I have to buy a few more PVC pieces, hose barbs and such to install the pump for the closed loop. After that it's ready for some water. I hope it doesn't break after all this work... :Sp
 
I've built an external overflow for the tank I am building (but on a much smaller scale) and I plan on painting everything but the box and the section with teeth will be black acrylic so the entire back will be black essentially.
 
I got the back of the box today, it's on and drying. No pics because it's ugly, I really screwed up the bracing and it slid while I was gluing it, so the silicone looks like crap. It will hold though, it's just smeared.

Yes, the little stubby thing in my overflow box is the intake for my closed loop. I am hoping having it out of the tank will help avoid getting fish sucked up against it. I'm also hoping I made the teeth big enough, we'll see. If not, I can throttle both the return and the closed loop, so I'll make it work. I also kind of want to eventually buy a smaller return pump, 900GPH is a bit too much for my taste, but I've gotten good deals on my mag 9.5's so I compromised. I was also disliking the idea of running a mag9.5 out of water, and putting it in the compartment under the overflow keeps it submerged, which should improve it's life. It also lets me use it as an additional tank heater, which is beneficial considering where my tank is.

I decided to go with a plastic sheet for the back. I was worried that it would be too expensive because of the size of the tank, but with an ABS sheet 1/16" I could have gotten it as cheaply as $10. I opted for 1/8" and still only spent $25 on it. It's siliconed in, whihc I've done on smaller tanks in the past. I hope it works as well here as it did before.

tankback.JPG

coverteeth.JPG
 
sfsuphysics said:
Should go with a wider opening on your intake then, that way there's less suction against it, that strainer will get clogged in short order :D
Click to expand...

Good to know. For now that strainer is just stuck on there, it's not permanent. I made the box large so I have plenty of room to do whatever i need to do to make it work, but this is the first closed loop I've set up. Thanks for the input.
 
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