Ok between having a box of tiles fall off a shelf on my ankle at the Home Depot and various "old age" injuries that seem to be occurring more frequently, things have been a tad on the slow side.
Tank is complete now, overflow is in place, it's been a long time since I've used an internal overflow, and the first time the internal overflow actually stretched the entire height of the tank!
All the talk of my stand I decided to go in another direction, it's more a modern art interpretation, total tank inversion, although it's going to be hard to figure out how to keep water in the tank like this...
in all seriousness, I wanted to make sure my overflow holes didn't run into any issues with any of the stand supports (one of those things about not using internal overflows you don't have to think about!)... well I was off a tad, but a few small cuts and things are back on track. Also it was easier to flip the stand over on top see where I'm off, remove, make cuts, replace, etc than having to put the tank on and remove or move out of the way.. stand I can handle by myself, the tank however is a heavy summabitch and requires two people (mostly because it's a bit of an awkward size to grab onto... but it's also a heavy SOB!)
Ok so I finally water tested my PVC bottom, and it passed flying colors, had one small leak on the inside where the overflow touched the bottom, fixed it up before realizing it's probably not that big of a deal because it's all internal, but just in case I missed something I wanted it be water tight first.
Also got a good look at how dirty the glass is from the picture, so some elbow grease is needed
Next up, need to grout the tiles I put in, which shouldn't take too long, but I want to do that before I toss the sump, check out plumbing etc.
Also need to figure out a light hood setup too, don't think I want to do the aluminum bit this time, keep it simple and wooden, but I do like access to the tank from any direction... which might make that a bit problematic. This is not going to be furniture quality stuff here, so looks are not THAT important, but I don't want it to look like total crap either.
Stay tuned, I was hoping to have it up and read before the frag swap next week (geezus a week away), just if anything because a lot of my soft corals are not going to make the move over and figured that'd be a great place to give them away, plus if I got a ricordia or something nice soft I'd have a place to put it... but we'll see. Can't seem to give corals away in this club anymore, maybe I'll see if the Steinhart wants them
Cycling shouldn't be a problem since a ton of the rock I'll be putting in will be from the existing soft tank... but I want to chip off ALL the brown palys, encrusting gorgonians, etc (that should be a fun exercise in not getting rushed to the ER too!
), but who knows. School is also starting up in a week and a half so I'm back to work! (should start working out a lesson plan now actually!)