Hey all,
I'm finally pulling the trigger and upgrading my current 55 to a new 75 with a 40 breeder sump. The 55 has been up for around a year, but I can't deal with the 12in depth from front to back anymore. I live in a 3rd floor apartment, so according to my wife (and probably one or two structural engineers out there
) I can't go much bigger at the moment. Maybe when we get a house, I can move larger, but until then this is what I've got!
A little background:
So I'm not too happy with my 55. I made a lot of mistakes with it (who doesn't their first time out of the gate?) so a lot of the design I've poured into this was to specifically correct those mistakes and give me the ability for expansion going forward.
Some mistakes I'd like to correct this time around:
---Staying the heck away from check valves. I've been burned once; never again.
---I don't think it's humanly possible to make an overflow louder than my current glass-holes overflow.
---I'm building my own stand to suit my own needs. Last go around, I paid $$$ for a standard stand that I don't really like the look of, and severely limited my sump options. A standard stand for a 55 only allows for 9 1/2 depth front to back on the sump. That landed me with an Aqueon ProFlex 2... Not that happy with it.
---I need a better way to organize the tank electronics. As it stands, I simply started bolting them onto the sides of the stand. It looks ugly, there's a rats nest of wires, and I can't keep looking at Drummereef's pictures without hating my own wire management
---I really do not like my BRS Dual Reactors. They're extremely finicky and hard to balance both the GFO and the Carbon. I need to get individual reactors going and scrap this dual reactor.
Credit inspiration:
So that brings me to the large pile of threads that I follow on here that have given me pieces of inspiration for some of the things I'm implementing on this build and hopefully in my someday-in-the-future dream build.
*Disclaimer* All of these tanks are absolutely drop dead gorgeous. I doubt anyone will see any similarities between my build and theirs, since my imagination is way stronger than my DIY skills, but I'd still like to give a shout out.
drummereef's 180g in-wall build
*d2mini's new 200g Reeftastic Build*
Mike's 300 Double-D
And lets not forget BeanAnimal for a wonderful overflow system, UncleOf6 for correcting some of my early plumbing plans, RocketEngineer for a very easy stand design, and all of you for reading this far without giving up since you haven't seen a picture yet in this thread.
Anyway, Lets get on with it!