[slief]

Part 2
Things progressed along nicely. Plumbing went as planned and it was time to get ready to stock things.. By this time it was nearing midnight.
The plan was to make a egg crate grid to keep the live rock off the ground. We also added a PVC manifold that would be fed via one of the circulation pumps. This manifold would circle the overflow under the egg crate support. It would have holes drilled in it to allow the recirculation water to pump out under the live rock in order to keep things from settling under the rocks.


Come 2AM, the tank is done.. In a matter of 14 hours or so, the walls were hacked, stand built, tank delivered and plumbed and set up. Talk about a well orchestrated move.
These pictures don’t do much justice but I don’t really have any good ones of the results.



The lights were setup with a winch to raise and lower them. This was done as the rest of the walls were being finished over the course of the following days.. There were a pair of 400W MH’s as well as six 4’ VHO bulbs.


The winch for the light system is on the right side of this picture.


Now lets fast forward several years. The tank was in the midst of an algae bloom and I was at wits end. The decision was made to tear everything out of the tank, address some scratches and clean the system out and start over. All live stock was moved to kitty pools in the garage.
The system was broken down and my aquarium service guy brought it some people he knew to polish things out on site. It would go through several steps of wet sanding with graduating levels of sand paper followed by buffing and polishing. The end results were fantastic.
Here is one of the guys inside the tank working on the scratches.