75 gallon tank

In September 2008 I finally talked my wife into letting me set up a saltwater tank. We visited several fish stores and asked lots of questions and settled on a 29 gallon complete set up being sold on commission by a fish store near an army base for a soldier going over to the big sand box. It had almost everything we needed and even though we were told keeping the 29 gallon parameters in check would be hard, we decided to buy it. So we had a tank, stand, compact fluorescent lighting, two maxijet powerheads, refractometer, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate test kits and a hang on the back skimmer. We also purchased some sand, live rock, salt and di water. So was born the little 29 gallon tank. It has changed quite a bit over the last 3 1/2 years. Currently it has some xenia, a few ricordeas, an African Flameback Dwarf Angel, an Ocellaris Clownfish, a Wheeler's Watchman Goby and a Psuedochromis fridmani (Orchid Dottyback I believe?). All of the inhabitants have been in the tank for more than a year with the Psuedochromis being the last added around November of 2010.

Not much more than a year after it was set up I began to suffer from tank envy. But alas being a civil engineer working in the housing industry, with the housing crash a larger tank was not in the picture. However, over the last 6 months, the housing industry in my area has been on a steady rise, and being in a situation where the only real debt I have is a car payment, I decided it was finally time to make the upgrade I've wanted for several years.

I searched around on craigslist and found a few 75's and a 90 and scheduled times to go take a look. I looked at the 75 gallon range because we rent and I can't make structural modifications to the house for a larger tank. There is a main beam near where the 75 will reside and it will straddle a minimum of 3 floor joist, so there shouldn't be any structural problems with a tank this size.

After viewing several of the tanks, I picked this one up for $40. It held water when I bought it but the silicone looks whitish. So I plan to reseal all the seams, just to be on the safe side.


I also picked up a 40 gallon breeder to use as the sump. Here it is when I was doing the water test.


I also have a 10 gallon that will either be used as an auto top off or as a saltwater mixing tank.


I've also purchased my skimmer.


I plan to build a stand that is over sized for the 75 gallon to give room to set things down around the tank when needed and also give plenty of room underneath for the sump and other goodies.

I'm thinking about buying the kind of overflow kit that requires drilling a hole(don't want to mention specific names if we are supposed to), so I did some research and tested the sides and bottom of the 75 to see if they were tempered.




On the sides when my polarized sunglasses are twisted the white screen on my computer (as seen through the glass of the aquarium) turns an even black all over. The bottom has lots of striations or ripples of white and black (sorry couldn't get my camera to focus on the striations). I believe this means the sides are not tempered but the bottom is. I would appreciate input if my understanding is incorrect before I order the overflow kit.

The other thing I'm contemplating is using a closed loop to keep the water movement in the tank high while being able to keep the turnover through the sump at around 5x. I've thought about drilling additonal holes in the back for the inflow to a reeflo snapper/dart hybrid, but I'm concerned about weakening the tank if I drill too many holes. So the other option is to use a method similar to the one melev used on his 29 but using the snapper instead of a mag drive pump. To get flow equivalent to that of the snapper, I'd have to use a Mag 24. The Mag 24 uses about 245 watts to move a max 2400 gph and the snapper uses 108 watts to move 2500 gph. However, I don't know if the snapper will be damaged if used in this manner. Any thoughts?

Well there's my introduction and a few questions. Hope you follow along over the next several months as I get the 75 up and running and switch the 29 over.