evoXmr

This blog is long overdue. I was reading a blog on here about a dream tank and figured I would show mine. I'm sure everyone remembers Marc's (Melev) leaky Marineland custom 400g tank... Well, I am the lucky guy who picked it up for a good deal! I had a 100g setup for almost 7 years and I parted it out when I got a house back in 2010. After being house poor for a few years, I got that saltwater itch again and decided to just take a look at used tanks online. There was the tank of my dreams at a price I couldn't pass up!

I gathered up 9 of my friends and trailer and went to pick it up. I didn't have anywhere to put it, so it sat in storage for a few months before the construction on my home started. My wife wasn't totally on board once she realized it meant tearing up the house and it didn't get any better when she saw how big it was! I had a friend of mine that does home remodeling do all of the work on the house. He was able to do most of it while we were on vacation which saved me from having to deal with the wife on a daily basis. I am telling you all of this because it will come into play later on, so just bare with me.

Here are the photos of install:

First thing that we noticed was that the stand wouldn't fit through the door.


So the trim of wood around the door frame needed to be removable. It took a lot of sanding and planing to get it down smooth before the new boards could be installed.


Here is the area where the tank will go once the divider wall is removed.


The wall being removed.


This is the board that will sit under the tank and on the stand. It needs to be painted so that the water doesn't destroy it.


The wall is down, and now he needed to remove the floor where the tank will sit so that it can sit on concrete. The tape was marking to 2 possible places we were going to put the tank. We opted for center with the support post.


The engineered hardwood cut and pulled from their glue. He said this part was super hard to do because they did a good job gluing down the planks.


The pink paper was put down to cover all the super sticky glue. We needed to get the stand out of the garage and make sure it was a good fit.


This side of the tank needed to be as tall as the stand, so that water would be able to make its way out the drain (picture further down).


He did a great job on this box. I wanted to be able to access it from both sides and the top.


This shows how un-level the was. I had to paint those metal pieces so that they wouldn't get eaten up by the salt water.


He redid the electrical that ran through the wall so that I would have a place to plug in equipment.


Here is where the drain was going to go.


We decided to use a P-trap style drain so that it could hold some water to keep a seal and hopefully keep out the rodents and insects.


This got covered with dirt and empties just to the right of this picture into a concrete drainage ditch between my house and the neighbor.


Here is some trip work starting to come and the tank has made it's way onto the stand from storage. It took another 9 friends to get this moved again. I almost got a fine from my HOA from having it sit in the driveway on a trailer for a few days!


Both panels are removable and held in place by rare Earth magnets. They also slide under the trim pieces to give a nice look.


The other side is also removable!


Luckily I got back from our vacation 2 weeks before my wife, so I was able to help get this install finished. The wife was not so happy with all the space that this took up, but I thought it looked great! I had to get it painted quickly once we got back from our trip because we were having our birthday party at the house. I threw a quick coat of paint on it for the time being.


Sadly, I didn't take many photos of the rest of my install because I was always in a hurry. I started to order all the equipment and I had to keep it all hidden from the wife. If she saw anything related to the hobby, she would give me crap about all the money I was "wasting." It was hard for her to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It was bad enough that she had to see this on a daily basis, but I tried not to make things worse for myself. I worked on this for maybe an hour a day and on weekdays only. This was the time I had when I got home from work before the wife got home. She caught me a few times putting stuff up or she noticed a change in the look of the aquarium and would complain to me about how much she hated this aquarium. It was a tough year and a half!

I eventually got all the plumbing and wiring done. I got the lights hung and the sump all set up. I will try and find some better pictures for part 2 of this setup, but for now I will leave you with the picture I snapped moments after I flipped on the return pump. I was happy to see that I didn't have any leaks!


Next was to add the rest of the rocks and equipment and get it cycling. I will say that the wife was once again not happy about the noise and added light to the room! It was really loud before the slime built up in the overflow.

More to come when I have more time!