Aquatic Therapy 300 Gallon Build...

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Aquatic Therapy

I will be starting the 300 build this Thursday and very excited about the extra space this upgrade will give the fish and I can finely have room for all my shelf rock and some caves.
I will be picking up the setup on Thursday from Ron (triggafish99)
and hope to have the staining of the stand and canopy done so I can start the build on Friday morning.
 
Picked up the tank on Wednesday and started working on the stand Thursday. Checked all the joints and basic structure to make sure everything was sound, sanded it down and started the staining process. Tonight I plan on finishing up the cleaning up of the inside of the tank and painting the inside of the stand.
Will be picking up so Acrylic from Caesar at the meeting to finish the Sump/Fuge setup and get it all plumbed up.

I need to decide if I'm going to use a twin pump return or just one big one to do it all but leaning towards the twin setup so if one dies the other will keep the tank running and the fish alive.

I will have some pics added this weekend as well.
 
I wanted to thank Dave and Josh for taking time out of their day to help me get this monster in the house.

Got the stand stained and the inside painted gray, looked over the structure of the stand to make sure all was good which it was.
Still have a little cleaning to do inside the tank and polish the outside once its up and running.

I have one end of the sump / fuge and building the other section today. I plan on having two refugiums one for fast flow and the other for slow flow with a larger section for the skimmer and a small section for acclamation and of coarse the return side running dual pumps.
There will be 2 bubble traps the make sure there are no micro bubbles making it to the main tank

The reason I decided to go with 2 sections for the sump / fuge instead of just a 125 gallon was to allow me to change the setup later incase it breaks or I just want to make changes to the setup without having to break down the main tank so I can move it out from the wall to pull the fuge out the back. I can simply shut the water off to the section or sections I want to remove and replace it open the valves and I’m back running in a few hours.
 
Ok got the sump/fuge in Thanks Henry...Now I just need to reposition the high & low speed overflows, make a skimmer stand and connect the pumps. The level is spot on and the tanks about half full now and I will add the sand and rock to both the main tank and fuge then fill it up.
The plan is to finish On Friday and move the livestock over Saturday then start breaking down the old setup and then I will finish the doors after that.
 
Ok refigured my water drop incase the power goes out and stays out over an hour and my battery backups die. The tank will dump 24.96 gallons to the fuge and I can hold 33 gallons so I should be good but the true test will come once the tank is running and I shut the pumps of. This is the part I dont like as you have to just sit and watch the water fill and hope you thought of everything.
 
I still need to stain the doors and canopy but had to put the doors on to keep the kids out.
The skimmer stand is just for testing to get the height right then I will glue some legs that prevent dead spots.
Right now there are 30lbs of rock in each of the fuges and 140lbs of LR in the display tank and 55lbs of DIY rock as well, I will need to pickup some more over the next few weeks.
The return pumps are a MAG18 and a Little Giant and with the head height together they are putting out 2100gph and I can run just the Mag18 and slow things down a bit.
I have noticed the Little Giant pump gets very hot when running, is that normal for an external pump to get hot?

As you can see my Blonde Naso is a camera hog so it makes it hard not have him in all the pics.
I have never seen the fish so happy and social this was defiantly a good upgrade for them.
I tested the water again this morning and its looking really good.


Ammonia = 0
Nitrite = 0
Nitrate = 5
Phos = 1
Calc = 520
KH = 9
PH = 8.0
Salinity = 1025
 
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