fritz

OG of this here reef game
Location
Marine Park
Rating - 95.9%
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Hey guys. For those that don't know me I took a break about a decade ago from the hobby. We had just had our first child, were starting a new business and this hobby became more work then play for me. I stopped enjoying it and for the first time in 20 or so years, didn't have a tank.

It didn't last that long and I found myself bouncing from planted tanks to africans and back again. I did a few dirted tanks (Walstad method) which were cool and super low maintenance. I met Discus Hans by chance at an event and kept Discus for awhile. Ultimately though I just find freshwater boring. To each there own, for me I love salt.

I decided to come back keeping my non-reef ready 90 gallon. I had it on an Aquatic Fundamentals stand which was rated to 900 pounds max. The 90 with sand, Live Rock and so on would be just over the 900 by my calculations.

We now have three kids and the tank is in their main play area. Needless to say the AF stand had to go. I originally was going to go cheap and easy with a concrete block stand. I made a platform to support the top as concrete blocks are only 16" wide:
 

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fritz

OG of this here reef game
Location
Marine Park
Rating - 95.9%
47   2   0
It took three minutes to put that top frame together so I just decided to go wood for the whole thing. If I had to do it over I'd go all plywood but I did the typical 2x4 stand we've all seen. One exception though, I didn't do the 2x4 nailers or the center supports. It's WAY excessive. As is, this stand should hold upwards of 13,000 pounds, 4k and change to be safe. I'm barely pushing 1k in weight. As is this stand is WAY overkill.
 

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fritz

OG of this here reef game
Location
Marine Park
Rating - 95.9%
47   2   0
Instead of the 2x4 nailers I went with these $0.49 corner braces from Lowes. They dont' have much strength holding that right angle but they are super strong holding left to right. As there are 16 in total and I'd need each and every one to fail for this stand to turn into a parallelogram, I'm good. My main concern was finding a fastener that would just hold the support 2x4 "L"s in place. Weight should want to pop them out, so long as they stay under the top platform and the bottom can't bow, I'm fine.
 

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fritz

OG of this here reef game
Location
Marine Park
Rating - 95.9%
47   2   0
I also liked how the "L" brackets were wide and staggered the screw holes. You may notice that I didn't go with all deck screws, stainless steel or coat the entire inside of my stand in marine epoxy. I've done that in the past and it's ridiculous. I mean it's cool if you want to say: "Yeah man, I coated this thing in six coats of marine epoxy" but only I will see it. I'm not entering this thing in an auto show.

Honestly if I get salt water under my stand the absolute least of my concerns will be the screws and wood. I did make the electric all tidy though.
 

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fritz

OG of this here reef game
Location
Marine Park
Rating - 95.9%
47   2   0
When I was doing the freshwater tanks I was mostly into the experimentation of it. Like doing a tank with a dirt bottom, or keeping Discus in really dirty tanks and not changing water (like they come from in the wild). I'd always had sumps before and I was kind of intrigued by the idea of doing an all in one tank here. A lot has changed (and a lot hasn't) in the last ten years. I loved my vortech with icecap backup back then and wanted one this go round as well.

I didn't go vortech though, opting instead for the Gyre. So far it is completely awesome and I much prefer it and its flow to the vortech. The battery backup seems great as well and is certainly smaller than they used to be.

I kicked around the idea of going skimmerless but the smell from curing 50 pounds of BRS dead rock was killing me. In the past I always ran gravity fed skimmers. I have always felt that the best "device" in our tanks is the overflow. It skims the nastiest of the nasty film and instead of doing something with it, we dump it into our sump and mix it back up with tank water. Our skimmers then have to sift through that stuff to separate the gunk we just had concentrated in one place. The gravity fed skimmer from the overflow had always worked well for me and I wanted something like that.

I was intrigued by the Tunze 9012, they don't seem to be known for skimmers anymore now then they were then but I like that it feeds off the surface and should work well in my sumpless tank. My only issue is that I couldn't have it on the back because of a service panel and it wouldn't fit with my glass stands.

Luckily I always have polycarbonate lying around. I cut some to the size of the glass and back piece of my versa top.
 

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fritz

OG of this here reef game
Location
Marine Park
Rating - 95.9%
47   2   0
I installed the skimmer (which seems awesome so far) into the tank and used a sharpie to mark where the skimmer's edges would be. Leave the film on if you're doing this! I then cut out an area for the skimmer using a metal blade and a jig saw. The heater will is behind the skimmer in that back corner of the tank. I may move the Gyre vertical and hide it too behind the skimmer, we'll see.
 

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fritz

OG of this here reef game
Location
Marine Park
Rating - 95.9%
47   2   0
Here you can see the polycarbonate panel on the left vs the stock Versa top on the right. Since it is 1/8" thick poly it fit perfectly in the hinge top.
 

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fritz

OG of this here reef game
Location
Marine Park
Rating - 95.9%
47   2   0
Here's the 9012 after roughly five hours of operation. It isn't broken in yet and is still releasing some microbubbles (to be expected) but I'm pretty pleased with it so far.
 

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fritz

OG of this here reef game
Location
Marine Park
Rating - 95.9%
47   2   0
Here is a shot of the stand which looks pretty home made. I wanted something similar to the Aquatic Fundamentals tank in look. Something that looked a little more modern than the standard pine stand. I thought about skinning it in thin plywoods (or thick), maybe doing a walnut or something crazy. In the end I just went to Lowes and had them cut down a 3/4" sheet of MDF.

Don't spray paint MDF! While it takes rolled on paint wonderfully it sucks at taking spray paint evenly. There are tricks online if you need to spray paint MDF (use shellac first, etc). I went with a black exterior paint and used a roller I had lying around. It actually gave it pretty much the exact finish that the Aquatic Fundamentals stand had. The panels (two on the front, one on each side) are held on with heavy duty Velcro.
 

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House of Laughter

Super Moderator
Staff member
Vendor
Location
Ossining, NY
Rating - 100%
310   0   0
Wrasse

Thank!
Nice to be back. Glad to see you're still here. I still think of that awesome Radiant Wrasse I got from you.


Wish i could find one like that which will live. They've been mostly coming from Africa and handlers don't know how to acclimate them and they die quickly after purchase.

At the moment, I have a Solarensis instead but wish I had a radiant or two.

House
 

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