New 180g expansion!!

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
Thanks!!! The tank has cured and should ship next week I hope! I bought 4 125lb capacity suction cup glass moving handles... the 120 was really hard to get in place.

I am getting some of the plumbing ready before the tank is in place. Have a sicce 5.0, I teed it off in the sump with a ball valve so I can have water circulation in the sump (additonal to what the flow after filter socks) before the dual 3/4 return bulkheads. I think that should be nice.

For filtration I put 2 marinepure 8x4x4 blocks plus 5L of EHEIM Substrat Pro. And of course another heater. I had a 300w finnex titanium tube, so just needed the controller.
 
Here we go. Paint is almost dry in the foam. On thing I like about the marineland stand is once you remove stock support, there is 1" to the top of trim. So with 1/2" plywood and 1/2" foam it sets flush!

I am really bad at trimming foam silly enough, but it's good enough.

image.jpeg
 
looks good to me, foam going to compress with the tank so never see it.
 
Thanks! It's coming along. Need a few more plumbing supplies. I am happy with the wood and taking up only minimal floor space for a ray. I think the larger rainbowfish should be good with a male ray - mini marble or similar.

As funds are tight I am not planning on any lighting other than floor lamp for a while. It gets indirect light from the large windows - should be ok for some Java fern, but I'm not concerned.
 
Well the sump was broken by UPS delivery and marine depot filed a claim with them with the pictures I sent - they told me to hang onto it for 30 days if UPS wanted to pick it up, after the 30 days I bought some weldon to fix it and have been sitting on it a couple of years.

Funny you say free lighting. I actually won the acropora growout contest on reef2reef when that was held, winning free AI lighting. I used it for a while but when shutting down the tank after I got sick (I couldn't care for a reef) I sold the fixture - it was more reef based than FW.

It is somewhat of a nice occurance as after 12 years working as a microbiologist for DuPont I got laid off this year. My fiancée apparently also decided marriage wasn't in the works for the unemployed and left shortly after. So it's nice to have something to focus on.
 
Very cool set up. Looking forward to the finished product. What with the iowa water ?

Oh yeah i really like the driftwood
 
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Thanks you!! I can't wait to see the wood in the tank, it should come just a hair out of the water, which I think is cool with rimless tanks.

We have a ton of farm run off here in the tap. Phosphates, nitrates and organics. The epa legal limit for nitrate is 10ppm or babies can get sick and even die. Our tap frequently will rise above 10 and the water works has to run a "super RO" that costs a fortune and blend the water back down to 10. There are current lawsuits over it. It's generally not a problem if keeping tough fish - but for longevity and when doing large WCs it's not the best imo. Spring and fall are the worst after planting and harvest. Here is the real time monitoring. It's not all that bad now, but there are other organics that get past.


http://www.dmww.com/water-quality/water-quality-data/
 
MonsterFishKeepers.com