I don't use that exact one but you can get some good deals this week on caribsea shipped. for my last 3 substrates it is what I have used.
I just bought 350#’s of two variety’s, good stuff and can’t beat the price, think 50#’s for $25? Free shipping too ? . Felt bad for fed ex dude...Got the tank on the stand this weekend. I used a couple of the online acrylic aquarium calculators and it came out to about ~250lbs. I still had three other guys to balance the load and to be safe. All of them were at least 6'+ medium build, ranging from 40-52 years old and all thought my calculation was off LOL.
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Plumbing will start later this week. Sorry for the bad pictures. I'm not good at taking pictures while I"m doing the work. I just take whenever I remember to. I will take pictures of the plumbing as I go. I think I have most of what I need, but inevitably I'm sure I be taking a few trips to HD/Lowe's.
Question for folks: I'm looking to use some really fine gravel or some course sand for the substrate this time around. Of all the places I looked, I surprisingly liked this size and color from Petsmart! It seems Petsmart is the only place that has this color AND size. Anyone else use this?
CaribSea African Cichlid Mix Aquarium Substrate | fish Gravel, Sand & Stones | PetSmart
CaribSea African Cichlid Mix Aquarium Substrate at PetSmart. Shop all fish gravel, sand & stones onlinewww.petsmart.com
The build is coming along nicely. Where did you get that black schedule 40? It’s a awesome touch. Why are you only going with one return pump? It would be a good touch to have some redundancy, and you wouldn’t need to make that t on the return. Just a thought. Keep us posted.Slow pogress but drains are done. Plumbing for return and getting the help of my bro in law to make a bracket to support the PVC return that will T into two returns. We want to avoid down pressure and weight with water running through 24/7.
I know many folks won't like the 90 degree elbows, and Im willing to compromise function and aesthetic ;-). I found this relatively inexpensive SS brackets to hold up the return pipe in the second picture. I enjoy this, kind of, but I need to get done to test and tune this.
Thanks for those following along.
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That makes sense, builds like these always take longer then we think they will. Well actually they could go a lot faster if we weren’t ocd. Your doing a great job. Definitely do the drain. I had that in my past two setups and it makes water changes effortless. Keep it up.Thanks Wolfman. I know dual return pumps is a good thing - I just made the decision not to. The sump pump chamber is limited to just one, and, it helps to reduce the amount of PVC Run. I'd have to run a completely separate PVC run.
I hope to have this tank for a long time, so decided to go with the black PVC that I got on BRS. You can actually get colored PVC in many places including Home Depot Online, however, they're not made to run water through - at least the "furniture grade" PVC. So, I ended up playing it safe and getting from BRS.
I hope to make more progress within the next 1-2 weeks. I'll be completing the return plumbing. My bro-in-law has some extra acrylic so we wanted to make a "bracket" to stabilize the T in the back of the tank. It wouldn't hurt to help stabilize the 3/4" returns.. From there we'll plumb the closed loop circulation that I had the tank drilled for. I'm also going to add a T and valve to quickly drain the tank for water changes (I had that before and wouldn't want to be without it).
I'll keep you all posted
That makes sense, builds like these always take longer then we think they will. Well actually they could go a lot faster if we weren’t ocd. Your doing a great job. Definitely do the drain. I had that in my past two setups and it makes water changes effortless. Keep it up.