Well, I am trying!!! I am just going to give a little history/ plan on this tank... I had a reef going, and it got wiped out by Hurricane Katrina
... That is not to say that the hurricane actually got it, but that our house went 25 days without power.
That is the very very brief version of it, but obviously it would be hard to supply power by inverter/generator for that amount of time... Especially when gas was being sold by the drop
So, I just waited it out... Kept my rock, and the fish that made it (2 have died since then, in a freak occurance), and just have gotten to a point where I know that I can do it, and enjoy it again
First off, I would like to say that
I KNOW I have tooooo much live rock, but some of those large pieces of Fiji will be coming out soon... I
hate them
... So, if anyone wants about 30 #'s of Fiji that has been in there for 3 years or better, just let me know.
Ok... So I started planning (again)
... First I decided that I should finally install a sump... I had not planned on doing this on the first go around because of the limitations in the stand... I got to looking around (thinking of a custom size), and found someone to build me one... I am not a DIY to the point of building a sump... I may mess around w/ some small projects, but I just do not have the time for (nor tools) building a sump... So, got that out of the way
Next, I decided that I needed to get just the right skimmer... This proved to be my most difficult desicion so far... I mean, I know that buying a skimmer is as easy as just picking one of the 100's available, but I am picky... I started a thread on another site
(I would put the thread link here, but I am afraid it will get me in trouble again) thats main focus was study of skimmers, and the discussion of them... It was very very very informative, and (before I ever knew that was such a thing) was nominated for thread of the month... I learned a lot from it, but the single most important thing was that I knew there was not one skimmer that incorporated all the good things into one
IMO... So I decided to get ORCA to custom build a skimmer as well... It should be in next week sometime
The sump is supposed to ship next Friday too
Now, lately my main focus has been to grab some stuff along the way (every pay day) that I am going to need when both of those things get here... I have bought lights, some plumbing, and some diamond hole saws for drilling my tank... I hope I think of everything, but I am sure that there will many many things that I run into, and will have to spend even more
So, my plan is to drill the back of my tank w/ 2 x 1.5" holes for the drains to my sump, skimmer, and refugium... I plan to break of each large drain like this
1st 1.5" drain will go to my sump w/ a 1/2" feed directly to my skimmer
2nd 1.5" drain will go to my sump w/ a 1/2" feed directly to the fuge
And here is a picture of how I am going to make my overflow
I will also probably go ahead and drill a hole for a future closed loop, but I dont know if I am going to have one or not... we will see
I am going to buy a cheap tank from walmart ( I think they sell a 50 or 55) to put everything in, until I get all of this done... it should not take more than a week or two... The main think is that, I will just basically put my tank in a smaller one (minus the substrate), so everything should be fine... I will keep bad things down with water changes
So, I hope I give a pretty good idea of my plans, and maybe it helped someone out, if they are planning