Upgrading everything!

[Monkeyrobb]

I was never happy with how the canopies I built looked in my house. I wanted a more modern look and also wanted to show off the fine construction of my Lee Mar tanks. Much to my woman's dismay, I removed the canopies and installed some Sunpods. A 150 on the smaller tank and a 250 on the larger. Initially I missed the actinics but now I'm down with the L.E.D.'s.

 

I really wanted to get rid of as much noise as possible and so far so well. I changed the Mag 5 in the 56 to (2) Eheim 1250's. Can't even tell they're running. Since the pump to my larger tank was in the basement, the only noise came from the skimmer and the power heads. I decided to move the sump into the basement. I bought a 75 gallon AGA and added some baffles. Here it is sitting in it's new home. BTW, it's not really a basement, but an old fruit cellar under my living room. My house is 109 years old.

 

I still have to plumb it to the existing system. The shelf holding the pump will come out and all the wires and tubing will get cleaned up. The three blue drums are for new SW, top off, and waste. I have a sump pump in the drum closest to the tank which pumps the water out of the basement. The return section of the sump is approximately 20 gallons so when I do a water change, I'll just empty that section into the drum and refill it with new SW. Couldn't be easier. The center section of the sump is a fuge and the last section will hold my skimmer. I made a platform out of extra eggcrate that will keep the skimmer submerged 6-7 inches.

 

Since I can't remove the sump under the tank, I will use it to house a filter sock and some LR rubble. It may even become a prop area in the future.

 

Going for a more modern look, I removed a lot of the LR that was in the display and put it in the sump. I think the tank looks much better now. I will be trying my luck with some SPS in the near future and that's why there is a lot of space in the tank. The spaghetti leather in the front right got an inadvertent fragging when I was removing it from the tank. Seems it was attached to two rocks and neither wanted to let go. Now I have twice as many!

 

Before:

 

Now:

Finally, here's a pic of the 56 gallon tank. I treated the tank with flatworm exit today so the shrooms are still mad at me.

 

 

I should have the sump plumbed tomorrow and will post some more pics.