A New Reefing Chapter Begins

I hear ya, it's easy to outgrow your house no matter how you try to plan for it.

I think a pet store for the SE IA region would be nice. You would have to have some maintenance accounts to keep you going but I definitely think it's possible.

 

Here are some of the construction pictures.  Since I am not all that handy with home improvements, I figured I would leave it up to the experts to do it.


Where the tank is going, I had to relocate the door about 20" down its previous spot.  I also had them swap out the door with a different one because before, it was an inswing door and now I have an outswing door on it so it will open into the mechanical room instead of swinging into the fish room and possibly hitting the tank.

 

Here are a few more pics of the wall.  All the gaps have been covered with weatherstrip so none of the light from the fish room will spill out.



The front access panel is hinged and when it is in the down position, they are closed in place with these.

 

I spoke to Tim at Iowa Pet Foods on Wednesday and he thinks my tank will be here next Wednesday.  Hopefully he is right so I can get some manpower scheduled to help get the tank in the house and on the stand.  Speaking of stand, it has begun!  A big thanks to Jeff (Ball) for helping me with the design and for coming up to help build it.  He is my go to guy for drawings and for bouncing ideas back and forth.

 

Thanks guys! When I was comparing the cost of 2x6s vs 2x8s, there was only a difference of $.67 between them. Using 12 pieces, the total difference was $8.04 so it was a no-brainer to go with 2x8s for the stand. Now comes the not so fun part of priming the stand with Kilz and then paint. /DesktopModules/ActiveForums/themes/_default//emoticons/sad.gif

 

Great question, blackx-runner!  The stand is built so that there is a 6" overhang around the sides and back.  The reason for that is because I have a sump that has the same footprint as the tank.  In order for it to fit, I had to build the stand larger than the tank itself.  And yes, I know where the holes will go for the overflow because I got the dimensions directly from Marineland.

 

Here's a little more progress on the stand.


To be honest, priming and painting the stand has been the worst part of this project.  It has been very time consuming since I put o 3 coats of primer and 1 coat of paint.  Not only do I have to do the stand, also a couple sheets of plywood so there's a lot of painting to be done! 

 

Yep, I plan on keeping the carpet in there.  It has been there with the two previous tanks and I think I can control the humidity well enough that it shouldn't be a problem.  
I am addressing the humidity as we speak and my plan is to have an air return added to the fish room so that the HVAC system will help draw humid air out of the room.  I am also going to add a high-CFM bathroom fan in the room on a humidistat.  The contractor that was supposed to do it last week has gone AWOL so I have been trying to get someone else to do it.  I wish I was skilled enough to do these things myself than to rely on flaky people.  But that's the way it goes. /DesktopModules/ActiveForums/themes/_default/emoticons/smile.gif