Once upon a time, I started keeping reef Aquariums. About ten years after that, I got a degree in Marine Biology. About Ten years after that, I saw where an ocean was not, and in defiance of decisions of gods, the ways men, and the natural law of order, I built an 800 gallon reef tank.
These are the voyages of the gigareef.
So how does someone get into something like this? Well, it kind of started when my kids showed an interest in my 80 gallon frag tank which was a display for a plywood coral farm I was running as a hobby at the time.
I started getting lots of help, and I was asked why we couldn't see my big corals, only my little corals in the 80.
When you reef, you reef together, as everyone knows:
So we embarked on a two year pandemic project journey to see the big corals, per my kids request.
The first thing we got was a skimmer, I chose the Rk2 AC8, because it was taller than the AC5 and my buddy insisted I get one that was at least five feet tall, so I did:
Here it is put together, next to my nano skimmer for my 20 for scale:
Much to everyone's surprise I hadn't used a UV skimmer before, and I guess since I was building there's a first time for everything, I got one of those too, this is the 6 foot long RK2 XLF5-150H rated for up to 2000 gallons :
I got some small canisters for media from bashsea:
Fun fact, I buy media in five gallon buckets.
I got a few rocks (1 ton, from pristine rock, they're great I recommend them www.pristinerock.com)
I rinsed my sand in a 100 gallon rubbermaid bin (soon to be my sump) and turned my sidewalk white.
Made a few LIGHT changes to the floor.
Fun fact the owner of the house before me didn't wait for the concrete to dry before rafting an engineered wood floor on the extension so I had to re-pour concrete in the whole house, (in testing found out self leveling concrete isn't THAT self leveling had to re-re-pour the sunroom after scraping it all up). In the process, it rained and water started running into the house, so bonus, we discovered my windows were not watertight and had to do a reside-ing on the house. I got new windows, it was fun.
BUT! Back to the floor. I poured and leveled concrete, then lay slate tile. it was BIBLICALLY level. We're talking true level here Morty, I got familiar with the bubble.
IS very nice.
Then came time to weld and powder coat the stand. Getting 12ft tubes of 4130 chromoly steel during the pandemic was hard, if I'm honest. I got my welding friend to help, he did most of the work to be honest, and I got my aerospace friend to sign off on the structure engineering numbers, and got another guy to x-ray our welds:
put some PVC, started playing with rocks for visualization
Put in a BUNCH of work cutting, leveling, skinning in plywood, tapping in and drilling leveling feet:
Since Icouldn't get the stand under my drill press, I was using DeWalt clamps and jigs:
Kinda looked like a chicken with the leveling feet, so i cut them all down and re-threaded them:
Once the stand was "done", we had to use a test aquarium to see if it worked out:
Great success!
The tank is from www.glasscages.com they're great. Their support is great, their team is great, and their prices are great. Spoilers, but I had an error in my stand or plumbing or something, but my fault, which did cause a leak and they wanted super hard to support me. In the end I was unable to accept their help, but I made the mistake, so I paid for it.
These are the voyages of the gigareef.
So how does someone get into something like this? Well, it kind of started when my kids showed an interest in my 80 gallon frag tank which was a display for a plywood coral farm I was running as a hobby at the time.
I started getting lots of help, and I was asked why we couldn't see my big corals, only my little corals in the 80.
When you reef, you reef together, as everyone knows:
So we embarked on a two year pandemic project journey to see the big corals, per my kids request.
The first thing we got was a skimmer, I chose the Rk2 AC8, because it was taller than the AC5 and my buddy insisted I get one that was at least five feet tall, so I did:
Here it is put together, next to my nano skimmer for my 20 for scale:
Much to everyone's surprise I hadn't used a UV skimmer before, and I guess since I was building there's a first time for everything, I got one of those too, this is the 6 foot long RK2 XLF5-150H rated for up to 2000 gallons :
I got some small canisters for media from bashsea:
Fun fact, I buy media in five gallon buckets.
I got a few rocks (1 ton, from pristine rock, they're great I recommend them www.pristinerock.com)
I rinsed my sand in a 100 gallon rubbermaid bin (soon to be my sump) and turned my sidewalk white.
Made a few LIGHT changes to the floor.
Fun fact the owner of the house before me didn't wait for the concrete to dry before rafting an engineered wood floor on the extension so I had to re-pour concrete in the whole house, (in testing found out self leveling concrete isn't THAT self leveling had to re-re-pour the sunroom after scraping it all up). In the process, it rained and water started running into the house, so bonus, we discovered my windows were not watertight and had to do a reside-ing on the house. I got new windows, it was fun.
BUT! Back to the floor. I poured and leveled concrete, then lay slate tile. it was BIBLICALLY level. We're talking true level here Morty, I got familiar with the bubble.
IS very nice.
Then came time to weld and powder coat the stand. Getting 12ft tubes of 4130 chromoly steel during the pandemic was hard, if I'm honest. I got my welding friend to help, he did most of the work to be honest, and I got my aerospace friend to sign off on the structure engineering numbers, and got another guy to x-ray our welds:
put some PVC, started playing with rocks for visualization
Put in a BUNCH of work cutting, leveling, skinning in plywood, tapping in and drilling leveling feet:
Since Icouldn't get the stand under my drill press, I was using DeWalt clamps and jigs:
Kinda looked like a chicken with the leveling feet, so i cut them all down and re-threaded them:
Once the stand was "done", we had to use a test aquarium to see if it worked out:
Great success!
The tank is from www.glasscages.com they're great. Their support is great, their team is great, and their prices are great. Spoilers, but I had an error in my stand or plumbing or something, but my fault, which did cause a leak and they wanted super hard to support me. In the end I was unable to accept their help, but I made the mistake, so I paid for it.
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