Finally getting closer with my 120 gallon

As some of you know, I have been working on a 120 gallon FOWLR tank for some time. I finally hit a milestone today.


I picked up a 40 gallon sump from Big D on here and made some minor modifications to it. I got the tank from someone who joined GIRS just to promote the sale. The tank was picked up near Des Moines 2 days before Thanksgiving and it ended up being in somewhat sad shape.


The stand was basically junk, the hood wasn't much better, the tank was messy to say the least. The live rock was covered in detritus, and the live sand was more detritus than sand I think. I was still excited though. First job was to get the rock and sand in good saltwater while I started cleaning the tank.


The tank took quite a bit of cleaning as it was covered in dry green and coraline algae, featherduster, and other "crud". This took most of the day before we headed out of town for the Thanksgiving holiday.


I ended up keeping about a scoop of the live sand and replacing the rest with new aragonite sand and some "bagged" live sand to help with the process. I built a stand for it (no quick task) and emptied the tank and put it back "together" on the new stand. Things were looking pretty good.


I had a couple of business trips that had me out of town for 2 weeks, so I took my DIY light kits with me and got those constructed. Keep in mind that the tank had just enough water to cover the rock, so my next project was going to be the plumbing once I got home.


After getting all of the plumbing squared away I decided to clean the pump that I got from the guy who sold me the tank. Opened it up to find a broken impeller. That took almost 2 weeks to get shipped to me so in the meantime I started some aquascaping of the tank which meant more water. That is when I found out that one of the overflow boxes was leaking. Drain the tank again and put the rock and sand back into storage containers while I fixed that and let it cure. Then I had leaky bulkheads to resolve too.


While waiting on the impeller, I also took the time to take the outer casing off of the same pump. There was sand and salt and grime all over inside the fan area. The fan blades did not want to come clean. Took a bit of careful Dremel work to get them looking good.


I am starting to see why this guy had everything torn down before I picked it up and had me loaded up and out the door so fast. He didn't want me to discover all of these problems.


Then I noticed something, the tank was no longer level. Not sure how that happens when it was level before. It is on new carpet with new 10 pound pad, so maybe the weight started getting it "settled" into the carpet, so I had the fun job of shimming it. Now it is nice and level.


Throw in a Christmas - New years when we were out of town, and yet another aquascape (after the overflow was fixed, I just got the sand, rock, and water in the tank to get them out of storage containers).


So that all brings me to today, almost 7 weeks after buying the tank, and I completely filled it and fired up the pump. No leaks, no issues. Everything is FINALLY looking promising.


The water it pretty clear, the pump and powerheads are moving the water, I even turned on the skimmer to start breaking it in and it is skimming nice and wet like it is supposed to at this point.


Next up will be mounting something for the LED lights to hang from and get those going.


I might get some fish in this thing yet before spring (after quarantine of course).

 

I thought about the blog. I did a lengthy one with my home theater build and basement finish a year ago, but I took lots of pictures. I don't have much besides the original pictures that I got from the tank seller and the night I brought stuff home and what I could take now. Maybe I will do a before and after miniblog.