Chris&Barbs Rebuild

The pieces are coming together quickly for our rebuild so i thought i would start a thread

Ill start of with some old pics of how it all started and then move through to where we are now.

When we bought the house we are in now we were lucky enough to have 3 weeks from the time we settled on the house untill we needed to be out of the old place. The day we settled on the house i had a friend of mine who is a painter come paint the whole inside of the house. The next morning it was time for me to get our fish tanks in place and starting to cycle so we would be ready to move to contents of our current tank over at the end of three weeks.

Here's the freshly painted wall.



And now the destruction begins. This is the same wall after a few hours of removing drywall, building temporary support walls (this is a load bearing wall) and cutting studs.



This is also about the same time Barb stops over and breaks into tears because i ripped out the wall in her new, freshly painted house I don't know what part of "I need to take this wall out to put a fish tank here" she missed but she missed something .

Here's the 4"x14"x18' long laminated veneer lumber support beam my neighbor (that i had just meet 5 minutes earlier)and I put in to support the second story of the house. The hole in the drywall is where the tank is now.



A little more framing work for the stand and hood.





The 2x4 stand on the other wall is for the 75g tank.



This will teach the new neighbors to be nosey and come see what I'm doing



A few hours of plumbing work and some water and ...



That's the last of the build photos i could find. I took my time on the rest of the build because my main goal was to get it up and running so it could cycle. Spent the next few weeks finishing the stand and packing for the move.

LOL i love the part about destroying the freshly painted clean new house

looks like you had fun though

how long was it before you pulled the sand and went bare bottom? if i remember right you have no substrate now?

Nice pics , how long ago was this Chris ?

Nice pics. This is going to be a great rebuild. I am really looking forward to this. If you guys need any help just give me a shout. I would love to help.

I remember this build from RF I beleieve. Right?

Nice chris and Barbara that was a nice setup.

I love the built in look, very perty.

wow, so with such a nice "original build" what the hell are you doing now?

Originally Posted by Kerickson978

LOL i love the part about destroying the freshly painted clean new house

looks like you had fun though

how long was it before you pulled the sand and went bare bottom? if i remember right you have no substrate now?

We pulled the sand and went BB about three or four years ago i think.

Originally Posted by Thinkin Reef

Nice pics , how long ago was this Chris ?

This is back when we bought the house, six years ago i think.

Originally Posted by ento_reefer

Nice pics. This is going to be a great rebuild. I am really looking forward to this. If you guys need any help just give me a shout. I would love to help.

We will let you know

Originally Posted by tcwayne

wow, so with such a nice "original build" what the hell are you doing now?

We are just redoing the rockwork mostly. This will be the second time we have done a redo on this tank

And so it begins!!

And so it begins...

I can't wait! How them xenia frags holding up???

LOL it's about time, one of the pic's isn't working for me?

So what all new stuff have you gotten for the rebuild so far?

What are you going to get in addition?

Really love your setup Chris, come on down when you get a chance and put a tank in my wall eh?

Finally, glad to hear you guys are starting the rebuild

The only new stuff we are getting is pumps and some rock, should order the rock today or monday.

Jason, the xenia is down in the frag tank somewhere. I had it in a corral for a few days but it escaped. Im going to look for it today when the lights come on.

Ian, i love cutting holes in walls, especally other peoples walls so any time

Originally Posted by chris&barb

The only new stuff we are getting is pumps and some rock, should order the rock today or monday.

Jason, the xenia is down in the frag tank somewhere. I had it in a corral for a few days but it escaped. Im going to look for it today when the lights come on.

Ian, i love cutting holes in walls, especally other peoples walls so any time

Hei Chris are you sure you want to try take a hole to my house wall I am pretty sure you wont love it . Believe me i know first hand houses here are made from lime stones and concrete

Originally Posted by chris&barb

The only new stuff we are getting is pumps and some rock, should order the rock today or monday.

Jason, the xenia is down in the frag tank somewhere. I had it in a corral for a few days but it escaped. Im going to look for it today when the lights come on.

Ian, i love cutting holes in walls, especally other peoples walls so any time

If you need anymore let me know. I need to thin out the herd again.

i'm a little slow today, i was looking at the pics, "boy this sure looks like the system he has now???"

i need to read a little more and drool over the pics less...........


so do you have some before the redo you did before your current pics??? so we can compare your aquascaping before to before and after.

Originally Posted by a4twenty

i'm a little slow today, i was looking at the pics, "boy this sure looks like the system he has now???"

i need to read a little more and drool over the pics less...........


so do you have some before the redo you did before your current pics??? so we can compare your aquascaping before to before and after.

yes i will post all that. im just dragging my feet right now untill the stuff we ordered comes in. figured id post a litle history

HEI Chris how many vortex pumps are you going to install in the tank;

So after everything was finished we ended up with this.







We thought we were good to go but over time the systems flaws started to show.

The first thing we noticed that just wasnt working right was the sump setup. Remember we had three weeks from our old place to here and i wanted to get this system up and running ASAP so it could cycle some before moving over the corals and fish we already had. I had no plan for the sump other than knowing we were going to have on when i started building it and it shows in how it turned out.





Our first sump was a complete mess (as you can see) so after about a year of dealing with that mess it was time to get rid of it. This is what i came up with. Still not pretty but much more functional.





This is pretty much as the sump is today. Some of the equipment has changed but the layout is basically the same.

So fast forward another few years and our haddoni anemone has eaten just about every fish in the tank and the crushed coral has turned to one solid brick so its time to rip that tank apart and redo it.