# 100 gal Sump, background and stand refinish



## paradigmsk8er (Apr 13, 2009)

Standby for detailed updates and a detailed build in the next 2 weeks. Added plants today, cycle is good, hopefully fish next week...


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## Malawi_Junkie (Nov 26, 2009)

:thumb: Very nice. Clean and natural looking. What are you stocking with?


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## paradigmsk8er (Apr 13, 2009)

It will be 1 Mbuna (a legacy buddy, he's being shipped out from our old apartment in Tampa by a very generous TBAS member) and then 10-12 male haps. It's been a long time coming, and I am still fine tuning the flow rates of the sump but its working out well so far


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## Petrochromislover (Feb 23, 2009)

very nice setup you have. =D> i can wait to see you fish in there.


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## paradigmsk8er (Apr 13, 2009)

Well some bad news...the Mbuna died in shipment (shipping errors) and my wife and I are very upset because we went way back with him

I received 11 fish, 8 of which survived recently. The vendor has been outstading so far so I am not worried...but there are 8 in the tank right now..slowly figuring out the tank. They have been acclimated but are still very skiddish. Once they color up and are more comfortable I will post pictures. Expect them this week


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## paradigmsk8er (Apr 13, 2009)

Well here is the build. I have resized all the pictures, hopefully you guys don't have dial up!

Here is what I started with...a poorly finished, not quite adequately supported stand and hood, and a pretty beat 100 gallon tank..with lots of deposits, scratches and scuffs. I tried CLR, vinegar, everything and couldn't get it off so I sold it and replaced it with a brand new tank.





































Since the 100 gallon was a compromise with my wife, I agreed to make it match the cabinetry in our apartment's kitchen as best I could. This involved paint matching the cabinets, adding hardware and molding.

A lot of sanding, priming, filling and painting later it started to come together.


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## paradigmsk8er (Apr 13, 2009)

In the process I also added some 2x4s for support.

Here in its place in the dining room:



















And the kitchen for reference, don't mind the mess I was waiting for my household goods to arrive.


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## paradigmsk8er (Apr 13, 2009)

Next step was building the filter. I had decided on a sump from the start, and knew I wanted as close as I could get to 30 gallons. I borrowed from several members on this site as well as some of my own stuff. I didn't take pictures during assembly, but it uses a 5 gallon paint bucket, an organizational tray at the bottom, a 29 gallon super heavy duty rubbermaid style container, loofas, pot scrubbers, and polyfil.

It initially started with a via aqua 3400 return pump but today the pump somehow had leaked, so it began carrying current up through the return pipe and electrifying the water on the right side of the tank. Luckily it wasn't much current so it didn't harm the fish and the sump/left side of the tank was fine, and the fish stayed over there. I found out the hard way when I was checking the tank. Ouch.

Replaced it today with a quiet one 2500 and its working relatively well but isn't as quiet as I would have hoped. It is gated down a little bit but not much..it just vibrates a lot. More on that later.


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## paradigmsk8er (Apr 13, 2009)

The overflow portion was handled by an Eshopps PF-1000 overflow box. I have 1" drain lines and 3/4" return. Currently I have gated my return back probably 20% and my overflow has a pretty noticeable trickle noise because one of the lines is flowing about 80% and the other about 30%. I am going to play with the drains, and possibly only run one if it still flows right. I am guessing I am getting about 500 gph of turnover right now. I have dual Hofer gurgle busters to get rid of the gurgling, so my sump is only making the trickle noise and the pump is humming. I am going to work on the humming because its driving me nuts.

Inside the sump I have a 25w tetra heater and a 200w ViaAqua stainless steel heater. Both work great. I had an airstone but do not use it because I get plenty of oxygenation. I also blew up a 100 w glass heather in the sump and shocked the heck out of myself then too. I then switched to the stainless and it works awesome.

The spray bar was custom made by me, and is made of 3/4" PVC, a couple elbows and krylon fusion black paint.

Next up was lighting-I went with Home Depot T-5 dual shoplights. I wanted two so I could use the CoraLife power center dual timer, and run day lights, moonlights and Noon sun lights.

I wish I had gone with t-12 instead of the 10 dollar t-5 units but they work. I will switch to LEDs down the road.

Currently have one actinic, one 6500k and two 4300k. The 4300k run all day (10 hours), the 6500k and atinic run about 5 hours from 11-4.



















The moonlights are at one corner shining down together, and are two Blue Leds and two White LEDs..they look great.


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## paradigmsk8er (Apr 13, 2009)

Next step was the background. I decided for the foam and drylok route. I used several layers of 1" white foam (all I had available here without going to extremes to find it) about 12 tubes of silicone total, lots of sanding, a gallon of beige drylok and the requisite three colors of quikrete cement dye.

The background had to be in three pieces to fit between the center brace, and I also knew I wanted some fake rocks. One as a hiding spot for some fish (I ended up placing terra cotta pots behind it) and one to hide the koralia nano I am using for more circulation.














































It was a several step process. Some things I learned: I would look for some different foam, and thicker blocks next time. I had to cut layers and silicone it together and it left some visible seams I had to work to cover down the road with drylok. Buy lots of silicone because I used a ton to be safe. I should've cut along the seams of the rocks instead of straight down. I decided to keep it relatively thin in an effort to keep as much swimming space in the tank as I could, but next time I would probably go for a deeper tank and add more depth to the background.


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## paradigmsk8er (Apr 13, 2009)

Mesh to help hide the overflow cut out from a distance:










Now at this point I stopped taking so many pictures haha. Due to my job, schools and other stuff this was about a 5 month venture, so I sometimes lost patience. I let the background cure for about 4 weeks, then bought a 50 pound bag of quikrete 10 grit sand. I wanted the heavy grit, and I think it looks great. It took a good amount of rinsing, but nothing too ridiculous. I used almost half the bag and have 2-4" of bed all around.

Then it was time to testfill:










And spend hours upon hours over several days fine tuning the flows. I have an 80% solution now. I am not completely happy. Welcome to the sump world.

Then time to cycle. This was taken care of by using an automatic feeder, and a heavy dose of food twice a day, over about a month. I kickstarted it with a small piece of polyfil from the filter in my 2.5 gallon tank to seed it. After a month of letting the food decompose and do its thing, I had a very heavily cycled tank. I still expect a small mini cycle in the following days since I added fish but we will see how bad it is. I'm not expecting it to be too bad.

After letting the tank do its thing for awhile, it was time to do plants and fish. I was home fulltime now, so I started with plants. My parameters here are pretty good for the tap, Ph floats in the 7.6-7.8 range, I have my temperature at 79 and although the Ph is good the water is relatively well stacked with minerals so thats a mixed bag.

I ordered the plants online and decided on some plants that the fish wouldn't eat and would be relatively neutral in appearance so the tank looked natural. I knew I wouldn't be able to create a biotope per see but I wanted something that looked appealling. I added some real rock in the tank (matching it was a pain) and went with some java moss, swords, vallisneria and some java fern.

I used floral staples to attach the plants, and it worked great.










Next up was fish. As stated above I wanted an all male hap/peacock tank, heavier on the haps. I also was mailing out my large red zebra from tampa but due to some mixups he didn't make it. So we got another one to replace him, though "Pinky" will never be replaced (RIP). 8 fish made it, amongst them a Ngara, OB Peacock, Ahli, Red Empress, Orange Kisi, Banschi..I picked up another hap (I need to reference my Konings book tomorrow to figure out what he is, the store didn't know) and the new red zebra today while getting the pump. I am at 10 fish, will hopefully end up with 12 total and be done when the DOA one's get replaced.

They are still sorting out their pecking order, though they have it mostly worked out. The ahli has decided he's going to rule the tank, but gets rocked around sometimes by the bigger guys.

They are coloring up nicely, though I have one set of duplicates (the unknown one) and some of them are still a little muted. Over the next few weeks hopefully they'll get better. Here are some pictures of the fish:


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## paradigmsk8er (Apr 13, 2009)

(Although the estherae has some signs of being a male...I think it's a female..woops)














































Overall its been a long, rewarding if not sometimes frustrating experience. As with any sump system, I have a lot of playing left to do. That will come with time. I am supremely happy with how it turned out, being one of the centerpieces of the living/dining/kitchen area, and the fish are gorgeous. Next time around I may try multiple FX5s to get even more of an experience with different filters. So far though its been a good time, and by doing it myself I learned a lot, sweat a lot but also saved a lot, as my total expenditures were much lower then off the shelf stuff.

Any questions, please feel free to ask. This is how I learned what I did and was able to put my tank together, so I figured I would help others.


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