I spent the next several months researching, planning, and designing. I mean, I made cad drawings of the tank, stand, plumbing, electrical, you name it. This was going to be a text book lesson in "how to set up your dream tank". As you will soon learn, nothing could have been further from the truth!
The Best Layed Plans
So, after much agonizing, I decided to get a 240 acrylic tank. I really wanted a 300 since it was the same width (8') and depth (2'), but I was concerned that the additional 6" of height (30" vs. 24" for the 240) would make it hard to work on and clean the tank. This is one of the few things I got right!
The hardest part of the decision making proccess was tank location vs. size. In order to fit a tank of this size, the only location in the house where it would fit was ... the garage. Now - it is a finished garage that we had turned into a game room. And I figured this could become my fish room. Some added benefits ... the garage stayed cool in the summer (no chiller would be needed) and there was no direct sunlight to deal with (our house is all windows - so direct sunlight has always been an issue.) I wouldn't have to be as carefull when working on the tank with regards to minor spills (cheap carpet over concrete slab.) And because it was in the middle of the garage, i would have easy access to all four sides. Perhaps the best benefit was knowing that if the tank suffered a major failure, the water would run out of the garage into the street rather than ruin the house. Seemed very logical to me. My wife didn't think it was the best idea and was concerned that we wouldn't enjoy the tank as much if it wasn't in the main part of the house. I convinced her we would.
I had a local company called TruVu custom make the tank. Really the only difference between their stock 240 and mine was that I wanted the 2 overflows to be 2' from each side of the tank, rather than in each corner. OK - this I got correct as well, as the tank is veiwed from 3 sides, so 1/4 of the side is not taken up by the overflows. Is it just me, or do other people out there love to view thier tanks from the side and dream of owning an aquarium that deep!
The stand and canopy were to be made of maple. I had the stand made an extra 6" high to give me extra room under the tank for all the needed equipment. A few weeks later, the tank, stand and canopy were delivered ... the day before we were to leave for a week vacation in San Diego! Ugggh!
Teaching an Old Dog Some New Tricks
During my research, I learned all about the benefits of using
live rock as the primary form of filtration. I learned the importance of protein
skimmers. I learned that the bio-balls in the
wet/dry were big-time
nitrate producers. I learned how canister filters, if not cleaned often, were also
nitrate producers. I learned that
refugiums were becoming more and more important in aquarium set ups. Jeez - about the only thing I didn't learn is the importance of strong water flow (thanks Uncle Ray). Have I mentioned I'm "old school"?
Because this was to be a fish only tank, I decided to combine some old school with some new school. From the old school: I would keep my
wet/dry and it's bio-balls (the tank was going to have a large fish load) and my canister filter. I would use DLS material in the overflows. I would also keep the UV Sterilizer. And I was going to continue using crush coral substrate and coral skeleton decorations (don't say it!)
So what new school technology would I add? A good
skimmer. And a
refugium. And so, plans in hand, hundreds of dollars in
pvc parts, I was ready.
4 Days to Aquarium Heaven ... Not!
I took a few extra days off from work to set up the tank. Adding the weekend in, this gave me a full 4 days to set up the new tank and take down the old one, more than enough. After all, I had all my plans and drawings, what could go wrong. LOTS! OK - the tank DID NOT explode when I filled it with water. So that's a good thing!
The first mistake was discovering that the holes TruVu drilled in the overflows were too small for the heavy duty bulkheads I purchased from my local sprinkler store. I had no idea that 1" bulkheads of different quality need different size holes. So I had to use the more standard bulkheads, which seem a bit fragile to me.
Oh - did I say 1" bulheads for a 240 gallon tank. Yep - that would be mistake #2. Let's not go there.
Another huge mistake was plumbing the
wet/dry and
refugium completely separate. One overflow fed the
wet/dry, one the
refugium. One pump in the
wet/dry fed one return, and an identical pump in the
refugium fed the other return. In a perfect world, this should have worked. Despite using identical pumps, they actually had slightly different outputs. And despite being perfectly level, the right overflow fed more water. Results? It was impossible to balance the
wet/dry and
refugium for more than a few days before one or the other need tweaking. This wasn't going to work long term.
OK - let's quickly recap some of the other issues I had:
* The canister filter I got from a friend leaked
* so did the UV (my fault - tightened the clamp a bit too hard and warped the plastic intake of my Coralfe Sterilizer)
* I filled my tank with crap water (I had never used
RO/DI, but knew that I needed to. The dealer where I purchased the
RO/DI unit told me that the "waste water" was actually
RO water and the other output was
RO/DI. Since this was a fish only tank, I figured
RO was just fine, so I used both. I later learned exactly what "waste water" was. So about 75% of the water in my tank was crap, just slightly better than tap (and we have horrid tap water!) I learned this when I got a HUGE
diatom algae bloom a few days after setting up the tank. Many 50 gallon water changes later, I got the water to an acceptable quality.
And # 1 on Casey Kasem's countdown of my Top 40 mistakes I made when setting up my dream tank - using coal skeletons rather than switching over to
live rock. I'll address that in my "take 2" post.
Looking Back
Despite all the problems, the fish all loved the new tank, especially the French Angel. So it wasn't a total loss! And yes - that's a thriving Moorish Idol (who thrived right up until the point I found him being eaten alive by my one hermit crab, a hermit that was 1/30th the size of the Moorish Idol.) The Moorish Idol died a week later. The hermit crab was not as lucky. And the tank included two of my second favorite fish in the world - the Golden Butterfly. Yep - Moorish Idols are my favorite.
I look back at these photos fondly now. At the time, there were many nights when I sat underneath the tank cursing it. Of course, 3am in the morning is not the best time for rational thought! But I learned a lot. And so I decided to try again. This time my plan WOULD work. And it would be easy. Or so I thought ...
This was my first use of a 
icon under their name to add to their reputation.