200 Oceanic UPGRADE

[Judge]

HI guys. I am making progress and have a few pics to show. It has been slow going and with just the two of us trying to move this monster, let alone getting it off the floor and onto the stand, was something of an engineering fete that included two pulleys and some nerves pushed to the limit.
At this point I am painting the back of the tank black. I have a new monster protein skimmer and the location in house is ready...i hope!
I have gone over in my head many times how I plan to transfer everything so I should be ready within the next couple of weeks to complete this project. So, enough words here are the pics.





I still have some touch up on the stand and have the canopy work to do. I am also going to paint the trim on the tank to match the stand..

[Judge]

Alright, finally finished with the painting and it's cleaned up. Next is to move into the house..maybe this weekend. I have the new sand and skimmer, but am waiting on salt to be shipped. The rest is just nerve racking when I begin the swap!! Here are the final pics!!




As you can see I painted the back...can't wait to get it in the house and all set up. Ok, I confess I cannot wait to watch Willis my Foxface have all that room to swim around in!! Does that make me an addict???LOL

[Judge]

Made it in the house to its final spot!! Now all we have to do is remove the wheels we used to maneuver this monster!


As you can see it took us awhile to figure out how we are going to get it up safely to remove the wheels but we have that figured out I hope. More to follow as I progress.

[lostanime]

Very cool!

We actually just ordered another monster tank, and picked up a couple 100 gallon rubbermaid horse troughs to use as sumps as we transition everything to the basement

You probably already know this... I'm mentioning it "JUST IN CASE". This is ALOT of water. And what I mean, is it is heavy enough to break floor joists. I originally had the back side of our 180 gallon up against a load bearing wall, and had braced the joists under the front side with 4x4s sitting on concrete feet on the foundation. Over a couple years, it actually cracked some of the concrete blocks holding up the load bearing wall which was NOT fun to address!

Make sure you either have this sitting on a concrete slab or otherwise have the floor reinforced to the ground from below.

It looks gorgeous! Where are you drilling holes in it?

[Judge]

UPDATE:

I have added built in wiring/plugs to the stand so I do not have electrical wires running everywhere. Will have pics of this eventually!!
Finally, crawled under the house and added some concrete blocks and 4X4's just for added strength...and piece of mind.
I can now start washing 150 pounds of sand (which I will seed with some of the old sand), and making more water.....ahhh, I am getting there, slowly but surely.

I will transfer rocks first, and I plan on temporarily using the old equipment until the tank settles. I will have the new stuff going to but there will not be much of a bioload for a 200!!

Not planning on but maybe 1 or 2 small fish otherwise I am just keeping the same crew, they just have 100 more gallons, or 3 more feet ,to swim in!!

***I almost forgot to mention the ease in moving and recommend everyone give this a try if faced with the same situation. I drilled holes in the bottom of the stand so we could easily move it around, and put rollers on it. PROBLEM: How to get them off after tank was in place in the house? If you used something for leverage then how to get THAT out from under. HMMM, easy. Open the doors to the stand. Use a 2x8 or 2x10 and run through the stand and out the back. Then use two "house jacks" one on each side. You only have to jack it up a few inches to pull out the rollers!! If I had thought of this before I would have done this on every upgrade. No reason why, even with fish/water, etc you can jack it up, put the rollers back under and roll carefully out of the way for the new tank.

[Judge]

Hi there, update with pics. All transferred with no problems. Mostly cosmetic type stuff left to do but for the most part..all done!