StupidTed's 225 Lee Mar Peninsula
Well this is long overdue. I had planned on doing a build thread for my previous tanks but ended up just taking a lot of pictures and never writing anything. So after taking more than a year off and selling almost all my equipment, I was given the green light by the wife to get a tank again. Since I knew that we wouldn’t be moving for at least 10 years I wanted to go big. At first I was looking at 400+ gallon tanks and trying to decide where I wanted it to go. After researching and playing with the possible dimensions in the living room I decided I wanted a peninsula tank to divide the dining room and the living room. I was planning on going starphire but really wanted acrylic. I spent the next 3 months looking for a decent 180+ starphire peninsula but they were not as plentiful as I had anticipated. Getting frustrated I saw that Korl was selling his 300 gallon acrylic and tried to line that up, but he decided to keep it. Ah schucks thought I was back in.
All along though I had been looking here, on the local Socal boards, and craigslist. I was seeing this tank on craigslist for months and the price was steadily decreasing over time. Once it hit a $1000, down from the original $2500 he wanted I decided to reach out to the gentleman and setup a time to see the tank. It was a 72”x24”x30” 3/4 in acrylic peninsula with stand, canopy, sump, skimmer, heater, uv, and a bunch of extras. Upon closer inspection it definitely had some scratches and a few were deep. The stand was an outdated honey oak finish that reminded me of my parent’s old furniture and cabinets. I told the gentleman that I like the tank but between refinishing the stand and canopy and getting all the scratches out I wouldn't pay any more than $600. He understood my logic behind my offer but let me know that somebody had already offered $800 and was going to be checking it out the following day. I shook his hand and told him that if the deal falls through give me a ring, and we can go from there. Damn, thought I was back in the game again, let’s keep looking. Well 4 days later I get a call and was told that the "other guy" never showed, but that he wouldn't go lower than $750. I really wanted the tank and saw all of its potential so I countered at $650 and he bit. After getting a fellow reefer to help load it up and get it into my garage it hit me. I’m back in business, well kind of.
Having learned patience the first time getting into the hobby, and knowing that the wife wouldn’t be ok with a hack job sitting in our living room for the next decade or so, I started planning. I had noticed that the stand had a Lee Mar sticker on the inside when I picked up the tank and thought "sweet a quality made stand," only to later find out after looking through the box of extras the warranty cards for 2 Lee Mar Acrylic tanks. W.T.F I didn't know Lee Mar made acrylic. But sure enough there was a Lee Mar sticker on the tank that was being used as a sump. Now I really have to do this tank proud. So I started sanding down the stand and canopy and prepping it for staining. Between staining coats I attended to adding baffles to the sump tank. After the sump and stand were all buttoned up, it was time to give attention to the display. I have removed a couple scratches from previous acrylic tanks before but nothing of this scale. I searched the interwebs and decided to try the Meguiar powerball/ novus method and it still took me over a month to get it all polished up.
At this point I was darn proud of myself, but was soon knocked back to my senses when I started planning what equipment to use, dsb or no dsb, how to plumb it, procuring rock and sand, you know the usual build stuff but now on a bigger scale. Amazon and I became good friends over the next few weeks. So much so, they mistakenly sent me a Drone that I never ordered nor returned lol. I started getting stir crazy waiting on the last few parts to arrive to get it going. Then finally in June I felt I was there and posted on the boards that I needed help getting some Scripps and John “Jschnepf” replied and we setup a time to fill the bad boy. As it was filling and I started chatting it up with John I realized that people like this was half of why I missed my tanks so much. Sure you can chat it up about family and work with other people, but when you start getting into stories about fish or tanks, or talking about equipment you have/want with another reefer its pure geekdom.
It was filled yay now what? Oh yeah, time to hurry up and wait. I started from dry rock and dry sand to limit any nuisance stuff. Using shrimp in a media bag I gave it a little over two months till levels were good enough. Then the fun began. Now that I look at it, it’s been 9 months now and I’m only beginning. In that time I decided to setup my garage tank. Now having two tanks to fill I realize that the addiction is full blown. If you managed to get this far in the read sorry for dragging it out. I was just going to put a few pics up and list equipment but once I started reliving the process I couldn't help myself.
Here is a list of the equipment on my main Display/house tank.
Tank: 225 gallon Lee Mar Peninsula 3/4 Acrylic 72”x24”x 30”
Stand: Lee Mar Oak Stand with matching Canopy
Return Pump: Jebao DCT-12000 Running Return, BRS Dual Reactor, and Aqua UV 40 w sterilizer
Sump: 75 Gallon Lee Mar Acrylic Tank with added baffles
Power Heads: 2x Jebao Rw-20's with JBWave for control and 2x Ecotech MP40's
Skimmer: Ati Powercone I200s
Heaters: 2x 300 Eheim Jaeger
Controller: Neptune Aquacontroller Jr
Lights: 3x 165 watt Full Spectrum Wifi Programmable/Controlled Ebay boxes
ATO: Tunze 3155 with 10 gallon petco special as ato container
350 lbs + - of rock on top of a 5 inch sand bed.
Livestock list:
Purple Tang
Yellow Tang
Blue Hippo Tang
Powder Blue Tang
BI Color Foxface
McCoskeri Flasher Wrasse
Green Coris Wrasse
Mandarin Goby
Starry Eyed Blenny
Pearly Jawfish
Pink Spotted Watchman Goby with pistol shrimp
Black Ocellaris female mated to Snowflake male
3 red firefish
Royal Gramma
2 Cardinals
2 Pajama Cardinals
2 Cleaner Shrimp
2 Peppermint Shrimp
5 Tiger sand Conches
Bunch of snails and crabs for the CUC
And probably a couple I forgot.
Well that’s all for now folks. I will post what pics I have of the actual build process but I didn’t take that many. Now that I’m looking at what pics I do have there are not many. Mostly iphone pics. I guess it’s time to bust out the dusty DSLR. Hope you enjoy em. Feel free to comment, criticize, or ask any questions that may come up.
Happy Reefing.
StupidTed
Here it is day one when I picked it up and got it home.
Hard to see the scratches but they were deep and plenty of them.
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Originally Posted by Rudyg308
