Hop's 300 gallon in-wall build

[Hop]

Useless information:

If you have read my previous threads or just want to see pictures, you may want to scroll down and catch the pictures.

Long story short is that about seven years ago I became addicted to salt water tanks after spending about 20 years dabbling in fresh water; from keeping goldfish as a kid, to moving to species specific tanks, breeding, planted tanks and then high-end planted discus tanks. I got pretty bored, but always thought that salt water would be too difficult. Well I decided to go for it and set up a 55 gallon FOWLR and was hooked. From there I moved to a 125 in-wall and then a 450 gallon system that many of you may have seen a time or two. During this time I’ve had a few 55s, a 40, a 30 and a 125 going in between and during the 450.

Then I elected to try to combine two display tanks together and shoot for about 800 gallons of total volume. Long story short is that due to a major medical problem, I had to liquidate most of my stuff so I could keep the evil bank people from foreclosing on my house. Now that things are getting back to normal around here, I was fortunate enough to wind up with a custom 190 gallon glass tank, which is going to replace my in-wall 125. It may not be as impressive as the 450, but I am looking forward to this tank I think more than any of my previous tanks. This tank should be fairly manageable while working full time and attending college as well.

So without going into anymore details, sob stories or interesting facts, I’ll move on to the build. Some of these pictures will be redundant for some of you as they start where I was with the 800 gallon build that never got completed.


The wetroom:

So I was fortunate enough to have a wetroom left over from the 450 gallon build. Initially I thought I would have to tear this down, but thankfully I didn't and elected to finish it out.

The old room was finished in greenboard and bathroom paint... Bad idea as it didn't work. So here is the deconstruction of the old wetroom:






And this is what the exhaust fan 4" pipe looked like after 2 years of use... Yuck!