I started off in the aquarium hobby about 4 years ago now with a betta fish in a vase. After about 6 months he wasn't doing well so I started researching how to better take care of him. Much to my wife's dismay this quickly sent me down a rabbit hole of fish keeping. After upgrading my Betta to a 5 gallon tank, I stumbled upon this site and decided I wanted to try a planted tank. I bought a 36g on craigslist and entered my foray into planted tanks. About 2 years ago my wife heard from a friend from work that one of his friends had a friend that was looking to get rid of his old tank, which leads us where I am today.
Before going into all the details, a brief summary of what I am trying to accomplish. My goal is to build a fully automated high tech discus tank. Dosing, lights, CO2, feeding, temperature and water changes will be fully automated. The only thing I will need to do to maintain this tank is trim the plants, and rinse the filter pads once a month. Everything else will be entirely controlled through my Apex controller.
This tank was a 130g custom built tank that was built in Texas and shipping to the guy here in Pittsburgh. It is a hex shape tank with an overflow on one side. He was upgrading from this $3000 tank to a 220 gallon and didn't have space for this one anymore. He said as long as I was going to use it and could get people to move it that I could have it for Free!!! Here is me with the tank 2 years ago after I first got it. Terribly awkward picture but I can't find any of the pictures I took when I first got it.
Aquarium Dirty
It was a saltwater tank and it was not in great condition when I first got it. It had a good 1/4" of salt buildup over the whole tank, and the polyurethane and stain was peeling off the wood over 90% of the tank and stand. I was living on the 18th floor of an apartment building at the time, so filling it was out of the question. I spent the next year striping it, sanding it, cleaning it and re-staining it from top to bottom. The end result was a vastly improved tank and stand.
IMG_0277
My next project was the sump. It had a sump, but it was pretty much unusable for a FW tank, and honestly it was a pretty big waste of space.
DPP_0004
I ended up removing the "baffles" from that one, getting rid of the wet/dry bucket and redoing the sump completely. After a lot of help from people here I settled on a new design and got some glass cut and built a much more functional sump. If you are interested in reading about the sump design more you can find that thread here:
http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/9-equipment/848482-sump-design-advice.html
For the overflow I am using a modified Durso Standpipe that feeds down into a reverse Durso in the sump. It's not as silent as a bean animal style, but it is all I could fit without redrilling the tank which I did not want to do. The overflow pours up onto the progressively finer filters, then into a biomedia (seachem matrix) chamber, with some purigen and then into the equipment section before finally entering the pump return section. I am using a Reefoctopus VarioS-6 controllable DC return pump, which offers amazing flow and is dead quiet. I have 2 250 W Aqueon Pro heaters which will keep the aquarium at a comfortable 82 degrees F for the discus.
Moving on, the light I chose to use is a Reefbreeder Photon-48 with a customized spectrum. This light will probably never go above 50%, but it offers incredible power, a great spectrum and is fully controllable. I dive into pretty great detail on the light in this thread if you are interested in learning more:
http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/10-lighting/985442-led-options-48x23x23-tank.html
Special thanks @jeffkrol for his help with the lighting.
Well that's all I've got time for right now. I will update this soon with some of the set-up and automation details as well as plants and fish when I get there! Hope you enjoy the journey!
Before going into all the details, a brief summary of what I am trying to accomplish. My goal is to build a fully automated high tech discus tank. Dosing, lights, CO2, feeding, temperature and water changes will be fully automated. The only thing I will need to do to maintain this tank is trim the plants, and rinse the filter pads once a month. Everything else will be entirely controlled through my Apex controller.
This tank was a 130g custom built tank that was built in Texas and shipping to the guy here in Pittsburgh. It is a hex shape tank with an overflow on one side. He was upgrading from this $3000 tank to a 220 gallon and didn't have space for this one anymore. He said as long as I was going to use it and could get people to move it that I could have it for Free!!! Here is me with the tank 2 years ago after I first got it. Terribly awkward picture but I can't find any of the pictures I took when I first got it.

It was a saltwater tank and it was not in great condition when I first got it. It had a good 1/4" of salt buildup over the whole tank, and the polyurethane and stain was peeling off the wood over 90% of the tank and stand. I was living on the 18th floor of an apartment building at the time, so filling it was out of the question. I spent the next year striping it, sanding it, cleaning it and re-staining it from top to bottom. The end result was a vastly improved tank and stand.

My next project was the sump. It had a sump, but it was pretty much unusable for a FW tank, and honestly it was a pretty big waste of space.

I ended up removing the "baffles" from that one, getting rid of the wet/dry bucket and redoing the sump completely. After a lot of help from people here I settled on a new design and got some glass cut and built a much more functional sump. If you are interested in reading about the sump design more you can find that thread here:
http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/9-equipment/848482-sump-design-advice.html
For the overflow I am using a modified Durso Standpipe that feeds down into a reverse Durso in the sump. It's not as silent as a bean animal style, but it is all I could fit without redrilling the tank which I did not want to do. The overflow pours up onto the progressively finer filters, then into a biomedia (seachem matrix) chamber, with some purigen and then into the equipment section before finally entering the pump return section. I am using a Reefoctopus VarioS-6 controllable DC return pump, which offers amazing flow and is dead quiet. I have 2 250 W Aqueon Pro heaters which will keep the aquarium at a comfortable 82 degrees F for the discus.
Moving on, the light I chose to use is a Reefbreeder Photon-48 with a customized spectrum. This light will probably never go above 50%, but it offers incredible power, a great spectrum and is fully controllable. I dive into pretty great detail on the light in this thread if you are interested in learning more:
http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/10-lighting/985442-led-options-48x23x23-tank.html
Special thanks @jeffkrol for his help with the lighting.
Well that's all I've got time for right now. I will update this soon with some of the set-up and automation details as well as plants and fish when I get there! Hope you enjoy the journey!