72 Gallon Bow Front Reef Aquarium

After about 8 months of lolligagging, I've decided to put together the 72 gallon bow front reef tank. Before I get started, let me tell you how I managed to build this 72 gallon for under $100 - and no, I didn't get the stuff from the back of some truck. :) Here's a breakdown of how I acquired all the equipment and LR for this tank and what I had to actually purchase:


Donations to the reef:

• 72 Gallon Bow Front tank and stand by All Glass Aquariums was given to me by a friend that didn't have the room to set it up.
• About 150 lbs. of live rock was given to me by a friend with a 140g tank that crashed. He decided he'd give up reefing (at the time) and started tossing the LR into the lake behind his house. After he told me what he was doing with the LR, I quickly drove over to his house to save as much LR as I could. I had the live rock in the tank for about 8 months so that it could cure because before I rescued the LR, it had been sitting in a garbage can outside in the sun for 2 weeks.
• The 420w light was given to me by my same friend that was chucking the LR into the lake.
• 29g converted into a refugium was my previous 29g nano-reef that crashed.
• Skimmer given to me by the same friend that gave me the 72g bow-front.
• Rio 2500 pump

What I had to buy:

• Plexi-glass to make the refugium walls ($14)
• PVC pipe ($4)
• Bulkheads ($15)
• 60lbs of Reef Sand ( $50)

 
Getting the 72g Bow Front ready:

The build took 2 people around 6 hours to complete. The first step was to take all the live rocks out and dump the water. Here's what eye-soar looked like for 8 months:

We stored the live rock in two rubbermaid containers:

After emptying out the tank, we took it outside for a good cleaning.

The previous owner of the 72g (not my buddy, but the person that gave it to him) used the tank without the the overflow, so what they did was glued a piece of plexiglass over the two holes to cover it up. At first we tried to just cut the silicon around the plexiglass edges to try to remove it, but then figured out they had glued the plexiglass to the tank. What to do? Luckily my buddy had a dremel tool that we used to cut out the holes for the bulkheads. After about an hour or so, we managed to make the holes.

Before cutting the holes out:

Here's a pic of the cut:

We did cut the second hole in there, but for some reason I forgot to snap a picture. I'm sure you get the idea. :)

Next onto building the refugium.