Travis: What's up guys? Welcome back to FishOfHex, my name is Travis. Today we're here in the fish room looking at the 120 gallon reef tank which is our very first build for our reef tanks for veterans program. I just want to give a quick shout out to customaquariums.com for sponsoring the tank, the stand and their seamless sun filtration. Definitely appreciate it.
Now, when it comes to Custom Aquariums and myself, basically when you buy aquarium or a setup through me, I get a certain percentage of that sale.
Now what I've decided to do is instead of taking that money I would just go ahead and let Custom Aquariums keep it and then we'll put that towards these builds. If you're interested in a setup like my 300 or like this 120, please contact me through my email, [email protected]. Again, if you go through me, not only do you get a discount on your purchase but you also get to contribute to these builds. Just a quick reminder on that.
Now, when it comes to this setup, we have the 120 gallon 4x2x2 foot with the ultra-clear glass all the way around and their H2 overflow. Now this is going to be the same type of overflow, the same type of glass and the same type of stand that I have on my 300 gallon. That's really what I wanted. I want to give a smaller version of my 300 because people really like that tank and I figured this would be a good first build and an opportunity to spread the love when it comes to that setup.
Now when it comes to filtration, we have the bigger section here which comes back down from the H2 overflow box into this first chamber which has filter socks and what we will consider the refugium. Now I will add my own DIY refugium lights to this that you guys see on my other refugiums. They grow mac rouser like crazy so I figured that'd be pretty cool to add them to this setup and they'll shine directly down through this glass. That was pretty cool as you can come in here and just stick your finger and lift this glass up if you ever need to remove it, so if you need to clean it or anything like that.
The next chamber we have a media chamber, where we can put some kind of bio balls or balls or anything like that. Here's some of the baskets. Then over to the right we have the skimmer section and the return section. We have a bubble Magus curve that just came in today from Marine Depot and then we have the CTA return pump that was donated from a local hobbyist. Pretty good pump, it's going to work out great for this tank size and it's a reliable pumps so that's what's really important.
Now, when it comes to equipment for the inside, I have already picked up some WP40s we're going to do two of them. They're kind of in transit through eBay so they'll be here. That will be our flow. We have a standard apex with the temperature and pH probe. I decided to go with the standard because to be honest, I find that ORP and the salinity probe are just pointless. Unless you know specifically what ORP is and how it fluctuates, it's pointless to look at and the salinity probe is notorious for just not staying calibrated. I figured we'll save a couple hundred bucks to go with the standard apex which is still a great controller without having that extra monitoring which we don't even use anyways.
Now when it comes to lighting, I have not picked it up because I don't know who's going to get this tank yet. Now the reason why I want to wait is because I want to know what kind of experience the person has, how long they're in the hobby, what kind of coral they're growing, what kind of tank they want this to be. If it's just a fish only, we're going to go with a different type of lighting if we were going with a full Acropora tank. I'm going to wait until we get-- They'll pick the winner within the next 30 days and then sit down and talk to them and figure out what they want to do with this system and then I'll go ahead and purchase the lighting.
Now we do have some glass tops which will sit on top of here, make sure your fish don't jump out or anything like that, good to go. Then you guys have notice that there is some other tops the camera jacked it up. There's some sections here that are blocked off with acrylic and then there's a section here for glass if we need it if we didn't want to have the skimmer or anything like that, and then of course, we have the glass top here. It's going to be pretty much enclosed, the evaporation will be minimum.
There's plenty of room for an ATO and all sorts of stuff down there. Now of course the ATO reservoir will probably have to be somewhere else since we are pretty limited on space but we could always fit a small acrylic container there and then go about it that way. We are also going to be doing, I haven't really picked out what ATO yet, it's going to depend on again, what kind of container. If we get a smaller container that we do want to fit on the side here, of course the pump will have to be smaller to be able to fit in there.
That stuff we're going to figure out as it goes to be the last minute tweaks which of course if you've ever built a reef tank, there's always last-minute adjustments. Instead of purchasing that stuff and finding out we might not need it, I'm just going to go ahead and wait until we figure out who's getting it, where it's going, what they're going to be growing in it, or what kind of tank it is and then finalize those little things.
Now, the process for winning this is pretty simple. All you have to be is a veteran of any war. It doesn't matter if it was Afghanistan, Iraq, if it was Korea, if it was Vietnam, it doesn't matter. It could be any war from the beginning of time to now, if you're still alive and you got PTSD then you are going to be qualified to win this build. Now, down the road, we might change it up and require you to have combat action because that's pretty important to me.
I find that people who go through combat and experience firefights, and experience IEDs, and deal with that struggle of life and death, they have the more severe PTSD than just some dude who got mortared while he was taking a shit in the port-o-john and still got to claim PTSD. There's different things that people do and we're going to probably narrow it down to just combat action in a future build but for now, this one's just going to be you have to have at least 20% post-traumatic stress on your original disability rating through the VA.
Now, you'll have to prove that via your disability forms once we go through the whole process and I narrow you down out of however, many applications we get through the process. Again, it's nothing personal when it comes to future builds and not having combat action versus having it, it's just one of those things that it's just a personal preference. I have combat action, the people that I know that have dealt with PTSD also have combat action and then I also know people who have not that still claim PTSD and you know that they're okay.
It's just one of those things that is personal to me and I want to make sure that people who get these builds that we put a lot of money into donations coral sales, all that kind of stuff, they go to the right person. For this one I just want to make sure that it goes to somebody who needs it, who really finds that it's going to benefit them and their lives and help them with their PTSD and it's really going to just prove their overall lifestyle and that's not going to matter if you have combat action or not.
It's more or less coming down to what this build can do for you and of course we'll make adjustments down the road as we have more of these builds. There will be more of them more often. This is just a really expensive build for our first one, maybe our next one would be something like 120, that's more of a DIY setup or maybe we'll do an all-in-one that we just plug-and-play. It's just going to depend on what we want to do and what route we go.
Now, if you are interested in applying to win this tank all, you have to do is email me at [email protected]. Just give me a little bit of background on you, what you're dealing with, where you live. We are going to keep this within Pennsylvania and the surrounding states Ohio, Maryland, New York, Massachusetts. I will even go up to Vermont because I have some family up there so I don't mind making that trip with you like a two birds kind of thing. Then we have any states surrounding New Jersey stuff like that, we can make that trip.
Now I have set some money aside and I do have some volunteers so we can pay for a trailer, pay for gas, again pay for all those odds and ends that we might miss, PVC, glue, all sorts of stuff, you guys know how it is when it comes to building. I have set a pretty decent chunk of money aside to cover all those expenses to make sure but there's food and it's just really going to be a good day.
If you are interested in winning, please contact me and we'll go through the process and I will announce the winner of this within the next 30 days and then you guys should expect to see this tank up within the next month or within a month after I announce the winner. That's going to be the plan and yes, so that's about it for this video. I hope you guys enjoyed it. If you have any questions, let me know.
If you want to support this and support the channel you can again contact me for Custom Aquariums tanks, or you can go through my website Purchase Coral and we can use the 10% of those sales to go ahead and go towards this program. With that said, I'll see you guys in a couple days with another video. All right, peace.
