10 gallon build - because I need another tank

[Chelsey]

My intarsia is here!!!! I think it looks phenominal, VERY happy with it. The pictures that I was sent don't do the project justice, it's amazing! I'll post pictures later tonight, after I'm done TAing my class I'm hopefully going to work on my stand.

 

[Chelsey]

Yay for intarsia pictures! These were left quite large on purpose so that you can see the detail :) I am SUPER excited about this thing and am SO happy with the way it turned out!

 

[mgdmirage]

Post #22

That is truly awesome!

 

[ahayes13]

wow, beautiful piece !

 

[Chelsey]

The stand and canopy have not been started on yet. The person that was supposed to help me build them this weekend fell off the face of the earth :(

Here are a few new pics. The silicon on the back wall is finally dry enough to stop smelling so I brought the tank inside. Here are two pics...try not to notice the copious amounts of silicon :)

Really bad shot of a cool little baby clam that I picked up for this tank. It's in my 100 gallon cube right now.

Here's a shot of my sump. The silicon job is sloppy but I don't really care, I won't be looking at the sump much ;)

 

[Chelsey]

I finally got to work on my stand today for about 4 hours and I'm pleased with how it's turning out. The guy that's helping me build it is an absolute perfectionist which is a good thing most of the time but can be irritating sometimes. At least I know that the stand and canopy will turn out well! Unfortunately I did not bring my camera with me today so there are no pics of the progress thus far. The stand is being made out of oak and 3/4" oak-skinned plywood (if that's the correct term). I'm pretty excited about finally getting going on this stand...I've been waiting a while! If all goes according to plan I'll work on it more tomorrow, maybe finishing it. After the stand is done being assembled I'll be staining it with a yet-to-be-determined color of stain.

 

[ahayes13]

cool, glad you were able to work on the stand. i know youve gotta be getting excited :)

 

[Chelsey]

I am getting excited but I'm having one heck of a time trying to be patient...I am ready to place all of my frags and let everything grow out!

 

[Chelsey]

I forgot to add that I got some new fishes to put in this tank too:

Red Striped Goby - Trimma cana

Trimma goby

I'd really like to find a few other cool gobies to put in there, cool tiny ones. There are two more Trimma species gobies that have been hanging out at my LFS...I think I'm going to try and trade for them too. Here's what one of those two look like:

 

[Chelsey]

Well, after roughly 20 hours of work the stand is assembled! I still have to sand it, stain it, and seal it but here's what it looks like so far. I am quite pleased with how it turned out. Sorry for the poor pics, it was dark outside and my car was in the garage. Hopefully I'll have some pics of it stained by this time tomorrow!

 

[Chelsey]

Here's a quick update of all of the troubles I've been through ;)

I applied "stainable" woodfiller to all of the holes, cracks, and crevices that I wanted filled...after sanding and trying to stain the filler wouldn't take the stain. I ended up sanding down the places where the filler was a second time and it took the stain better but it's still not perfect. I'm impatient and got discouraged and started polyurethaning. Most people won't notice the slight color difference...I'm hoping that the tank will be so spectacular that they won't be looking at the stand :D

First coat of poly is completely done, the second coat of polyurethane was mostly done as of 10 minutes ago. I still have to do the other side of both doors and the bottom of the stand.

I took measurements of the inside of the canopy and am planning on working on the reflector and hopefully getting it done before I go to bed tonight. This will be my first attempt at building a reflector and I anticipate getting sliced to bits by the sheets of aluminum that I have. I bought some really pretty silver reflective duck tape (:D) at Wal Mart yesterday when I went to get paint thinner and I'm planning on using that around the edges of the reflector and also the short ends of the canopy since the relfector will be parabolic in design and won't have four sides like a lumenarc/lumenmax/whatever. We'll see how this turns out...I anticipate it to be quite the experience.

Tomorrow I will be doing the following:
-finishing second coat of polyurethane
-replacing hardware once everything is dry
-attaching reflector and lights to inside of canopy
-moving stand and canopy inside, putting tank and sump in/on stand
-plumbing tank system (yay!!!) - I plan on painting PVC with black krylon fusion paint to make it look stealthy ;)
-bolt stand to the wall to prevent it tipping - the stand is tall and will be in a high traffic area so I'm taking extra precautions
-attach intarsia to stand door via wood glue (this will be one of the last things that I do...if the intarsia gets damaged I'll cry)

HOPEFULLY I will be mixing water tomorrow for a water change on two of my tanks and can take ~15 gallons of aged/"dirty" water from those systems to fill this new system. I have to silicon the connections on the lights and clog up one small hole with silicon on the rock wall to prevent gobies from getting stuck and I need to let that dry for 24 hours so no water in the system until Sunday.

 

[Chelsey]

My ghetto-fabulous reflector is done! :) I had a little help from Mr. Pythagoras to get the angles and lengths correct...never thought the pythagorean theorem would be useful (I'm not a math person). The best part is that I only had to give blood twice!!! :lol:

The lights are bright, but with the reflector they are SUPER bright. I'd be interested in borrowing a PAR meter or something to see just how bright they are.

Blue bulbs only:

White bulbs only:

Both sets:

It's a darn good thing I have a canopy to conceal this reflector in...it's functional but it's nowhere near as pretty as the commercial reflectors!!!

 

[reefer357]

Very unique build can't wait to see it all together.

 

[sprinklerdudes]

looking real good, I started a ten gal nano build about a month and a half ago, wish mine looked half as good as yours

 

[Chelsey]

Thanks for the compliments guys! You shouldn't have to wait much longer to see it all together...maybe 36 hours or less :)

 

[inactive]

lol!

Canopy man is NOT impressed.

 

[Chelsey]

???

It had to be stained...what's wrong with it?

I suppose that it doesn't really matter what you think about it because I'm perfectly happy with it and I'm the one that's going to be seeing it every day, but you didn't have to come in my thread and burst my bubble :(

 

[inactive]

???

It had to be stained...what's wrong with it?

I suppose that it doesn't really matter what you think about it because I'm perfectly happy with it and I'm the one that's going to be seeing it every day, but you didn't have to come in my thread and burst my bubble :(

What? You totally took that wrong.

I was just pointing out that it looked like a unimpressed face.

*facepalm*

 

[Chelsey]

Hmm...I don't see it....

Here are some pics of the (almost) finished stand/canopy. I say almost because the intarsia isn't on yet :) I forgot to add earlier that parts of the stand and canopy, namely the oak fronts, were also put together using a biscuit joiner...that's got to be the coolest woodworking tool I've ever seen! I'm going to haul the stand and canopy upstairs and then remove the stand door to glue the intarsia so that I can work on everything else while the intarsia is drying. The inside of the canopy has a few imperfections, namely the nail and the removed oak veneer from the plywood on the left hand side. You can't see either of those things when the reflector is in place and I'm not overly worried about it.

(the two little squares of wood are for bolting to the wall)

 

[Chelsey]

Tomorrow I will be doing the following:
-finishing second coat of polyurethane
-replacing hardware once everything is dry
-attaching reflector and lights to inside of canopy
-moving stand and canopy inside, putting tank and sump in/on stand
-plumbing tank system (yay!!!) - I plan on painting PVC with black krylon fusion paint to make it look stealthy ;)
-bolt stand to the wall to prevent it tipping - the stand is tall and will be in a high traffic area so I'm taking extra precautions
-attach intarsia to stand door via wood glue (this will be one of the last things that I do...if the intarsia gets damaged I'll cry)

Here's what I've done today:
-2nd coat of polyurethane is done
-hardware replaced
-reflector and lighting installed inside canopy - "sealed" connection points on lights with silicon, waiting for that to dry
-stand and canopy are in the house, though canopy went back out in the garage because silicon smells bad
-plumbing is mostly done - I cut/fit/glued everything that I could, painted the top half of the return and the drain black, waiting on the paint to dry before I can glue top and bottom portions of the plumbing together
-intarsia is glued on...yay!

Here's what's left to do today:
-put door back on stand (removed so that intarsia could dry flat instead of vertically)
-glue top and bottom portions of plumbing together (have to wait till paint is dry)
-bolt stand to wall
-add sand to display tank (using dry sand that will be seeded with live stuff)

Tomorrow:
-put canopy on display tank once silicon is dry
-do 15 gallons worth of WC's on the cube and put that water in the new system :bounce1:
-tinker with ball valve so that I don't have too much flow
-aquascape
-program timers for fuge, blue, and white lights
-take lots of pics!!!

I'm excited that this is finally coming together...can you tell? :)