Kaxt's 120 Build

[kaxt]

Hi all- My name is Kat and I’m working on a tank upgrade. I’m new here, but I’ve been fishkeeping my entire life and reefing for the past 8 years. My current tank is a 93 gallon cube with a 75 gallon basement sump.

My brother and I drove out to That Fish Place in late February and bought a 120 gallon tank on sale for a great deal. The tank is still at my brother’s house because it wouldn’t fit in my car. He is coming up to visit me next weekend and will deliver the tank for me.

Before I left his house I got all the measurements of the tank so that I could start to build a stand. I wanted to build the stand out of oak to match some of the furniture I already have in the living room. I made the front of the stand out of solid oak, and the remainder of the stand is plywood.

I used biscuit joints to build the entire stand. One biscuit for each joint in the front face of the stand.

Five biscuits for each vertical corner.

I glued all 4 sides together at the same time. My favorite saying applies here, “there is no such thing as too many clamps.” So much so, that I even threw in a few ratchet straps.

I put the bottom on the stand with glue and screws. Then I decided it would probably be easier to paint the inside of the stand before I got it completely closed up. I also decided to add a few cross braces in the top.

Then I added the top.

Next I rounded the corners on a few 1x3s to start making it pretty. I added the top trim offset from the top of the stand to hide the trim on the tank.

Then I added more 1x3s for the bottom trim and a top lip. I like to be able to rest a drink down on the stand while I’m watching the tank, or tools as I’m working on it.

Next I used a roman ogee bit on my router table to give the molding a little more flare. I cut it down to an inch wide and added it under the top lip.

I then cut two access holes in the back of the stand for cords and such to come through.

I filled any imperfections with a filler I made out of sanding dust and glue, and then gave the stand a final sanding.

I stained it with MinWax Red Oak.

Sorry it was such a long post, just figured I would dump a bunch of pictures to get you all hooked.

 

[Lovemyreef2015]

Wow, very nice build! Following along

 

[Dimmy007]

Looks awesome!! Nice Woodwork.

 

[Bryce M.]

Very nice. very nice. I'm tuned in

 

[cvanchuck]

Terrific build. Watching

 

[SPR1968]

Hi Kat that looks like a nice build and the stand looks very well made

And keep the pictures coming !

Welcome to R2R as well by the way, it’s great to have you with us

 

[kaxt]

Thanks everyone for the kind words. Woodworking is one of my other hobbies. Being able to build things for my tank is as enjoyable to me as watching my reef grow out.

I have plenty more pictures to come. I just have to make the time to sit down and post them. It's hard to do that when there is still so much to be done to get this new tank up and running. My next update will be soon, I promise.

 

[kaxt]

Part of the reason for this new build is because I recently decided to switch my living room and dining room. The living room only had one small window on the northern side of the house, and it is always dark in there. The dinning room has plently of windows, but is rarely ever used. When it is used it’s generally at dinner time when it’s dark out and windows don’t matter anyways. A rectangular tank will fit the new space much better, and if I’m getting a new tank I mine as well go bigger.

Anyways, since the DT is going to be on the opposite side of the house from the current tank, the sump needs to move. The new DT will be directly over the furnace, and I didn’t want the sump to be that close to the furnace because I didn’t want to have rust issues. I was planning to just build a wall to separate the two areas, but my boyfriend mentioned just building a full fish room. It didn’t take much to persuade me.

Here is the space in my basement just before we started the project.

The space after removing a couple light fixtures and the shelves. You can see the location of the furnace in this picture also.

A trailer full of material

Framing almost completed

Door in.

We rebuilt the shelves that we removed just outside the fishroom so I could start to get the basement organized again.

We also decided to move all the furnace plumbing up into the floor joists so that we could put a ceiling in the fish room and really close it off for complete climate control. That didn’t end up going very well. We had a pretty bad leak at one of the joints. It was 11:00pm on a Sunday night and we had just run out of gas for the torch. In a last ditch effort to get the furnace running in order to get hot showers we used FiberFix. As you can see, it was not successful.

We ended up giving up and going to bed feeling defeated. We eventually succedded in repairing the joint correctly. Turns out it was a good thing we ran into this problem because it lead to us finding a joint to the baseboard heat in the living room that was about to fail. That could have been disastrous if it had gone unnoticed. We were able to repair that as well.

Well, that's it for tonight, thanks for checking in.

 

[kaxt]

Continuing with the fish room build- We put in a couple cans, and a bathroom vent that will be run off a humidistat.

I’m going to have outlets above the sump that will be powered by individual plugs from my EB8s. I started to run wire in the wall for this, but ran out before I could finish.

Then we started to hang the green board.

Once sheetrock was up we started to work on the plumbing. Neither the sump or the DT are in place yet, so we could only get so far. First, we cut a hole in the wall in the living room.

Next, we drilled holes for a BA overflow and the return through the ceiling in the basement and into the wall space of the living room.

Then we used a hole saw to drill holes in the sheetrock of the fish room for the pipes to travel through.

We put the PVC into a pipe bender and then put it through one of the holes in the fish room wall. Once it was through the wall we fed the warm side of the pipe up through the floor and into the living room. Forcing the pipe to take the shape we needed we then held it in place until the pipe cooled again.

One down, three to go.

All four from the living room.

Coming out of the basement ceiling.

From the fish room.

They have a pretty decent slope to them so hopefully I won’t have any issues starting a siphon.

Once the pipes were all in place we fit the sheetrock back into the hole in the living room wall.

I’m pretty happy with how it all turned out, and excited to get the tanks in place so that I can finish it.

 

[kaxt]

I started to work on the canopy a little bit. I like to have a canopy on my tanks to eliminate carpet surfing and light creep. I also think they end up looking cleaner because all the wires can be hidden inside or behind them.

This is the back of the canopy. I put 2” desk gromets in so that I could have plenty of places to feed wires through, without providing any fish escape routes. I also cut three large openings for ventilation and covered them with plastic craft mesh. I plan to have a few wrasses and other possible jumpers.

I got the sides and part of the top on as well. I plan to have two doors on the front of the canopy for easy access. I will also have the entire front half and 8” of the top on a hinge so that I can get better access for cleaning and maintenance.

 

[kaxt]

I finally got the tank!

I have a modular marine 1600 gph overflow I’m going to put on the tank. The overflow came with a template and a glass hole saw so it didn’t take much to get started drilling.

Fits like a glove. It took a long time, but I finally got through both holes. Even though I’ve drilled a ton of tanks in the past it’s always nerve racking when drilling the bigger more expensive tanks. I’m glad that part of the build is over with.

Once the tank was drilled I painted the back of the tank black. First coat.

We moved the stand and tank into the house so that we could finish the plumbing. I also painted the room.

Plumbing all finished. I’ve never used a pipe bender before this project, but it’s been coming in handy.

The white sludge that is created from the mixture of water and glass dust when drilling got under the trim of the tank. I didn’t notice it until we had the tank in the house and on the stand, but you could see big white patches from the front of the tank. Because it took me so long to notice, it had dried under the trim and became almost like a solidified powder. I had to move the tank back outside because the only way I could think of to get it out was with the hose. We weren’t able to remove it all but got most of it. Hopefully it won’t be too noticeable one the tank is all set up.