Hmmm that's a good idea!
So a quick back story… I’ve been out of the saltwater hobby and actually completely tankless for about 6 years. I sold my tanks when I left my home country of Ireland to live in Poland. The itch starting to come back and I finally decided I NEED A TANK!!
After spending a lot of money in the past on fish related stuff and the fact that I’m now living in a “poor country” going all out and buying the highest quality or most expensive gear were not options and I felt I had no interest in doing so either.
I started thinking about how to do it “on the cheap” and realised that it was much much more interesting to source parts and make as much as possible myself.
I expect some detractors here and I welcome them because before I put any life in here I want others opinions on what I should/shouldn’t do. I realise I’m not doing the ideal thing but I’m confident that everything will work out. However, if someone sees an important hole in my plan I really would like to hear from them.
The target was basically this:
I wanted it to be cheap, I wanted it to be safe, I wanted it to be fun and the missus wanted it to match the furniture.
Of course I wanted a big tank but I felt that because we will more than likely move in the future I wanted to start off small so I could do everything by myself, lifting the tank etc. It wouldn’t be too intimidating for my other half and maybe she would fall in love with it and want a bigger one when we move to our forever home in the next few years haha.
I decided on a small 100L tank, or 25G.
I bought a strange corner tank and had a nice idea to turn it around and make a half hex out of it but that idea was revoked and I had to remove it from my home and it now resides in the basement. Here it is along with my vision...
I was asked politely to "get a normal one"...
I bought the next aquarium second hand for basically nothing, ordered some chinese diamond hole saws and drilled 2 holes in the back. This was the first time I had drilled an aquarium and for anyone out there wondering about cheap hole saws I can really recommend them! I bought 2 in case the quality was so bad that I needed a second to drill the second hole but 1 did both holes no problem. They cost $6 including shipping haha! Then I painted the back with oil based gloss paint only because I needed it for the interior overflow and I’m trying to cut costs.
I don’t want to bore you with the stand building, but basically, I had never done this before.
I recycled our old IKEA bed plus some extra bits for the stand. Then I recycled my son’s old IKEA cot for the canopy and painted it all in waterproof paint made for bathrooms that I had already, unopened for another project that in the end wasn’t needed.
We bought our apartment almost 2 years ago to the day. It’s an old tenement house which was built in 1902 in very bad condition and we’ve been living here and renovating the whole time. The renovation is 90% finished and I had some leftovers so managed to make a “skin” to match the kitchen furniture.
So far so good
