Kessil

Another tank in the making, a Mike-Mar retrofit! :D

HA! One swing of a hammer? Unless that hammer is the one wielded by Thor no way in hell you could take it out with one swing. The gussets really increase the strength dramatically, almost as much as a sheet of ply.
 
Ha! not going to dare anyone, you want to put up $100 or something to make it worth my wild (and the the cost to repair the divots from the hammer) then sure :D Also need to let me put the top gussets in too.

I don't think the glue is anything special, it's Tightbond II, only thing it claims I believe is that it has some water resistance.
 
gussets, smussets, One swing I say. especially if you put a full tank of water on the stand. Then the weight of the water will give it some mass so the stand won't fly across the room on impact. Only problem is three legged stands don't hold tanks to well.
One word. Sledge. :D
 
Thor uses a blacksmith's hammer I thought? But whatever... he can smash anything with that :D

But yeah... when you say hammer I'm expecting one you use to pound in nails... although many people don't even use those anymore.. pneumatic tools at all...

but thanks, it'll hold the tank, it'll resist lateral stresses, I'm happy. It don't need to look pretty for me :D
 
Just make sure you don't get that titebond wet Paint over it . Itll do fine with a little moisture but its not good to get it wet . It gets kinda gummy when its wet . I do love my biscuit joiner though , its great for long grain joints .


oh BTW, Ill use my normal hammer . One swing of a Dalluge it will go down .
 
Ok between having a box of tiles fall off a shelf on my ankle at the Home Depot and various "old age" injuries that seem to be occurring more frequently, things have been a tad on the slow side.

Tank is complete now, overflow is in place, it's been a long time since I've used an internal overflow, and the first time the internal overflow actually stretched the entire height of the tank!

All the talk of my stand I decided to go in another direction, it's more a modern art interpretation, total tank inversion, although it's going to be hard to figure out how to keep water in the tank like this...
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in all seriousness, I wanted to make sure my overflow holes didn't run into any issues with any of the stand supports (one of those things about not using internal overflows you don't have to think about!)... well I was off a tad, but a few small cuts and things are back on track. Also it was easier to flip the stand over on top see where I'm off, remove, make cuts, replace, etc than having to put the tank on and remove or move out of the way.. stand I can handle by myself, the tank however is a heavy summabitch and requires two people (mostly because it's a bit of an awkward size to grab onto... but it's also a heavy SOB!)

Ok so I finally water tested my PVC bottom, and it passed flying colors, had one small leak on the inside where the overflow touched the bottom, fixed it up before realizing it's probably not that big of a deal because it's all internal, but just in case I missed something I wanted it be water tight first.

Also got a good look at how dirty the glass is from the picture, so some elbow grease is needed :D
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Next up, need to grout the tiles I put in, which shouldn't take too long, but I want to do that before I toss the sump, check out plumbing etc.

Also need to figure out a light hood setup too, don't think I want to do the aluminum bit this time, keep it simple and wooden, but I do like access to the tank from any direction... which might make that a bit problematic. This is not going to be furniture quality stuff here, so looks are not THAT important, but I don't want it to look like total crap either.

Stay tuned, I was hoping to have it up and read before the frag swap next week (geezus a week away), just if anything because a lot of my soft corals are not going to make the move over and figured that'd be a great place to give them away, plus if I got a ricordia or something nice soft I'd have a place to put it... but we'll see. Can't seem to give corals away in this club anymore, maybe I'll see if the Steinhart wants them

Cycling shouldn't be a problem since a ton of the rock I'll be putting in will be from the existing soft tank... but I want to chip off ALL the brown palys, encrusting gorgonians, etc (that should be a fun exercise in not getting rushed to the ER too! :D), but who knows. School is also starting up in a week and a half so I'm back to work! (should start working out a lesson plan now actually!)
 
Well as long as you don't look too close at the tiles they look good :D

I only did about 50 sqft out of nearly 400 though... but others will come later, since I need to move around plumbing lines, a drain, washer, drier, basin... so yeah there's some work to be done still :)
 
hey at least you don't have to pay someone $6 per sq. and that is not include material.

I didn't a pretty bad job on my floor. Learned quite a bit after that.. I'm thinking about tearing it up and redo it but that won't happen for another year or two or three..
 
Yeah my first tiling job was in my bathroom, even though it is MUCH smaller, I had to do a lot of work to make it come out good, and while there are some errors here and there for the most part it's a pretty damn good job. I did the floors, the walls, even an entire enclosed shower stall. That took blood sweat and a lot of money (I didn't use 99cent/sqft tiles :D), but at the end of the day I think it made me at the very least a tile laying apprentice :)

Downstairs I really don't care as much, it's a fishroom/laundry room (with a lot of other junk in it). As such ANYTHING is better than what it is, and it's a heavy duty room that's there for function first, so much to the point I'm really considering putting a drain in the floor to deal with spills.
 
7pm man, it's way after quitting time :D Nothing good happens fast.... so I'm not going to bust my balls getting it all ready... although I should... but slow and steady makes a tank that doesn't leak and require repairs or something when it's completely full of fish and corals :D Besides I've had more than enough working until 3am to get something done moments.

Anyways minor updates, overflow is flowing!

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The return is the middle pipe that tees off to the two holes at either side, and let me tell you it was a pain in the ass to get that in there, I'm guessing Mr. Mar decided that two return lines is what was needed or you could only use one fitting (1" bulkheads) because there was no room for 45s or anything else, I ended up using some spa flex, which as anyone knows isn't terribly flexy, and when it's a short nub it's REALLY not flexy... but the heat gun softened it up a bit allowed me to bend to a make shift 45, and it's really crammed in there tight, I need to fiddle a bit more to try to reduce the torquing on the bulkheads. And I had to screw in the fittings by rotating the bulkhead because there's not room and... ahh hell it was a bit of a PITA moment, but once I figured out the way it had to go together not too bad.

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This is what all the pain is about though, I'm just water testing that bucket is not my sump :p The return is simply going right back into the overflow and everything is dry fitted. Anyways I think it was Matt that made a comment about this on RDO some time back, decided what the hell I'll give it a try. Forget the actual "name" of the overflow (i've heard it named after a few people though). Anyways the gate valve allows me to slow the water to a point that it rises and the head pressure forces it through the pipe ... so no vortex effect and no air gets pulled down! So yeah just wanted to test it with some hose water first, and sure enough it works. It's also pretty damn dead silent too, which is a bonus, but the lack of air bubbles is what I was really aiming for, no air bubbles means you don't get that salt spray/creep when they come to the surface and pop.

A few more things checked off my list. Need to go back to work to see what else I can do now.
 
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