Reef nutrition

SFSU's (Fishnfst's) 180g temporary tank.

Thought I'd start a thread here rather than continuing the one in the Reef Talk forum just to keep things a bit clean here.

Here's the thread
http://www.bareefers.org/discussion/index.php?topic=4970.0

To recap, I pulled a boner and damaged my other tank, Doug lent me a 180g tank, 4 feet long, 3 feet wide, 2 feet tall. I built a stand, nothing pretty, just functional for it to sit atop, finally rid myself of all those scrap pieces of lumber I've been keeping that I kept saying "I'll have a use for that!" (more on the stand later)

Well the tank itself has some scratches inside, and a couple good sized ones on the outside, guess storage wasn't kind to this boy.. but it's a temporary tank and it already is less scratched than my current acrylic tank so bonus :D I'm not going to even bother with the internal scratches, I might try to buff out the external ones, but they feel pretty deep so I might let Doug handle that when/if he wants to use this tank.

This first post is rather short and too the point.. there was a single hole for a 3/4" bulkhead in an odd spot center and off to the left that he used for freshwater fish or something, well that wasn't going to do for an overflow, so I decided I need to figure a way out. Doug gave me the go ahead to modify it (but I'm not going to cut the top :D) so I decided my patented coast-to-coast external overflow fit the bill. It's an easy enough thing to do with some patience, and a straight cutting edge, plus it's something that's totally fixable if Doug doesn't like it since the back is black.

Well unfortunately tap plastic is closed on Sunday, and I only have enough acrylic for half of the overflow, so the rest will come later, but here are the holes I cut... there's a couple goofs where there drill holes were a tad too high, but nothing that makes a big difference. Pretty snazzy looking (and WAY better looking that the one on my 100g... but that one was done when the tank was full of water :D
 
Well Doug gave me the ok to do it before hand, he said slap a piece of acrylic over the hole, drill the back with a 1.5" bulkhead, hell he said do whatever the hell I wanted... However I'm not quite going to take him up on that much of it... especially since it's a temp tank, I mentioned the external overflow and he said it was fine.

These cuts and the overflow are the only two things I'm going to do, and they can be fairly easily "undone" if needed. I think because someone tried to modify the top (it shows) he doesn't care as much... plus he's got thousands of gallons of spare tanks, I doubt he'll use this every again *:D
 
Hahahaha come on now.. tens of thousands is a bit of an exaggeration :) Oops I read it wrong thousands could be pretty darn close . hahahahahahah

Glad to see it coming along...
 
Ok here's the stand...

It looks like a big white box because.. well the tank is a big acrylic box. Nothing fancy with the stand, standard ell legs with the inside support, beams rafter style on the deck, plywood on multiple sides to combat tipping. I decided to do without a center brace in the middle, I figure 4 feet probably can do without, especially since I used 2x6s for the deck, if those bend... well damnit if they bend I'll be amazed as all hell! Even so if it doesn't look like it can handle the weight, I got multiple 2 ton jacks and extra wood :D

The top has 3/4" plywood (two pieces... leftovers from another job), and the white plywood on top is 3/8" basically so the seam of the two pieces isn't touching the tank. The white plywood I don't know where it came from, older than me probably, and looks like someone used it for a wall, going by the rectangular opening which reminds me of heater vent size. But who knows, as old it is I'm sure that white paint is the good stuff with extra lead! I decided to use that rectangular opening to my advantage to allow me a way to peak under the tank and maybe get an arm in there if need be, the back will remain open however. I bet you could rest a car on this during an 8.0 earthquake and not have it fall.
 
[quote author=dswong01 link=topic=5057.msg62262#msg62262 date=1225751421]
I am sure Mike wouldnt mind you cutting his door/door frame to fit the stand through ;D
[/quote]

Thats what I'm talkin about :)
 
Yeah, that just happens to be the ONLY wall that's running the entire span east-west in my house (aside from the back and front walls) I'm sure that's not load bearing or structural in any way...

BTW, one thing I've been trying to mull over is how to put the corals in the new tank, they're going to be 6 inches deeper in water.
 
Ok external overflow box is built and on there, that took a couple days because I had to butt multiple pieces of acrylic together, as well as wait for the weldon to hold enough that I can work with the new piece.. so that took a day. Unfortunately I had to use #16 because things don't always line up flat over 4 feet of length... but fortunately I could use #16 since this isn't a really large pressure area, the bracing aspect of the thing will work fine with 16 and it's not going to hold a terribly large amount of water.

It's a shallow box, because I don't need a standpipe, this is in a separate room so the sound is a non-issue, not to mention the one I built on my 100g has a 1.5" bulkhead and I don't hear much sound coming out of it anyways. Sorry Doug if you'll want a deeper box, you'll have to build it yourself :D
 
Looks pretty damn good to me :) I was thinking about your last question. I wonder if you could build some kind of rack to raise your corals up 6". Pvc with a whole bunch of tees and 90's.. Just like a big rack...
 
Well got a tad behind schedule yesterday when I found out one of my T5 reflectors didn't have the bulb clip/bracket on it (it's the only thing that holds the bulb up (which is really nice since it allows you to angle the light if you need to). Well I tried pounding a piece of steel (ok it was a random piece of scrap metal) and while I could bend the general shape, there was no way I could get it as small as the other clip (the other clip was much thinner metal too). So I tried a piece of acrylic I saw sitting around, pulled out the heat gun, tried to soften it in which I did a great job at unfortunately it got too soft and didn't cool off quick enough to solidify in the shape I wanted, so I scrapped the idea... unfortunately I was putting the heat gun away and I don't know if I just wasn't thinking or what but the end of it touched my hand and needless to say it was still hot as all hell... end result is I spent 20 minutes cooling my hand off with water, taking advil, and try to sleep off the pain (2nd degree burn), today however the redness is 100% gone, and all is left is a good size blister (about the size of the end knuckle of my finger), but zero pain and no breached skin.... well yeah that killed the rest of the afternoon as far as work.

So today I got back to work, tossed a latex glove + work glove over my "injured" hand (all that's injured is the fact I have a blister) and got the lighting system put together and hung up. Made the aluminum rack for my 6 foot long tank, so I had to modify it a bit (cut here cut there, re-rivet some corners) but it doesn't look too shabby, but I don't need this to look too pretty now. The unfortunate part is due to the way the acrylic is over the tank (the back half is literally all covered in acrylic (and I'm not going to chop it out :p) putting metal halides over it is out, and unfortunately I don't have enough reflectors and endcaps to put as many T5s as I wanted over that area, so I'll settle for 2-T5s over the back, not part of the reflector rack, because I wanted that symmetrical as far as hanging goes. I can always add another couple T5s if I find the parts (I really don't feel like ordering anything more online though)

Ok so here's some pictures, nothing is wired yet, however, the back T5s "rack" is resting on the acrylic, it shouldn't get too hot, I can always put a couple fans there if I need to though. But here's a sneak peak.
 
Back
Top