Silverado61's Stand and Tank build.

[silverado61]

Update: I cut the egg crate to fit the tank. I even took the time to grind off the burs from the cuts. We're talking over 100 burs. Talk about tedious. But it was worth it to get the nice clean look. Here's a few pics.


I cut it into four sections for 2 reasons.
1: I've got the brace going down the middle of the tank.
2: The front two sections will make it easier for maintenance and feeding.
I checked the effect that the egg crate will have on the LEDs and it actually makes it a little brighter in the tank.

I even started staining and polying the stand.

The front right panel on the base is removable to make it easier to work on the sump so I'll be staining and varnishing it separately from the stand.
Everything but the canopy has been stained with a lot of help from my awesome wife, Dee.
I just put the first coat of varnish on the base panel, the canopy door and the columns.

My Mother in-law passed away last Saturday and is being put to rest Wednesday so I'm going to wait till afterwards to proceed because my wife wants to continue helping me. She's been almost as involved with this project as I have. She has a very creative mind and is one of the reasons I decided to go fairly simple with the trim.

The doors should be here tomorrow. WOOHOO! I can't wait!

 

[silverado61]

The DIY rock has been at 8.2 PH for a few weeks now. Both the API and the RedSea tests have been giving me the same numbers so I went out and got a Seachem test kit and it shows the same results.

Hmm... I wonder if it's done curing. I've got a few more weeks till I'm ready for it so I think I'll just let it churn for a while longer.

 

[trigger40]

looking good

 

[silverado61]

Well, the stand is finished. The doors are in and installed. The DIY rock is done curing. Everything has been set up in the sun room. The electricity is on line. The water is in with the DIY rock, live sand and the live rock just came in yesterday. Everything is ready to go. The cycle has started.

If anyone is interested in seeing photos, let me know and I'll post them. I think the damned thing looks awesome, but I don't think I have any readers so this is a test to see if anyone is still keeping up with this.

 

[flower]

Well, the stand is finished. The doors are in and installed. The DIY rock is done curing. Everything has been set up in the sun room. The electricity is on line. The water is in with the DIY rock, live sand and the live rock just came in yesterday. Everything is ready to go. The cycle has started.

If anyone is interested in seeing photos, let me know and I'll post them. I think the damned thing looks awesome, but I don't think I have any readers so this is a test to see if anyone is still keeping up with this.

What do you mean IF ANYONE IS INTERESTED???? Post those photos!

 

[silverado61]

Lol will do. Soon.

 

[novahobbies]

I think this was buried for me.....of course I'm not on SWF nearly as much as I used to be. However, I just read through the whole thread. Don't stop taking pictures...take it from me, you'll love having a detailed build journal down the road!

The tank and setup look amazing. I'm personally not a fan of DIY rock, but I'll admit that your rock arrangement looks really nice and I can't wait to see it colored up after it's been in the tank for 6 months. I was particularly impressed with the way you built the stand for the tank. At first I was confused because the size of the tank hardly seemed to match the stand setup, but once you got it all skinned and set up, I'm amazed at how much it looks like a built-in entertainment wall!! Better than watching TV, I promise you that. Good job so far....I look forward to seeing it stained and varnished!

 

[silverado61]

Soon. I promise. I'm hoping this weekend. If I can quit taking photos that is.

 

[silverado61]

Well, the stand is finally finished. WOO HOO!
The last coat of polyurethane is on. It's dry as a bone and it's in the house.
A little background on the house first: The garage is right next to the sunroom where the tank was going and there is a 36" door going onto the room. But just inside the door is a short three foot hallway followed by a wall mounted furnace that heats the room in the winter time. Giving me 22" of space to get the base in the house (the base is 24" from front to back). That wouldn't do. On the opposite side of the room (and on the opposite side of the house) is another 36" door with tons of room to get it in the house.

My first plan was to recruit four friends, load the base in the back of my pickup and take it all the way around the house and bring it in through the 36" tons of room door of the sunroom where the tank is going to sit.

Dee (my wife's name) had a brilliant idea. Why not take the cover off the furnace? "That would give you four more inches of room."
Awesome. That gives back the 36" of room we needed. Why didn't I think of that? Duh! That's one of the many reasons I married that woman. She's a thinker like me and together we work great together on projects like this.

So, she took the cover off the furnace and, with the help of my son, we put the base on a four wheel moving dolly. We strapped it on, and away we went. Through the garage door and through the sunroom door with just two tiny inches to spare. We had to bring it in facing the right way because there was no room to turn it around once we got it in.

I had to set the stand down 2ft away from the wall it was going against so I could hook up the electrical and the plumbing but the room has carpet and after we had the tank on and all the wiring and pipes hooked up the carpet would be nearly impossible to move into position so I laid down two 6ft lengths of 2x4 so we could slide the base and tank into position. Worked like a charm.

So (drum roll please) here's what it looks like now.

Sorry, the room is just small enough that we couldn't get a full picture of the whole stand. I, for one, am pretty damn proud of all the hard work that went into this build.
I'm still glad that we went with the simple 1x2 aspen trim. We think that anything else would have taken away from the tank which is supposed to be the focal point of the whole project.
My next post will be about the setup of the tank and refuge area.
Wadda ya think?
Sweet, right?

 

[2quills]

Looks great! And it didn't even take two years to build lol.

 

[silverado61]

Once we had the stand and tank into position we put the columns and the canopy on.

Then I installed the lights in the tank and sump, the return pump, the power heads, skimmer, algae scrubber and the ATO system. Then ran all the cords to the power room on the side of the stand. That alone took almost a day. Then tested everything to make sure it ran just like it did when I did the "dry run" in the garage. Everything tested green. Perfect!

I then made no less than 4 trips to Walmart to get R/O water for a total of 140 gallons. Put it all into three 33g Rubbermaid garbage cans. Added the reef salt, heaters, thermometers and power heads and let it churn while I ordered the 80lbs of live sand and 25lbs of live rock to be delivered to the house. Bringing the salinity up to 1.024 and the temp to a comfortable 78deg.

While I was waiting for the water to finish, I worked on a plan on how I wanted to arrange the 60lbs of DIY rock in the tank. I placed the two base pieces (If you remember, I had to build plywood forms to make these so that they were the basic shape of the bottom of the tank only half the size.) into the bottom and went to work arranging the rest of the rock. I wanted to make sure there were plenty of ledges for coral both in the full spectrum of light at different levels and some in shaded areas. Plus crawl spaces and hiding places for all my critters. Not to mention swimming areas for the few fish I plan.

The sand arrived first as planed so I poured about 6 inches of water in and put in 70lbs of the live sand in. The other 10lbs went into the sump. Then I added the rest of the water slowly so I wouldn't cloud the tank up too much. Didn't work. It still clouded up so bad I couldn't see any DIY rock. LMAO

Then I hit the all the breakers, flipped all the switches and watched and listened as my creation came to life. "IT'S ALIVE! IT'S ALIVE!"

Wow! I actually did it! I made this with my own two hands and a lot of help and input from my wife. (What a team!) This 6'4" 340lb guy almost broke down in tears I was so happy. I love this hobby!

But, lol, I still couldn't see anything in the tank. So I forced myself to walk away from it till it cleared up.

Three days later, the live rock showed up and I was excited all over again. I opened the box and looked at my treasure. What the hell??? It looked like a bunch of little pieces for a nano tank! Son of a biotch! So, I used the last 30 gallons of water I had for rinsing the rock ( Julian Sprung advises against any scrubbing and to me, he is marine guru.) then I started taking out these small pieces of rock to rinse them. What? There were bigger pieces of rock underneath. Cool, I thought. So I started to take those pieces out and what did I find? This beautifully huge piece of rock at the bottom. swf.com, you rock! No pun intended.

I took all these great finds, rinsed them all, and since this was a new setup there is no curing required I found a home for each and every one of these rocks. The smaller pieces went into the sump. The rest.... into my new tank!

(Another drum roll please.) This is the arrangement I came up with.
[/ATTACH]
In the first picture, on the far right, you'll see the huge piece of live rock I got. I put a chunk of DIY rock underneath it so it looks like it's sitting on top of the sand. It's locked in so it's not going anywhere.

In the second, picture you'll see how I arranged the flat pieces of DIY rock for ledges topping it off with a good sized piece of live rock to seed it.

In the third picture, in the center, you'll see my huge piece of DIY rock. You'll notice that it has tunnels. There's a total of five entrances.Three in the front. Two more in the back. I had two pieces of dead coral rock that looked really cool so I put those on top and capped it with live rock to seed that area.

In pictures four and five, look at the veins and the character of these rocks!

In the sixth picture is the crowning glory of the tank! The monster rock!

The last picture the tank under blue actinic lights.

Well, wadda ya think everybody?

 

[silverado61]

Looks great! And it didn't even take two years to build lol.

LOL. I know, but I had a lot of help from you and everybody else here.

 

[silverado61]

After putting everything in, I put a piece of shrimp in a nylon stocking and tossed it into the tank. Let the cycle begin!

Almost a week later, I had a soft spike. Ammonia spike at .75 and Nitrites spiked at .25.

Now: Ammonia is zero. Nitrites are at zero. Nitrates are at 10.

Tomorrow I'll test again. If the results are the same, I'll do a 10% water change.

In the mean time, I've got Copepods, amphipods and a cuc on order.

 

[trigger40]

looks great! what fish do you plan to get?

 

[silverado61]

I don't really know yet. I do know I need a couple of sifters.
Maybe three others. Coral safe of course.

 

[silverado61]

Just a quick add on cause I forgot to mention, my diatoms are in full bloom.

 

[trigger40]

that means you are doing something right.

 

[trigger40]

I don't really know yet. I do know I need a couple of sifters.
Maybe three others. Coral safe of course.

i think you should get a trigger.

 

[silverado61]

Yea, I figured you'd say something like that. How tall are you again????

 

[trigger40]

ohhh i see... your trying to size up! lol im about 6'1'' 220lbs. id like to say im phisicaly fit because i do weight lifting and football at my school. by the way our new coach is fsu's heismen trophy winner charlie ward! he has really turned our program around. we used to be one of thoes teams that never won a game and now we have a winning season so far! but nice tank!