tosiek's 40g upgrade DIY

[tosiek]

hola,

Started to work on my upgrade and descided on taking some snapshots through the process.

Volume measurements are 20"x20" with a height of 25" and it comes out to around 40 gallons. Glass is 3 sides starfire with standard glass for the back. Going with a custom external overflow, not the hang on's, and cut baffles into the back piece of glass itself, planning on running a durso overflow 1" out and 3/4" in. Still haven't descided where to put the intake or how i want to run the intake. Stand and trim on tank is going to be white oak, natural stain with a laquer.

so.... here are a few pics of the process so far. Pardon the blurry pics, i think its time for a new camera.

Look at the difference between the starfire and the normal glass, normal glass is on the left, starfire right.

Oak trim to help relieve some stress off the glass and help cover that waterline, left side is the bottom piece and right is the top. The left one is at a 90degree angle although in the pic for some reason doesn't show it. Wierd angle....hhmm...

bottom piece cut and assembled with the bottom glass inside for measurement.

my fuge/sump i made out of 3/8 plexi i had laying around, 18x14x13 totals 15 gallons more or less. Its a little messy, plexi was all scratched up and wasn't about to waste my time running for new unscratched plexi for something that will behidden inside my cabinet.

Back piece of glass with the baffles. Used a diamond bit tile saw, cut it surprisingly quick but a little sloppy, going to sand it with a dremel tommorrow and fix it up.

more updates when i have the tank fully assembled and when the stand is fiished.

 

[masterswimmer]

Looks like it's going to be a nice DIY system, top to bottom. Great start. Looking forward to following the progress. Keep those pix coming.

swimmer

 

[scarf_ace1981]

looks great so far. nice comparison shot between starfire and reg glass.

 

[spykes]

can you put some build pics of the glass tank build?

 

[tosiek]

Some more process pics. Dry assembled the tank and painted the back pane of glass a dark blue and prepped it for the overflow, along with tailoring the top and base to the glass sizes, forgot to give room for the glass so i'm off by a 1/16" and the ends of the panels are off by a little more than 1/32" or so. Also had to dremel the cuts in the glass so there are no sharp edges, tried to even out the baffles but was chipping more than i was grinding away so i let them be.

Full shot without the back

With the back

the overflow, masked the shape of the overflow so the silicone holds better. Going to be an external overflow, think i might have to epoxy the inside once its assembled and glued on. I have 1 part acrylic pour i can coat the inside with.

I added supports to the bottom pane of glass although i probably didnt need it at all.

I screwed up and didn't leave a big enough bead of silicone, realized it when it all dried so i couldn't fix it. Its gonna be covered with sand so its ok=0)

I left a 1/8 lip around the top in case i wanted to add a hood in the future, just something to grab onto. I have a lumenarc 250w DE HQI fixture going over i will be suspending over the top because the reflector looks so cool all by itself.

What that same molding looks like from the inside, inside the wood is cut 1/2 (i think i can be wrong, might be more) higher than the outside to cover the waterline

Next step is getting the wood into the spray shop, stain it and laquer it, and start on the stand. And find a place that sells 1" spa flex PVC since home depot is out for some reason along with fittings.

 

[masterswimmer]

Tony, that's kickin my friend. Very nice work.

R

 

[jhale]

looking nice! a real wood frame wow

 

[tosiek]

Ok, finally an update on my tank. Sorry about the bad pics, i have to get myself a new camera and learn to take good pictures.

Its been a month since i installed it and moved everything from my 24 gallon JBJ nano to the new tank. Total water volume is 55+ gallons. My time spent lately has been redoing and fixing the various problems i came upon. Its my first time setting up a real SW tank and had no knowledge at all about any of this beforehand so pardon the mistakes. Also alot of the stuff was done in a rush and is temporary due to bad timing, like the light in the fuge and the fuge itself which has to be redone. Note to self: NEVER do things quickly thinking you will go back and redo it the right way once everythign stabilizes, it'll never get done =0)

Alot of small problems with the tank these past few weeks and i'm currently experiencing a small algae problem because i wasn't running the phos removal the right way. Also had a problem with my external overflow leaking and almost flooding my house (long story, but never work on a crucial part of the tank when your very tired :bigeyes: ). I'm in process of getting more LR and a larger cleaning crew to help with the algae problem.

I forgot to add process pictures of the stand beeing built but i didn't have the time. The stand was made of 1/2 inch ply for the inside box with 1/2 inch Rift cut white oak ply for an outer shell and to finish off the stand.

Fish in the tank:

False percula clown
Marine betta (comet)
Squami Anthias 2 female 1 male
Copperband
McCoskers Wrasse

anyways here are the pics.

Full tank shot.

Full tank shot
I'm taking care of the overflow, it was painted but had a small complication so had to remove the overflow and scrape everything and then remount it and repaint the back.

Lumenarc 250w De HQI metal halide running a pheonix 14k bulb, suspended it from the ceiling which i still need to put metal plates to cover the holes i made. The only thing i don't like about the way the hanging light is set up is the wiring, which makes the pendant tilt because of the weight of the wire. The only other option would have been to run the wires into the cieling and do all the connections up there but that would require cutting holes and repatching/repainting.

I love this photo. This is what the room looks like at night :teeth:

Here is the sump area. Rebuilding the sump/fuge in a week or two to make it larger and to work out the kinks. Remora skimmer and running a phosphate reactor which i just got this weekend to counter the algae problem that developed. 2 120mm fans and trying out a agro-lite bulb i found in HD. Have to rewire the lighting.

Garden of Zoo's

Acans thanks to the pirate from downtown brooklyn :wink1:

You have to see the colors on this acro frag in person. The picture doesn't do it justice. but the polyp extension is amazing.

Fuzzy the Starfish :biggrinpa

Fuzzy relaxing next to the purple taco (Thanks Russ and Jim :approve: ) all thats missing is a cigarrete in his hand....

Thats it for now. Once i get the LR finished and stock it up some more i'l post more bad pics with my camera Have to reposition alot of things once i do that also.

 

[DEEPWATER]

Great work tony .

Look like youre off to a great start

Good luck with

Ronen

 

[bad coffee]

Looking good

 

[masterswimmer]

T, really sweet looking. Nice and clean. I can just picture that cig :biggrin:

Keep up the good work and get more pix.

R

 

[prattreef]

Wow Tony really nice job. Can you try to get a nice shot of the McCoskers please

 

[Tonyscoots84]

Looking great T.. keep it up ..

 

[tosiek]

I tried for 10 mins and this is the best. He's a quick little bugger and settled himself into the small school of anthias.

 

[tosiek]

Little delayed update. Tanks up and running for a little over 2 months now since i did the move from the 24g. Redid the sump/fuge along with redoing my plumbing 4 times which is still making noises and added 30lbs of LR. New LS also =0) I also aquired a sweet tooth for Echno's and started my collection :thrash: Also found a small 3/4" Baby hippo tang =0) And yes i know my tanks too small for it when he grows up.

Here is some eye candy.
As always little improvement with pics but still not as good as J's pics or in person. :sad2:

Corner Shot.

Frogspawn that i got last frag swap from Jim/Russ =0)

Acan From Ronen, have a baby neon green head popping out on the underside, too small to get a pic of :biggrin:

The large pink Echnophilia (6 1/2"-7" round :bigeyes: ), Thanks Jason :approve: I also got 2 small frags of a dark with green highlight echno thats colored up nicely so far :biggrin:

MMmmmm.. Crocea! and no the GSP isn't laying on him, moved it and couldn;t take another good pic.

Colonial Tunicates!!

Bob doing his morning stretches.....

Few rics Near my Marine Betta's hang out spot.

And my Marine Betta. Russ/Jim he's doing great

Goniopora =0) Still hasn't adjusted to the lights. Been 2 weeks but he's coming out more and more. Does great after a target feeding though.

P. Maldivensis. Can't see it in the photo but each mouth lights up with this neon orange glow. Can't get a better pic of it, thats the best out of 20 i made. Its still in the coloring up process but doing great.

I couldn't get any at all of the fish up close. They were just too quick. LMK if i'm doing something wrong or somethings out of place :scratchch

 

[Awibrandy]

I really like this tank. So nicely done.:smile: Best wishes with it.

 

[masterswimmer]

Tony, looking awesome. You've got some real nice pieces in there. I've got one of those frogspawns too. Out of all the different frogspawn morphs, I think that one is by far the nicest. Mine is a real slow grower. How about yours?

swimmer

 

[noodleman]

i really like that starfish pic :lol2:

 

[tosiek]

Yeah Russ it is a slow grower but worth it. Its doubled in size since i got it last swap so its not that bad. Those ricordea developed orange mouths =0)

I swear i have the little starfish who has dreams of beeing an acrobat or a gymnist. That pic was part of a series that he had as he was flipping across this ledge :biglaugh:

 

[KathyC]

Nice set up!! I especially like the mix of corals you've put together in there!

Is it just me or was the starfish named Fuzzy on the first page & Bob on the second...? Maybe he's really Fuzzy Bob the Acrobatic Starfish?