You have a nice tank, Greg!

Well thanks, but it's still going through some growing pains. Or rather, I'm still learning :wink:

I got the canopy/light surround cut yesterday and half glued together tonight. I hope to glue the 2 halves together tomorrow night, fit the door hinges maybe on Wed and cut the trim, then sand it all down and get some primer/sealer on it by the weekend
Looks like I have to work Sat, so maybe I'll get it painted on Sun, and then be able to install it by the end of next week after the paint cures some

I'll be using a pair of 80mm fan guards for the fresh air intakes, and a 140mm fan for exhaust, with a piece of fiberglass mesh covering the fan
The semi-massive rectangular opening will be my access behind a pair of doors
Hopefully, when it's all done, it will sorta match the Aqueon stand, but only by the door widths and the outside dimensions
The wife didn't want it exactly the same as she doesn't like the stand much, so I had to tone down the build and make it a bit sleeker than a bunch of verticle pine planks
Except now it's just big, horizontal pine planks :rolleyes:

This new surround will also allow me to raise the lights another 3", so hopefully I'll be able to turn on some of the other colors I've been missing since the corals started to bleach
It will put the bulbs about 10-1/2" (guesstimate) above the water

http://i749.photobucket.com/albums/x...ps1599b5a4.jpg

http://i749.photobucket.com/albums/x...pseb9542a7.jpg

I won't bore you all with the rest of the build pics for the surround
The basic idea was to have it semi-match the stand, but be a bit sleeker to satisfy the wife
The door widths match the stand when closed, but open fully without a center brace
I used a primer/sealer and then 3 coats of zero VOC gloss white on the inside, and 2 coats of satin black on the outside
If I ever make another one, I'll use a satin black Minwax stain on the outside

I have the light 'just' resting on it on foam to block light bleed, while still having some tension on the support cables
The whole thing comes off in less than a minute if I wanna get crazy 'arms deep'

Here it is all done

http://i749.photobucket.com/albums/x...ps01d361cf.jpg

http://i749.photobucket.com/albums/x...ps3369e07b.jpg

I had to add a bunch of black weather-stripping to the insides of the doors to block light bleed

http://i749.photobucket.com/albums/x...ps0c46705e.jpg

I had to add a support front to back as the thin horizontal face wants to warp inwards

http://i749.photobucket.com/albums/x...ps4edd9825.jpg

And because it's been over a year ...

June 7, 2012

http://i749.photobucket.com/albums/x...d/DSC01083.jpg

June 7, 2013

http://i749.photobucket.com/albums/x...ps9613e7df.jpg

I'm off to make my first batch of home-made fish food

Du'oh! I feel cheated! JK. Build pics are half the reason I come on here :)

The finished project looks great though! Good job! I like the weather striping idea to prevent the light bleed. Nothing worse than sitting down and that one crack shining right in your peripheral vision.

Ya
One last touch up will be to add some deflectors on the end of the light fixture, the air intakes and the fan
Then the only light will be from the glass and we can re-hang our picture without a big stipe of light through it

Couple updates

The RBTA I got from Rich in Feb has become 3 :lol:
I'm super happy they are staying where I placed the first one
They are a bit deflated as I still haven't ramped the lights up fully yet
I keep feeding them about once a month, and they get lots of fish food

http://i749.photobucket.com/albums/x...ps0a3e1a33.jpg

And here's my home-made food in the trays
I used 1/2 bag of scallops, 1 bag of seafood medley, 4oz mysis, a bunch of pacifica plankton, some cyclopeeze, and a healthy dose of garlic and aminomega

I thought for sure I was gonna have problems finding somewhere to freeze all this food but, after I started spreading it out in the trays, it quickly became evident there's lots of room as I only got 315 cubes out of the mix
So with the current fish load, this recipe should last me about 9 1/2 months, unless I need to use more than 1 cube per day
I'll find out tonight when I feed with this stuff for the first time :wink:

Thanks Kien for your post about making the food, and thanks Mindy for the link to buy these silicone trays :smile:

http://i749.photobucket.com/albums/x...ps6116ba92.jpg

Those trays are cool. Smaller than I was expecting. Do you still have the link for them?

Absolutely :smile:

There's 90 cubes per tray and I bought 2 pairs
Some reviews aren't too forgiving, but I had no issues removing a couple cubes tonight for a feeding

Casabella silicone mini ice cube trays

I put mine through the dishwasher when they arrived, and then rinsed them in RO. I'm a bit anal :rolleyes:

Sweet, Thanks!