So I've not posted anything for a while, mostly because not a lot has happened - apart from my ballasts exploding. Really, they actually did explode..
Anyway after much messing around a new ballast from Canadian Tire has the fishes back in the daylight again. So there's time for my current project - the upgrade...
It's going to be the slowest upgrade ever as I'm buying bits as I go. I've fixed up the broken 75 gallon tank I got my hands on and now have finally finished building the stand.
I wanted to have all the sump, skimmer etc hidden out of sight so it had to be built as a cabinet as opposed to a stand. I wanted it to match the rest of our furniture so it's made of a mix of maple and birch faced plywood. Anyway here come the photos - angles are a little odd as it's in the smallest bedroom and I couldn't get far enough away from it for sensible photos.
In a fit of madness I actually made the door handles myself out of some scrap maple because I wanted them to match. Me? Obsessive? No!!!
And an out of focus one of the box beams that support the top.
There are a few things that I'd have done differently, perhaps not using hard white maple for the doors and the front of the cabinet. It's nice wood, but they're not kidding about the 'hard' bit - you could make car parts out of the stuff!
I'd planned on using ready planed dimensional lumber, but it was really expensive so I bought larger rough lumber, then re-sawed and planed it myself. In fact the price difference was so big that it actually paid for a thickness planer... So I now have a new toy as well!
