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Old 05-14-2010, 01:28 AM
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Milad Milad is offline
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Sorry this took so long for an update but I did the plumbing, then got mad at the plumbing and have since removed it (picture show old plumbing) and I will be redoing it tonight I think. I also wanted to wait to get you guys pictures of the newest "design" i came up with and got someone from work to help me create. Im very impressed with it, its in the last pictures on this post (dont you dare skip ahead, read!).

I was sitting at work thinking.... "Milad, where can you get some better magnets to hold up the panels of your stand"
While I was thinking that.... these were sitting on my desk..


Eureka!!
Hardrive have super strong rare earth magnets in them! Well when we decommsion a PC we destroy (physically) the hardrives for security reasons.
So here is a quick how-to to remove the magnets
First unscrew the side that has all the writing on it (should be about 7 screws). you need special screwdriver for these.

then just peel it open

pry the magnets out (some are screwed in, others are not)

And boom, two magnets (each harddrive has two, one upper and one lower)


these magnets will tear skin so they can hold up my panels easily.


now off to the electrical and plumbing....

So what I went and did was grab a bunch of plumbing and electrical items from Rona (the how to people) and started installing away. I wanted to split the load of the aquarium between two breakers and it happens that where this aquarium is going, there are two sockets that are on different breakers! and after reading the thread on the GFCI thing I decided to throw two in for the fun of it.

These are just two GFCI outlets in a plastic box. This was probably one of the easiest things to do but one of the scariest to turn on because ive never actually done electrical wiring though my old days of car stereo installer and trailer wiring installer came in handy

The two wires are running through the gray conduit on the right. I ended up using 14 guage wire

used a tension reducing thingy at the end of the conduit, simple to install and only couple bucks






I needed some overflow boxes and I went through a bunch of different designs and ended up with one on the inside of the aquarium. One thing I hate about this is that it takes up so much room and looks ugly..... until I came up with a way to fix that (more later). I used bunch of 3/8 in glass for this. Was about 15 bucks per piece.



This was my first silcone job and I think I did ok. I was surprised how strong the silcone was!

So one thing that scared me about buying this used tank is that the rim was brittle in one area and cracked. I dont want water everywhere so I read around and came up with a plan. First... try to seal it



I cant remember what I used for the seal but its for patching hot water tanks. I then decided that wasnt enough so i did the following:



Clean eh? I thought so. Two 3/8in x 27 1/8in x 3in glass. I had 1/16in on each side to fill with silicone once I taped them into place. They came out really nice and I think they will add a bit of extra support to the tank to ease my mind.

Im not really showing the plumbing because I think I did it wrong so i ripped it out, but we did leak test it before i ripped it out



for some reason this fish didnt want to go in, hmmmm



tunze wave box thanks to mike olsen!


as you can see by the above picture I threaded them on the outside when I was suppose to slip them on the inside! not only that, i didnt use purple premier! doh

So now you are asking yourself why I had two overflow, well, this is a herbie setup so I pulled some strings at work and got my guys to cut me up some arcylic




Looks nice right?! WRONG!! I didnt like it at all. It looks two clunky, to much stuff, to many 90s. This is why i didnt want the overflows inside. UGH dammit
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But wait.. what did I say at the begining of the thread? In comes my co-workers with their
holy **** elite skills.







now thats what im talking about!!! hope you like!

Last edited by Milad; 05-23-2010 at 01:59 AM. Reason: changed wire to 14guage
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