mseepman's 16" starfire nano

[mseepman]

Okay, so here are the beginning pics of the tank build. I work from home and this is going in my office...hopefully something that will relax me during the work day.



This cube was previously running using a cannister filter by a Canreefer in Calgary. I didn't want to use a cannister closed loop and so I needed to deal with the dual bulkheads in the bottom of the tank. I built a 4 x 6 glass overflow for it using egg-crate for the skimming...but since this was my first time doing this...I made the egg-crate too low for where I wanted the water level to be in the tank. To fix this, I attached a 1/4" pane of acrylic over the bottom two rows of the egg crate...very ghetto but I'm hoping it will work.

I painted the back of the tank black since I will be running a SCWD in the back and I didn't want to see it all the time.



In the bottom you can see the beginnings of my planning for what will fit down there. The sump will be a 5 gallon Eclipse tank that I previously ran for FW. I picked up a thin container from BRS to be used for my FW ATO. I plan to do a low-cost ATO using a TOM air pump and a timer. I also plan on using GFO right from the beginning...hopefully to prevent any of the algae outbreaks that so often plague a new tank.

The last thing you see down below is my extremely ghetto chilling fan set-up. I cut a piece of acrylic, carved 3 holes in it and screwed on 3 pc fans from Princess Auto. I hardwired them to a Variable voltage adapter and I plan to bolt it to the wall inside the stand aiming at the sump. My hope is that this will cool the entire tank enough that I don't need to worry about a chiller.

Tonight I plan to dry-fit some of the plumbing and hopefully give you some more pics.