mr_alberta's 1/2 cube build

[mr_alberta]

Sorry for the delay, didn't get a chance to finish the tank off quite yet, but here are some pictures of the build thus far:


First, the external overflow weir...normally you would cut the weir in BEFORE glueing things together....but I got a little too excited with the Weldon 40 and forgot to do this first As a result, we had to cut it after everything was glued together.


Here is Des helping me align the bottom of the tank after epoxying.



Here is Des and I admiring our work.



Here are my banana hands mixing the Weldon 40.



Here is Russ routering the edge after the Weldon 40 dried (a few days later)


That's all I have for now, hopefully I'll get to finish off the tank tonight at Russ' place and will have more pics soon!

[Joe Reefer]

Whoa! Russ is super focused.

[Delphinus]

Looks .. um .. very constructiony and stuff. Looks nice though.

What are the wooden boxes for, are they just weights for pushing on the seams?

[bignose]

Nice work! Do you have alot of experience building tanks?

[Boomboy]

Go russ go, get that acrylic!!!

[mr_alberta]

Hey Tony, yeah, the wooden blocks are just weights for the joints.

This is the first acrylic tank I've ever built, but I've built a couple glass tanks before and Russ has built a lot of glass tanks before as well. Des and I both used to build acrylic skimmers, reactors, etc so we do have a little bit of acrylic experience.

Weldon 40 is actually not too difficult to work with. The hard part is mixing the two parts together and getting all of the air bubbles out of the solution.

A few things I have learned though is to:

1) order your top and bottom pieces a bit oversized so you can router everything flush and get a nice clean edge

2) peel the paper farther back and use masking tape instead. Now that the epoxy has dried I'm having a heck of a time removing the paper.

The tank is almost almost done, went out to Russ acreage last night to put some of the finishing touches on it. I just need to glue/silicone on my aluminum trim on the tank to hide the messy epoxy and the tank should be done!

[saltynuts]

any more up dates(pics) looking good any way!
i am glad i could help you out with the build( funding)
now i can get my tank build going too!
going to have to plan a reef meet or 2 this fall!