kien's 150g Room Divider Mixed Reef & Stuff - Page 8

Lance · #71 08-04-2009, 04:57 AM

Hmmmm. I have 2 MP40's and I don't find them noisy. Maybe a little at full throttle, but I run mine at about 75% in Reef Crest mode. I love them.

For flow I was thinking of getting a couple of Vortech MP40s but now I am leaning towards a couple of Tunze 6105s. I've read enough reports about the Vortech being noisy now so I am hesitant. Also, I have a Profilux on order which can control the Tunzes so I don't have to buy a separate Tunze pump controller. Well, that's all for now. Sunday will be exciting, or traumatizing..[/quote]

kien · #72 08-05-2009, 03:33 PM

So last Friday I finished up the canopy. Primed, sealed, painted, put on doors, cut out vents, etc. Everything was going swimmingly with my build.. then I went and slit my wrist. Not on purpose of course! Somehow I managed to brush my wrist across the end of my drill bit

Ouch!

Actually, I think it looks worse than it really was. Nothing a can of spray on bandage can't fix up.

Anyway.. enough of that. On with the show!

kien · #73 08-05-2009, 03:42 PM

Right, so the stand turned out pretty good. Well, at least I like it. I used the exact same plans as I did with my 90g tank. Basically we have 8 1x2 leg supports with panels attached to both of the short sides (overflow and return). Cutouts on both of those panels to support a fan cooling system (air in one end out the other to provide laminar air cooling if needed). The top rails are 1x4s for a frame braced by 1x2s running along the long edge. Pretty stiff and stable. The combo light fixture will sit on top of the canopy. nearly 6 foot long panels attached by hinges for access.

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Both of the long panels on the canopy open for easy access to either side.

The 1"x3" panels that I used for the top part of the canopy was pretty flimsy so they needed some sort of support, especially for a 6 foot span. My original gut feeling was that I was going to have to put a leg or two in the middle on either side. I really didn't want to do this because i liked the clean wide open space that I had for working with. What I came up with was a brace using a 1x2 screwed into the 1x3 top panels. The 1x2 sits on its 1" side so it is nice and stiff. It really only needs to support the weight of the doors, which aren't that heavy. Even though the combo light will be sitting on top of the canopy the legs of the combo light actually sit on far ends which are supported by the legs, so no worries about sagging or stress on that long 6 foot run. You can see the brace that I painted gray just behind the doors.

And finally, a full tank shot from the living room.

mseepman · #74 08-05-2009, 04:37 PM

This is a great build. You've done a really nice job with that canopy.

Thanks for documenting so well, you've given me a few ideas on how I want to do things in my new tank.

Dez · #75 08-05-2009, 04:43 PM

Beautiful work there. Don' even need fish, I could stare at those pictures all day.....well maybe not all day, but you get the point.

Every build has injuries hey? I put a robertson #2 bit right through my thumb while building my stand.

kien · #76 08-05-2009, 05:10 PM

Thanks guys :-) I'm trying to document as much detail as possible just for that reason. Before I ventured into this build I combed through just about every build thread in the Tank Journal section. I have nearly all of your builds subscribed to and they all gave me great ideas for how I wanted to set up this tank. So really I'm just paying it back :-)

JDigital · #77 08-05-2009, 05:12 PM

Loving your build Kien... Mostly because of those excellent photos..

kien · #78 08-05-2009, 05:50 PM

The time has finally come. This is probably the one aspect of any build that is on everyone's mind before they even get started.. the aquascaping! It has kept me awake at night for many many moons now (that and the whole worrying about leaks and flooding). So many great examples out there. Do I stack, epoxy, rod, zip tie, spray?? Do I do an apple stand, bonsai tree, mounds, lagoon ? Lots of stickies and napkins with funny looking squiggles on it that may or may not resemble live rock were sacrificed. Here's how it went down.

I decided to break up my aquascaping into 3 sections. Each section would be aquascaped in a fashion that I saw appealing from other examples and my past history with rock work. It ends up being a little bit of a mash up but I liked the end result.

The first grouping, closest to the overflow is a stacking of rocks with bridges and caves. I call them, the Caves. However, I didn't want to just stack the rocks like I did in the past. For one, I never did like the idea of putting live rock right on the glass. I know its fine and everyone else does it but that's not for me. I also wanted to stand the base rock up in more interesting stances rather than relying on their widest most stable side. Okay.. so how to do that? First I needed an anchoring system for my base rocks. What I came up with was the use of acrylic frag plugs, plugged into the bottom of the rocks, with the acrylic plugs glued to a sheet of acrylic that would sit on the glass. What I needed to do first was to make a some what level surface for my frag plugs. I simply rolled the rock around until I decided on which part of the rock I wanted to sit on the ground. If that part of the rock wasn't perfectly flat, I just took a chisel and made it flat(er). I used an acrylic sheet to test for flatness as I chiseld away.

Once I was happy with its flatness I choose 3 points where the frag plugs would go and proceeded to drill the holes for the frag plugs.

Note: If you ever try drill live rock, take it slow! Start out with a smallish pilot hole, then work your way up to your final hole size/drill bit. If you start off with your largest bit right away chances are you will end up fragging your live rock.

Once the hole was drilled I tested the hole to make sure it fit my frag plug snuggly.

Then I proceeded to do the remaining holes. Once all of my holes were drilled and plugged with the frag plugs, I lined up the acrylic sheet again to make sure it was still level/flat. It wasn't so I simply made some holes bigger and and filled them with epoxy to straighten the plug. At this point the plugs simply sit into the holes, they are not secured in the holes in any way. I wanted to be able to place the rock onto the plugs later after I had put the acrylic base sheet into the tank first.

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Once I was happy with the fit I put gel glue (loclite from home depot) onto each of the frag plugs and place the entire structure onto the acrylic sheet where I wanted it.

I had to hold it in place for a few seconds to let the glue dry enough so that I could then lift the rock up from the frag plugs, leaving the frag plugs behind.

I repeated the whole process for the 4 legs of my main support legs for the Caves.

Next I had to decide what the upper structure of the Caves was going to look like and how to attach them. Again, I didn't want to just lay or stack rock on top of the base rock. What I decided to do was to make acrylic dowels of various lengths. These are dowels made out of a 1/2" acrylic rod (hallow).

The upper rock was light(ish) so I didn't feel like I needed an entire rod inserted into the rock. Once I knew where I wanted a piece to attach to, I drilled a hole into each piece that was the size of the dowel. Inserted the dowel and set them together. For a little extra security I used epoxy and/or zip ties to fasten them together.

Finally, once I was happy with all my varous sub structures I put the sheet of acrylic into the tank and then started to position all of the base rock onto their corresponding support plugs. I'll admit, it was tricky to line up the holes again.

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kien · #79 08-05-2009, 05:51 PM

And here they are, the Caves.

kien · #80 08-05-2009, 06:06 PM

Next up was the middle section of the tank where I wanted a bonsai tree like structure. I knew that this pieces was going to sit funny and be very top heavy so i didn't want to rely on the previous method for securing rock to the acrylic sheet. Instead I just picked out the largest and heaviest rock I had in my collection and used it as my base rock. I then epoxied and zip tied various flat pieces together to make the arms or branches of the tree.

Here again I am using an acrylic dowel to help secure an arm of the bonsai tree.

There are two arms in total with a vary large flat tonga piece that sits on top. Huh.. I thought I had taken a picture of of the entire structure but I guess I didn't. I guess you'll have to wait until the full tank shot to see it. Sorry, here's a shot of me drilling live rock, enjoy.