180g peninsula tank build - First ever aquarium

[Milad]

So, about 5 weeks ago 3 gold fish came into our home because of Persian New Year. Well these poor goldfish were stuck in a little 3gallon tank. I decided that they deserve more!!! I embarked on a mission to find these goldfish a new home where they can swim free....

One thing lead to another and I bought a 180g tank.... SW tank... soooo ya, goldfish are still stuck in the 3gallon one! DOH!

Anyways, this is my first aquarium so I may be doing alot of things wrong so take my pictures and posts with a grain of salt (instant ocean salt)

Hardware so far:
180g tank
70g sump
6' coralife aqualight pro 150 watt with new 13K geismann's
2 tunze 6105s powerheads
1 tunze 6215 wavebox
PENAIR SKIMMER (Euroreef 250 copy) made by Pen-air Aquatics(8"body & 24"tall) sedra9000 pump with gate valve
SICCE 5.0 return pump
Marine Tech Calcium Reactor
1/4 Pacific Chiller
Neptune Systems Apex Controller

Livestock:
~250lbs live rock
2 cinnamon clowns
1 porcelain shirmp
1 yellow clown goby
1 green candy cane


Quick links:
Initial pictures of tank and sketch up model
Building the stand
Stand is done, tank is up on stand
Painting the back and adding new bulkheads
Electrical, Plumbing, Overflowboxes, Magnets
Filling with water - finished plumbing
First fish added
Mesh installed - Desk view
Automation setup
First Corals/Anenome
Full tank shots and Livestock update July 20th 2010
Overbending wood to straighten it
Skimmer Silencer for gurgling noise from intake

[Milad]

The tank before I got my hands on it:


Here is a sketch up of what the final product is going to look like (But with fish in it!)... that is if I do everything right..

[Milad]

I thought this was going to be the easiest part of this whole thing but it seems this is the hardest!! I wanted to stand to look really good. This aquarium is "decor" to me and needs to fit in with the rest of the house. Most of the pieces in the house are black laminate so I wanted to match this... simple right? sorta of

Turns out laminate shows ANY bump, dip, etc on the wood. So the first batch of wood I got was totally wrong. So I had to go back and cut two more 4x8 pieces of wood. The stuff that I really needed was plywood G1S (which stands for Good 1 Side). This stuff is sanded and free of bumps, notches etc on 1 side of the wood. Its a bit pricey but its nice. I bought 1/2in sheets. The sketch up diagram worked really well to get the measurements needed. I made 4x8 rectangles in sketchup and

The laminate I bought was called Fromica (sp?). 4x8 sheet of the stuff is $65 bucks but the store I was at had 2x4 sheets for $5 so I bought 16 of them.

Here is the stand with the crappy wood on top


My carpentar buddy came over and laughed at me for buying the wrong wood but he came up with the idea of filling in and sanding the top half so we could save the big pieces of wood. Its gota be smooth for the laminate to go on. We used drywall filler because thats all we had at the time but the stuff that you are really suppose to use is called "Poly filla". Then we just used a sanding block to smooth it down.
Here he is sanding and filling.



The laminate we cut with a table saw but you can use a laminate cutting tool which is really cheap ($6). Slapped 1 coat of contact cemant ($13 for 930ml - ended up needing 3 of these) on laminate, 1 coat on wood.... then you wait till you can touch it and it doesnt leave anything on your finger and you add another coat just to the wood (it soaks the first coat up). once you can touch it and it doesnt leave anything on your finger you stick the two pieces together. Kinda easy once you do 1 or 2. After that, we took a rotor to trim off the 1/8 excess laminate.






This took us something like 6 hours to do.... lol.

[kien]

wow, there are some major tools being used in this build! Looks good, and I'm really jealous that you've got bamboo growing in your backyard!

[Milad]

Ya i got lucky i got a friend thats a carpentar.
Dont look at the yard!! it needs to get mowed and cleaned up but it keeps raining here.

[kien]

Originally Posted by Milad

Ya i got lucky i got a friend thats a carpentar.
Dont look at the yard!! it needs to get mowed and cleaned up but it keeps raining here.

ya, that is just terrible! I feel so sorry for you poor souls.. it rains so much that your backyards become a disgustingly lush palette of green flora :P

[Leah]

Originally Posted by Milad

Ya i got lucky i got a friend thats a carpentar.
Dont look at the yard!! it needs to get mowed and cleaned up but it keeps raining here.

It rains in NorthVan??? I do not believe you. Born and raised there.

Can't wait to see what you do with the tank.

[Milad]

Sorry I didnt get pictures of my building this mesh top but it was really simple. I bought the 1/4in poly clear mesh from http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forums/...ble-price.html

EDIT: it now looks like you can get it from BRS too http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/store/...ing-7-x-3.html

it was a bit expensive to get it to canada but I didnt mind. I went and bought some aluminum framing for window screens from Rona which cost about 50 bucks with all the tools need (you gota get the roller tool, so hard without it) and then just follow instructions.. very simple to do

I think it looks great
The main reason for it is so the fishies dont get away. I dont want a dried up fish on my floor! I didnt put arcylic/glass because i didnt want to trap the heat mainly.

BTW the fish feeder just sits on the top of mesh and drops pellets through the mesh. I didnt need to widen any holes. worked great actually.

Here are some shots of it on





Here is what i look at everyday now while posting messages on this board...

[Lampshade]

Do i see an alliance druid? poor guy. Nice tank though, good setup.

[Milad]

yup alliance druid, glad this season hopefully!