25 gallon cube rebuild

gem

Totally over it
Due to serious neglect after destroying my foot and ankle at the frag swap last year, my tank took a huge turn for the worst. Everything finally got moved to smaller tanks and my disaster of a display tank was taken down for quite a while. Even the two small tanks suffered some neglect because I was still unable to carry 5 gallon jugs of water up two flights of stairs to do water changes.

A few months ago, I finally replaced the floors with laminate and recently my ankle has felt good enough to actually get back to normal stuff!

This time I decided to make the stand look more like a piece of furniture. The stand that I had was the one that I won at the Christmas party a few years ago and it was very wobbly. So I picked up an unfinished stand at Aqualife built for a 65 gallon tank.
 

Attachments

  • standbare.jpeg
    standbare.jpeg
    99.4 KB · Views: 0
I stained it red oak to match the other wood furniture in the living room. and because the tank will sit to one side and not in the middle of the stand, I built a tile top for the opposite side. There is a piece of wood on the side the tank sits on.
 

Attachments

  • standstain.jpg
    standstain.jpg
    39.9 KB · Views: 0
  • tiletop.jpg
    tiletop.jpg
    36.3 KB · Views: 0
Previously I had a 10 gal tank as a sump and that was all that would fit in the stand. I also had a 10 gal tall auto tp off reservior that I had previously hidden in a crappy little cabinet next to the crappy wobbly stand. This is why I went with a larger stand..... I picked up a 15 gal tank (thanks to Kim) and had some glass cut for baffles at the Glass Guru across from Your Reef (thanks for that suggestion Joe)

I siliconed in the baffles and the next day got the sump and top off reservoir installed under the stand. Then started putting everything else in place.
 

Attachments

  • newsump.jpg
    newsump.jpg
    40 KB · Views: 0
  • understand.jpg
    understand.jpg
    35.1 KB · Views: 0
Filled the tank up and a couple days later it cleared. So now it's been running a few weeks. I decided Saturday to transfer all the fish from the small tanks to the 25 so I could get rid of the two other tanks. I JUST WANT ONE!!!!! Got everybody safely into the 25 and was cleaning the sun pod when "snap" - the freakin leg broke off.
 

Attachments

  • tankfilled.jpeg
    tankfilled.jpeg
    86 KB · Views: 0
  • clearedup.jpg
    clearedup.jpg
    32.3 KB · Views: 0
  • brokenlegs.jpeg
    brokenlegs.jpeg
    99.4 KB · Views: 0
I checked Marine depot, google, craigslist, ebay......no way to get spare parts for this light. I hadn't seen any response to my thread as of this morning except the craigslist suggestion from Shawn. So today, I was stuck with the dliemna of how to hang this light. I knew what I wanted to do but not sure what I needed so I wandered around Home Depot putting parts together. It's certainly not an original idea, but figuring out what would work was time consuming. Here/s what I did.....

Some steel pipe and an elbow, black rustoleum spray paint, u-brackets, small blocks of wood, 4 bolts and nuts and nylon locking nuts to hold the black chain..... insta hanger
 

Attachments

  • polehanger.jpeg
    polehanger.jpeg
    84.8 KB · Views: 0
  • paintedclamps.jpg
    paintedclamps.jpg
    41.2 KB · Views: 0
  • attachedpole.jpeg
    attachedpole.jpeg
    87.9 KB · Views: 0
  • almostthere.jpeg
    almostthere.jpeg
    71.6 KB · Views: 0
  • stringnitup.jpeg
    stringnitup.jpeg
    99.5 KB · Views: 0
Tada

Happy fish
 

Attachments

  • tada.jpeg
    tada.jpeg
    83.3 KB · Views: 0
  • happyfishies.jpg
    happyfishies.jpg
    41.5 KB · Views: 0
Yeah. Those. Why the heck couldn't I find them? Every place I looked said discontinued.

Well - no matter now.
 
I like the hanging look better anyway. Good job

Me too. I actually always wanted it hanging but wasn't sure how without hanging it from the ceiling. Thought of this way before but was always hesitant for fear I'd screw it up. I'm happy with it mostly. But now am wishing I had gone with two poles from the back. The one on the side makes glass cleaning with a mag float impossible. Going from the back would have requires draining the tank and sump in order to move the stand out. It also would have made it harder to get the plantation shutter off the hinges to clean. This option is a small sacrifice in the long run.
 
I like it. I've had this for a couple years. The overflow itself is very quiet. Did you get one for your cube?
 
Back
Top