34 gallon frag tank, lotsa questions/build thread!!!

[hoohoohdillyo]

I'll try my best to get a video of it up and running tomorrow, but for tonight you guys will get a glimpse into what the top of the stand will look like. The rain really messed me up today as well as using an old can of aluminum speckled paint that didn't dry correctly. I was able to complete about 3/4 of the stand before I realized the front supporting legs were 3 1/2" too long, so back to the table saw I go in the A.M. I also need to go to Home Depot and buy some more sand paper since the old nasty aluminum paint gunked up about 15-20 sheets today. Hopefully I will have it setup on the stand in the garage tomorrow.

To start off I used 1/2" Blondewood ply from Lowes... Home Depot is now using wood from China (at least the stuff I was looking at) and there is no way I am buying Chinese wood. I took some tools from the garage as well as some nails and a scrap piece of 2"x4" and hammered them into the wood. The tools and 2x4 with nails in it was then used to make marks, dents, scrapes, holes... So on to "age" the plywood.

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After making the worm holes, dings, dents, and everything in between to my likings I gave it a once over sand job and grabbed the darkest stain I have to fill in the holes.

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[hoohoohdillyo]

I'm not stopping here as I want this thing to look like its old, beat up, and been around the block a few times. So I grabbed the colors of spray paint I wanted and went to work. Starting with the black, then white, then aluminum flake.

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Okay, now I know this thing looks messy, but I swear I think I know what I am doing here! After painting I then waited about 4 hours for dry time before sanding. Sadly as stated above the aluminum paint didn't work correctly and ended up clogging more sand paper than it was worth. I have a new can and should have just used that instead of the old stuff, but who knew right?

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I took some videos throughout the process to share it from my viewpoint instead of by pictures.


This one is me explaining the process of how to create the distressed look.

http://s656.photobucket.com/user/hoohoodillyo/media/Aquarium/SAM_8606_zpsadfa69ad.mp4.html

This one shows the process before the painting.

http://s656.photobucket.com/user/hoohoodillyo/media/Aquarium/SAM_8620_zps0e525dce.mp4.html

I hope you all enjoy and that I will have a good update tomorrow for everyone. Please comment guys, I feel lonely in here and need some feedback and/or suggestions. Thanks

 

[CrazyEyes]

Dude. Dude. I cannot wait to see this thing finished.

 

[rogergolf66]

Interesting. Tagging. Glwb

 

[hoohoohdillyo]

Dude. Dude. I cannot wait to see this thing finished.

Come on over tonight, I'm sure I'll have it done.

 

[hoohoohdillyo]

Interesting. Tagging. Glwb

Thanks, what do you mean by tagging?

 

[ChadRaay86]

You can tag a thread so that you can access it easily or be sent email notifications when an update is made Good way to keep up on tank builds that span years and years.

 

[sirrealism]

Very interesting. Never thought of trying to make a stand look old! But I do like the antique look. Very creative

 

[CrazyEyes]

Thanks, what do you mean by tagging?

Noob.

 

[kory1006]

That looked way to much like work.

 

[hoohoohdillyo]

That looked way to much like work.

Perfection takes time. Lmao... It's not that hard, just a tiny bit time consuming.

 

[hoohoohdillyo]

Sorry the update on here went slow, however the work on the stand did NOT! It is now complete and ready to show to the world!!! I will post the pictures in order from when I last updated the forum post.

After really looking at the top after the last update I didn't like a few things about it so I decided to go back and sand the top quite a bit more then add in some more of the antique white and the blue spray paints to brighten it up a bit.

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I then had a friend join in to help with the light green stain I wanted to add a hint of green to it.

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As you see it is barely noticeable, just a light accent. After dry time I added 6 coats of polyurethane to completely seal it.

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At this point I had to wait for the entire day of nonstop rain to pass by... Luckily my skimmer came in! Oh, but not so lucky, this is what I got.

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I immediately contacted the seller with some pictures so they could see the damages and offering them two options, or if they had another proposal;
Option 1: partial refund of an agreed amount and I repair it myself.
Option 2: ship a new unit minus the pump and they pay for return shipping of the old unit if they want it back.

Within 15 minutes I had a response back. We both liked option 1 because, well it was just simple. I mean, the damage was only on the stand and not on the actual working parts of the skimmer. Great deal for me since I already had the acrylic glue here from adding in the bulkhead in my sump. So, even though it seemed horrible upon opening, it ended up being an amazing deal since after refund I pretty much got a brand new skimmer for about $65 bucks!!! Can't beat that deal any day in my book.

 

[hoohoohdillyo]

Jump ahead a couple days since I was a total dummy and forgot to take pictures of building and painting the stand and top being finished... Upon installation I realized I also forgot to measure for the trim on the walls :facepalm: Shoot me now! Well, I made a simple fix by cutting new 2x4 and building it into a slightly smaller frame to sit under the main stand.

Then...

It gets installed!!!

My son, niece, and one of our dogs approve of it at this point, so far so good!

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As you can see it fit perfectly, not even a single piece of paper can fit around the edges.

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With the stand in place, the obvious next step was to add the sump, aquarium, pumps, and whatnot.

Sorry for the blurry image on this one, I'll retake another one when my wife gets home with the camera.

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With a small blue led light I have just for testing.

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For those wondering, I used the 5 1/2" fenceboard for the bottom inside the stand instead of using plywood since they are only $1.25 each plus it's pressure treated so it can handle the wet environment. Just make sure you sand with a low grit paper to make them uniform and a high grit afterwards to smooth it out.

 

[hoohoohdillyo]

I bought a HUGE rock thanks to the awesomeness of Silvert55 selling me his show piece rock. (Pedro, this is the rock I was telling you about)

Sadly once I got it home I realized it was just a bit too big to fit into the tank the way it was, so I cut off what is now the small rock on the right side of the tank and trimmed a bit off a few peaks on the bottom side. The rock on the left is just over 18" wide x 16" deep x 12" tall at it tallest points. The center is a hollowed out cave that has some holes going all the way through! The rock on the right is about 9 1/2" wide x 6" deep x 7" tall.

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With no flow so you can see all the awesomeness on this rock.

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The system is super quiet that it can run all night without even bothering us. For those that don't know our bed is about 15" from the stand. The pluming works without a hitch and doesn't even require the syphon to suck in air at the startup. Crazyeyes didn't believe me till I shut it down, let it drain, and start it back up. ZERO noise! My watercooled computer is actually louder than this entire system.

Hope you all enjoyed this post as much as I did making it. Please, any comments/suggestions/questions/tips/tricks/anything feel free to chime in below. I would be more than happy to assist anyone that is wanting to do the overflow like mine as it was so simple and quite awesome the way it turned out.

 

[Nemo345]

Are you going to do a bare bottom ??? If so just keep it clean ) I hate my sand bed right now !!!

 

[CrazyEyes]

Joe must be terrible at photography because these pictures aren't doing this tank any justice. Oh and, bare bottom man.

 

[hoohoohdillyo]

Are you going to do a bare bottom ??? If so just keep it clean ) I hate my sand bed right now !!!

I am 50/50 on the bare bottom idea. Crazyeyes is trying to talk me into it, so I decided to give it at least a couple weeks with nothing in there to see what I think. Going to do a bit more research on the matter as well. If I do decide to go bare bottom I'll just have to syphon out the debris that falls off frags and the rocks.

 

[CrazyEyes]

Everyone I know who has made the switch to bare bottom all love it. Myself included.

 

[MrHarvard]

I am 50/50 on the bare bottom idea. Crazyeyes is trying to talk me into it, so I decided to give it at least a couple weeks with nothing in there to see what I think. Going to do a bit more research on the matter as well. If I do decide to go bare bottom I'll just have to syphon out the debris that falls off frags and the rocks.

I would make this decision based on your stocking plans. If your going sps then I would say BB all the way. I have ran both with success so you can't go wrong either way. Great looking set upBTW.

 

[CrazyEyes]

Very true, need to realize there will be some stuff you can't keep i.e some wrasses, blennys etc. I also think this tank is going to be quite heavy on zoas and palys. I think it'd be really awesome for the zoas to grow on the glass and cover the bottom.