60 Cube build

[cloakerpoked]

My wife bought me a 60 cube for when we move. It will be a slightly smaller footprint than my current tank, will be able to run off of 1 250w halide, and (most importantly) the front brace of the tank isn't cracking like my 72 bowfront currently is. Since the 72 is in my parent's basement, I have the luxury of cycling the new tank, and moving everything over when I'm ready to, which is very nice.

I'm going to be going with a larger stand (36" wide and high and 30" deep) to give it a look much like what TJ did with his tank. I also need the extra space to be able to house all of my equipment.

Here are some pics of the stand which I am currently working on building.

The door is actually a cut away of the main front, which will be trimmed out and held in place by magnets. It was a lot easier to do this than to mess with cabinet hinges (not to mention cheaper) and I'm actually very happy with how it is looking. Got a lot of the trim on today, and the rest tomorrow.

 

[sokin]

Stand looks good.

 

[cloakerpoked]

Got my tank today. Getting excited to get water in this thing.

 

[jesterns2]

That`s going to be sweet!! I like the cube design.

 

[o0xerog0o]

Looks cool! Are you staining the stand before finalizing everything?

 

[cloakerpoked]

Yes. The stand has been stained a black lacquer. I put 3 coats of poly/stain hybrid on it, and will put at least 1 coat, probably 2 of clear poly on it. I should be putting pictures up soon (tonight or tomorrow).

 

[the2ofus]

Looks good Nate.......
Nice trim work

 

[Misled]

Agree, looks really good. How are you gonna do the light?? You gonna hang it on conduit like TJ or are you gonna hang it from the ceiling?

 

[cloakerpoked]

Agree, looks really good. How are you gonna do the light?? You gonna hang it on conduit like TJ or are you gonna hang it from the ceiling?

conduit like TJ...but it's going to be a canopy, so I'm going to use the conduit for the wire. TJ's tank has been a huge inspiration for this tank in a lot of ways.

 

[cloakerpoked]

Used wood filler on all the holes, sanded them smooth, then I started to stain. I used 3 coats of a poly/stain combination. The door only has 1 coat, so that's why it looks uneven. It will get more coats after the canopy is built as well...then everything will get at least 2 coats of clear high gloss poly. The back of the tank has been spray-painted black.

 

[raynist]

Where did you get the tank? I always like the dimensions of the 60 cube.

 

[cloakerpoked]

The Seahorse ordered it for me. Elmer's also has it on their website listed for $218.99. Now I got mine at a great price because of my mom's position with the Seahorse, but mine included the factory drilled holes/bulkheads and the overflow installed and I'm guessing that would run somewhere in the $275 range before our 10% club discount. It's a Marineland/Perfecto brand tank with black silicon....24x24x24.

 

[cloakerpoked]

As far as I can tell though, Seahorse and Elmers offer pretty much the same pricing on their tanks, so there wouldn't be a difference that way.

 

[cloakerpoked]

Been a while since I've updated on here...with the move and everything, life has just been too busy to throw updated pictures up, but now that everything is settled down (relatively) and I got everything moved into the tank, I figured I'd take a few pictures.

 

[cloakerpoked]

I've misplaced my magfloat and all of my algea scrubbers so I'm still on the lookout for them, plus my bulb hasn't burned into it's color yet, so I'm hoping that once I get the glass cleaned and the bulb burns in more that I'll have a more whiteish hue to everything and less of the brown. Not to mention a lot of my SPS has sorta shifted toward brown a bit from the move and everything. Hopefully in a few weeks everything will have settled in and I'll be able to figure out if anything else needs done. A few corals seem like they may be STN'ing from the move so I'm keeping an eye on them as well. Water parameters are not ideal, but are within an acceptable range for now...once the tank establishes itself a bit more I'm confident that they'll settle into a more consistent and positive pattern.

 

[Tswifty]

Wow... I have no idea how I missed this the past month. :lol:

Everything looks great though Nate. Nice work. :thumbsup:

What bulb are you using?

 

[cloakerpoked]

Wow... I have no idea how I missed this the past month. :lol:

Everything looks great though Nate. Nice work. :thumbsup:

What bulb are you using?

Thanks man. Your tank has been a lot of my inspiration for how I did a lot of this stuff, and the overall look I've tried to pursue.

Right now it's just a 14k Pulseright (ebay) bulb while I decide where I want to go from here, although I've actually had pretty decent results with them in the past. I'm strongly considering going to a Radium, although I've read that they need an ignitor and fire better on an HQI ballast, which would require me to change things up a bit. Either way, I think I really want to go to a 20k bulb now that I've lost my actinic supplementation.

 

[Tswifty]

Yeah Radiums are awesome, but they don't fire nearly as well on an electronic ballast. The HQI ballast increases the output as well as changes up the spectrum a bit. If you're not going to be overdriving the bulb with an HQI (M80) ballast, then I wouldn't recommend a Radium. Some people say that they still like the look of them, but the intensity drops severly. So you won't get the combination of color and growth which makes a Radium... well a Radium IMO.

A few other SE bulbs that I've heard good things about are the AquaConnect 14k Plus, and Reeflux 12k and Reeflux 20k bulbs. Pheonix also recently came out with a 14k SE bulb, but I really haven't seen any reviews on it.

A friend of mine from Cleveland was getting some really nice output from his Reeflux 20k's

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1593174&page=11

 

[cloakerpoked]

If you're not going to be overdriving the bulb with an HQI (M80) ballast, then I wouldn't recommend a Radium. Some people say that they still like the look of them, but the intensity drops severly. So you won't get the combination of color and growth which makes a Radium... well a Radium IMO.

Thanks for the link. Is that a 180?

I couldn't agree more about the M80 ballast. Since I now only run one lamp over this tank, there really isn't any excuse to cut corners with the lighting at this point, so I really think I am going to update my entire lighting system and go with a Radium at some point...probably around my birthday (April) and possibly sooner if this bulb I'm using now doesn't burn into a color that I'm happy with in the next month. To be honest though, color is what I'm after. The aquascape is pretty full, and I'm going to have to be thinning out my collection if I ever want to add more coral to it, and will probably have to be pretty active in fragging things to keep them from going after each other, so growth is kinda an afterthought for this tank. Hopefully it will be running for years (and I mean like 4-5 years minimum) without interruption so color is king.

On a side note, plans for this system include an eventual upgrade of the skimmer, adding a controller (probably a RK lite), and either a dosing system, or a Ca reactor.

 

[Tswifty]

Thanks for the link. Is that a 180?

It's a 300 Deep Dimension. 72" x 36" x 27" Tall