Aegeon's 25G Cube Build

[Aegeon]

I've been keeping a build thread on another site, and thought I'd start one here as well in hopes of getting more feedback, especially as I get the tank up and running. A bit of background:

I'm pretty much a noob to reefing, so I'm learning a lot along the way. I tried to get into the hobby way back in 2001, where I got as far as getting a 90 gallon tank full of saltwater and live rock before I unexpectedly lost my job and had to move. Everything was broken down and sold off to cover expenses, my dreams of an exciting new hobby dashed.

Since then I've moved a few times, gotten married, and settled in Chicago. My wife and I had our first son, Andrew, just six weeks ago. With the new addition to our little family I decided to get into reefing in a limited way as something to work on around the house. I also think as our little one gets older this will hopefully be a great hobby that we can share.

I've been working for the last few weeks on starting up my first tank, and thought I'd share the build here. I will say that from what little I remember from my first go-around, it appears that a LOT in the hobby has changed in the 9 years that I've been away. With the demands of a 9-to-5 job and the new little guy, the build is slow going, but progress is being made.

Here's the plan:

18" 25gal Mr. Aqua rimless cube DT, drilled with 1" overflow and 1/2" return from glass-holes.com
12" 7.5gal Mr. Aqua rimless cube sump
Maxi-Jet 1800 return pump
Tunze DOC Nano 9002 skimmer
Jager 75w Heater
JBJ ATO controller
Custom DIY tank stand
Custom DIY LED light fixture, 18 CREE XR-E LEDs, 50/50 mix Cool White/Royal Blue
BRS 75 GPD RO/DI 5 Stage PLUS System
Vortech MP10 Powerhead (eventually)

Since I'm playing catchup to my other thread, I'll have a few posts in a row here... Hope nobody minds.

Comments, suggestions and feedback are always appreciated!

 

[Aegeon]

Here's the DIY stand I put together for the tank and sump.

It's built from an IKEA 18" base kitchen cabinet. We have a lot of other IKEA furniture, so the finish on the stand matches. The cabinet was initially 24" deep, so I cut down the sides to 18" to make a cube stand. The cabinet was a bit flimsy (all particleboard), so I reinforced the particle board sides, and replaced the stock cross-members with 1x3 solid wood to make sure it'll hold the weight of the tanks.

Since I cut the depth of the stand down to 18", I was able to use 2 additional standard 18" pre-finished cabinet doors as side panels to match the front, instead of having the fake light-wood laminate of the cabinet walls show.

The top of the stand is a 1-1/2" laminated countertop from IKEA. Now that I have the stand reinforced, weight should be no problem. The stand is also on 4" adjustable legs, hidden behind a matching plinth. This will let me level the stand exactly, and I can just pop the plinth off to clean up under the stand in case of spills.

View of the stand with the tank set on top. The box in the tank has the overflow/return kits from glass-holes.com.

Another view of the tank/stand.

Inside the stand, showing the Mr. Aqua 7.5G cube sump. Door is mounted using 153 degree hinges, so access is good even though the cabinet is narrow. Boxes for the return pump and skimmer, and the Jager heater stored inside the tank.

Originally I had a shelf in the stand, with the space below sized for a 2.5gal square bottle I got for an ATO reservoir. The shelf has since been removed because I thought it'd be too tough to work in the sump with it up that high. I'm planning on mounting the reservoir above the sump now, but haven't figured out exactly how to do it yet.

As always, comments and suggestions are appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Aegeon]

Managed to get the Mr. Aqua tank drilled using a kit from glass-holes.com. Drilling went surprisingly well. There were no real surprises even though it was my first attempt at drilling a tank.

Here's the tank.

Tank with the overflow template in place.

After starting the hole using the template, I removed it and build a dam around the hole using plumber's putty. Then I could flood the area with water to keep the bit cool.

The final result.

Tank with the overflow box in place.

I repeated the process for the return line. The kit for the return didn't have a template included, so I drilled a hole through the fiberboard template included with the overflow kit to use with the smaller hole saw. I didn't have a hole saw of the correct size, so I just used the glass saw itself. In retrospect, this probably wasn't the best move. Particles from the fiberboard clogged up the diamond cutting surface of the holesaw, and I had to clean it out using water and a toothbrush. In the end, it worked just fine, though.

The hole for the return. There was a bit more chip-out around this hole than there was around the larger one. I'm not sure if that's because the hole was smaller, or if I went to fast or too slow. In either case, the gasket for the bulkhead completely covers the chip-out area, so I think it's fine.

Final result with both the overflow and return bulkhead installed.

Since drilling the tank, I've also painted the back wall black. All-in-all, I think it looks pretty good.

 

[Aegeon]

Here's the GFCI outlet box I built to go inside the stand. I wanted at least two separate outlets, so if something were to trip one of them the other would still be up and running. I also have two outlets near where the tank will be located that are on different circuits in my condo, so I wanted two cords out of the outlet box. This means I can run one GFCI from each of two separate house circuits, which will help balance the load of the system across two separate 15amp circuits and reduce the possibility that having a breaker trip on one circuit will shut down the entire system.

Parts for the GFCI outlet box. I used two replacement appliance cords I found at a local Ace Hardware, which have a 3-prong plug at one end and bare wire at the other. This way, everything was already color-coded, and I didn't have to cannibalize a standard extension cord and worry about stripping wires, or have to wire up a plug myself.

Outlets wired up. The power cables run through clamps to provide strain relief.

Box assembled.

Mounted inside the stand.

 

[Aegeon]

So far, the DIY light fixture has taken the most time to get finished. Before I started, I planned it out a bit on paper and in Google Sketchup.

The fixture consists of 18 Cree XR-E Leds (9 royal blue, 9 cool white) driven by 3 700ma buckpucks. The pucks are the pre-wired version and come with an external dimming pot. I also decided to wire in individual power toggle switches.

I got 2 5"x10" heatsinks from heatsinkusa.com that the LEDs are mounted to. Everything is housed in a 12"x12" aluminum chassis by Bud Industries that I ordered from Mouser, and cooled by 2 40mm fans.

A few of the initial drawings. Front, nice and simple:

Back, showing toggle switches and dimming pots. The tube extending out of the middle of the chassis is 1" OD aluminum framing tube from McMaster-Carr, and is what holds up the fixture. It's attached to the heatsinks themselves inside the chassis. I'm running aluminum pipe up from the back of my stand, behind the tank, and using a 90deg fitting to position the fixture over the tank. This should let me swivel the fixture out of the way for tank maintenance. I also ran all the wiring for the power supplies through the pipe to keep things nice and clean.

View from underneath, showing the positions of the LEDs. Also visible are mockups of the buckpucks, pots/switches, and the barrier strip I used to help distribute the power inside the chassis. The chassis also has a lip around the opening so I could add a piece of acrylic as a splash guard.

There were lots of holes to be drilled so I created a set of templates like this for the hole patterns. I printed out at full scale so I could lay them directly over the parts to be drilled and not have to measure too much.

 

[Aegeon]

Took quite a while to get the LED fixture finished, but I think it came out pretty well in the end.

Light fixture mounted. Nice and clean, all the wires run through the support tubing in the back.

View in the back of the stand showing the mounting brackets. These clamp on to the support pipe with set screws, so I can change the height of the fixture over the tank.

Back of the fixture. Each string of LEDs has individual dimming pots and on/off toggle switches so I can control the output at the fixture if necessary. You can also see the vent holes for the two 40mm fans used for cooling. The top of the fixture has vents holes drilled near the front of the fixture to allow air to flow in, across the heatsinks, and out the back of the unit. The fans are 12V, wired in series with each other, and in parallel to the driver controlling 6 royal blue Crees. The blues (actinics) will be the first LED string on in the morning and the last off at night, so this ensures the fans will always run anytime any of the LEDs are on.

50/50 color mix.

Whites turned up.

Blues turned up.

 

[Sugar Magnolia]

Nice clean build so far! :thumbsup:

 

[Aegeon]

Managed to get my BRS RO/DI unit installed last night. To maintain the required Wife Acceptance Factor (WAF), I had to agree to keep the unit out of sight. There wasn't enough room under the kitchen sink to mount everything, so I rigged up the unit in the mechanical closet in our condo.

This closet also houses the furnace and water heater, so I think it'll work out well. It's already wired with electrical outlets I can use if I need to rig up a booster pump, and is plumbed with a drain line in the floor, currently used for the water heater and humidifer overflows. The only downside is that the closet is on the 2nd floor, and my tank is on the 1st, which means I'll be lugging buckets of water around. Should only be a real pain for the initial fill of the tank. After that, water changes should only be about 5 gallons at a time, so I should only have to haul a single bucket downstairs each week.

Unit mounted in the closet. Had to be careful running the lines to avoid the hot areas around the furnace and water heater.

Closeup.

The closet already had a feeder pipe plumbed out of the wall that I could use for the cold water feed. The other, older saddle valve is for the line that feeds the humidifier on the furnace.

 

[Jadams]

Excellent start!

 

[Aegeon]

Sorry for so many posts in a row. Everything up to this point has taken about two months to complete, so from here on out posts should be spaced out a bit better. I hope to have a box of wet rocks in about two weeks.

If anyone has any comments, suggestions or questions, please let me know. Thanks for reading!

 

[echopiece]

VERY impressive! Tons of detail, and very well put together! Have you ever thought about putting in 1 or 2 red LED's? Cant wait to see this thing filled up.

 

[coraltastic]

nice build cant wait to see it with rock in it

 

[Aegeon]

Thanks for the compliments!

Have you ever thought about putting in 1 or 2 red LED's?

To be honest, I didn't think about adding any reds. Do you think they add to the look? Probably something to consider for v2.0 down the road. At this point, I'm just glad I got it finished and it works. It took a lot longer than I thought it would to complete. Thanks for the suggestion!

 

[echopiece]

I dont know too much about LED's but I have seen some people put in a few reds. IMO you would just have to try them out and see if you like it. Would it be hard to swap out 2 of the pucks? Maybe some of the more polished LED guys could chime in?

 

[Aegeon]

A little more of the LED fixture, here's a quick video I made of me playing with the dimmers/toggles. Pretty boring, but there it is. I mainly wanted to figure out how to post video to YouTube. Sorry for the crap quality, I took it with my Canon point-and-shoot.

LED Fixture Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaWFeGUwsy4

And here's why everything (tank related) takes so much longer than it should to complete:

For not doing much but eating, sleeping and pooping, this little guy sure takes up a whole lot of time.

 

[Aegeon]

Would it be hard to swap out 2 of the pucks?

At this point, it would be pretty tough to swap out any of the LEDs. I wound up using thermal epoxy to glue the LEDs to the heatsinks. I started out trying to drill/tap the sinks to use stainless screws. I had to do everything by hand since I don't have access to a drill press, and after snapping off three #4 taps on the first three LEDs (and wasting a couple hours) I scrapped that idea and just glued them down.

 

[SawdustInTank]

Very nice. I like the design of the light fixture a lot. The extra space on the cabinet top will help while feeding and doing maintenance. Good start.

 

[Aquarist007]

Great build thread---lots of pictures. Love the LED setup

 

[nvdiz]

Awesome, keep it updating!

 

[mkorolev]

Very nice, makes me want to try this setup
Then again...I think my DIY skills stop short at cutting egg crate to cover the top of my tank