Ajae's 180 Gallon build

[Ajae]

Well that time in the hobby has come for me, time to upgrade the tank! Right now I'm in a 65 gallon Marineland FW tank combo that I got from Petsmart that I converted to SW after years of FW.
A buddy of mine is helping me build a steel stand for it. We we're going to build the tank however I've changed my mind and having my LFS build it for me. This is it:
http://artfullyacrylic.3dcartstores.com/180-Gallon-Reef-Ready-Aquarium_p_1842.html



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[Ajae]

Ok so today was the first day we've got to work on the stand. My buddy's "garage" is more like a shop than anything else. Today was mostly spent cutting the sticks to shape and prepping the steel for weld.

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[Ajae]

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[Ajae]

Some shots from around his shop, makes fixes and sells them.

 

[Ajae]

Since most of the day was spent cutting we only got to build the base. Wields could be better but I was being taught how to wield as we went along.

 

[Ajae]

This is how we ended the day scaling down the pictures. I went online and saw that they are huge! Lol

 

[Ajae]

Been really busy so the stand was placed on hold but got the bottom built today. It's ready for legs. Im going to 30ich legs so the tank can really sit at eye level. Any thoughts?

 

[rockslide123]

I'm following closely. Really interested to see how square and flat the stand turns out. I have been considering making a stand like this myself (I'm a complete novice welder). I am a little worried about setting it up correctly then warping it during welding.

Best of luck!!!

 

[Ajae]

So far so good, as you weld steel together it starts to flex on you a little bit but have clamps takes care of it. I won't be able to work on it this weekend. But I'll post as I go along. Thanks for following.

 

[breck]

Looks good. Off topic..but, how do you get your pics to be full size and fill up the page?

 

[Ajae]

I'm uploading them from the tapatalk app, it gives you the option to make it small medium or large size which is usually the largest

 

[Ajae]

Sorry it's been while

Sorry it's been while

ok sorry it's been a while but between taking my summer vacations and getting laid off i was able to finish the stand a few weeks ago. The project however is far from over and now that i'm looking for a job, it will slow down a bit. I was looking to have to done by end of Sept but its going to be pushed back a few months. I won't be taking as long between post but please just bare with me. I do have a small hobby that i use to make money but it's never steady enough to plan this thing out fully. I'll have to be in steps.

 

[Ajae]

So yeah it looks like a rectangle!! So the stand so far has cost me about $73 and change, steel was really cheap early summer. And I already had a friend with a welder.

 

[Ajae]

The stand is going on carpet so I wanted something that I could level the stand with. I know that there are some you can buy online I even saw some on Amazon but I needed to finish the stand that day so my buddy and I just made some. The hockey pucks are the feet for the stand, I just used his CNC machine and drilled down about a 1/8 or so. That way the screws would fit snug inside. The pucks will help distribute the weight.

 

[Ajae]

Yup just ol regular hockey pucks.

 

[Ajae]

72Lx28Wx34H was the final specs of the stand and I used the black primer and paint version of this stuff that my buddy had in his shop.

 

[JoeTSI]

Nice stand. Oh, and tell your friend I said "War Eagle!"

One other thing, I noticed on pic where your weld didn't go completely around the tubing. Assume you finished that up after the pic? You need full penetration around or your weld will fail.

 

[Ajae]

Yeah we finished up the wilds for sure, this was just to take pictures. Welding a stand takes some banging around and a few clamps because it does flex a lot when you weld one end.

 

[Fuel Doodle]

Update?


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[Ajae]

Yes! Sorry I was waiting for my tank to finish being built before I updated. The tank is now a 210 gallon! Some measuring fail on my part when building the stand gave me some more tank to work with. The build was put on hold because I lost my job but we're back on track.


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