Introducing Xia’s Zero Edge!

[xia]

Thanks to Warren (fishsoldseprtly) for passing this baby on to me.
Pics first before the story.

Before Cleaning

After a little elbow grease and some vinegar

A special thanks to Marc Daniels for his acrylic polish kit, which consisted of 4 fine-polishing grades of paper mounted on a strong algae magnet cleaner. Simply put, you work your way down from each grade until your tank sparkles. Works safely with water and livestock in the tank too, but I wanted to avoid the splashing.

This is the before shots. Scratch removal and polishing on both sides took about 8 hours.

 

[xia]

After #9 polishing sheet

After #3 polishing sheet

After #2 polishing sheet

 

[xia]

After #1 polishing sheet

After the initial move

Video
http://s18.photobucket.com/albums/b135/xiaher/2-26-08/?action=view&current=P2250228.flv

First I stained the stand a little darker red with minwax's bombay mohagany. Then I had to take the stand's sides off to get it in the room. Stand was originally glued together, but I had trouble getting the molding to come together so I went ahead drilled holes and screwed the sides on. Filled over the screw heads and restained.

Plumbing was a real challenge, since I replaced the mag 8 with a mag 18. With three overflows, I sent one to the sump, one the fuge, and one to the remote sandbed/live rock tank. The flow was just too much for my fuge to handle. It also created too much turbulence at the tank's surface, so I went back to the mag 8, and still had to restrict the flow to the fuge. Only thing left is to split the return line, for a feed to my calcium reactor.

 

[P.Kelly]

Awesome Xia... Amazing. Do you have room in there for those baby pink yumas? If not, you can always send them back my way!

 

[kdblove_99]

Holy Cow! That was some amazing work Xia.

Tank looks incredible

 

[Mikey Donuts]

WOW! Just beautiful.

 

[pbetito]

AMAZING JOB XIA!!!! That set up looks great. You put a lot of love into it and the results show.

 

[KMP]

that's cool! always nice to see a tank revived.

 

[FunGuy]

Wow. Looks really nice!

 

[mpoletti]

Sweet Xia. What are you lighting this bad boy with?

 

[Nuuze]

Looks very nice Xia!

 

[dlee300z]

Awesome pictures! I'll try to come over tonight to come see it!

AWESOME!!

 

[bladeruner143]

Those zero edge tanks are just plain ridiculous! I saw one for the first time a couple months ago and I had to be restrained or else I would have walked out with it!!! Very nice work Xia!

 

[xia]

Lighting: Aquaconnect bulb on 400w PFO HQI with a Lumenarc reflector (Thanks Karl for the setup).

Thanks to Sam for the retractable hanging brackets. Now my lights go up and down with ease.

I use to run Radiums, but these aquaconnects are a nice crisp white, and I'm starting to see purplish pinks and reds on my corals that I've never seen before. It's a very nice bulb that shows the "true color" of corals. No wonder Karl likes it. I'll wait and see how it colors up the corals, not too much of the blue that I'm used too, so I might try some radiums again later on.

Too much stuff to aquascape properly, so I'll be selling some stuff soon including the old tank setup. Pete your babies look too happy to be sent back to that prop tank. Nice, fluffy, and open. Thanks for the trade. The zoos look great too.

 

[Auntbeez]

amazing what a little elbow grease and TLC will do.
Very cool.

 

[miracles38]

Xia that looks awesome. Nice job!

 

[Unarce]

That's stunning, Xia! Glad you like the lighting (I really miss it). I'm also going back to AquaConnects.

 

[P.Kelly]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11957254#post11957254 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by xia

Pete your babies look too happy to be sent back to that prop tank. Nice, fluffy, and open. Thanks for the trade. The zoos look great too.

Glad to hear all is well. Thank you very much for the tank, it was a life saver!

 

[tfp]

xia, that's lookin sweet!

 

[kdblove_99]

At $115 a pop those Aquaconnects better be nice