ludnix
New member
After owning a 30 gallon cube for a few years I finally have gotten the opportunity to work on building a 120 gallon reef aquarium! I am currently 17 years old and graduating highschool within the next two weeks, but I intend to update this thread as often as possible.
From the start of the project, my family knew this aquarium would have to go on the first floor of house becuase of weight, and since we would be making a reef aquarium we thought it would only be fitting to have it placed in our Hawaiian decorated room. We wanted the aquarium to be a little different than the usual 120 gallons you see, in that we wanted to be viewable from three sides. For this to happen we would have to have the overflows in either the corner, or what we chose, to have two of the overflow boxes placed on the non-viewable side.
We placed our order with AGA and got to work on our stand. We all agreed that we wanted an extra tall stand so that you don't have to bend over to get a good view of the fish (of course this is inversely more effort when it comes time to feed and clean the tank). We ended up chosing to have it be 40" tall.
But with these ideas in mind we set out on the construction.
The stand is built using the usual construction plans you can find on Reef Central, each corner is supported by three 2x4 peices, and the overall strength is amazing.
On goes a few coats of KILZ primer!
Doors are mounted! The wood used is marine grade ply-wood, overkill but we wanted to be sure the doors would not warp under any conditions (They better not, they fit only exactly the way they are!).
I unfortunately didn't take many photos during the decorating process but it was pretty straight forward. We used some bamboo reed mats we found for sale in Hawaii to cover the stand, everything but the top and the doors would be covered in the mat on the outside.
The trim would be stained pine for the small pieces, and the large pieces that go around the top and bottom would be made from Cherry, no stain, with carvings made using a dremel.
Front:
Back:
Doors:
The doors are the marine grade plywood, covered in a different style of matting. The carvings are the ones you find all over Hawaii for the tourists.
I'll try and add some close ups of carvings and such soon as I can.
The sump/refugium is a 40 gallon breeder. Return pump is a Mag 12, ans the skimmer is a Octopus RPS 2000 recirculating skimmer.
This weekend I'm going to try and plumb everything together as well as order lights. We're looking at doing 4x T5 55watt bulbs and 2x 250watt metal halide bulbs. The lighting may seem overkill but we plan on running the the Metal Halides as infrequently as possible (4-5 hours a day when we are home), and have everything do well off the T5's for the rest of the time.
Once we have the lights we can start working on the canopy!
From the start of the project, my family knew this aquarium would have to go on the first floor of house becuase of weight, and since we would be making a reef aquarium we thought it would only be fitting to have it placed in our Hawaiian decorated room. We wanted the aquarium to be a little different than the usual 120 gallons you see, in that we wanted to be viewable from three sides. For this to happen we would have to have the overflows in either the corner, or what we chose, to have two of the overflow boxes placed on the non-viewable side.
We placed our order with AGA and got to work on our stand. We all agreed that we wanted an extra tall stand so that you don't have to bend over to get a good view of the fish (of course this is inversely more effort when it comes time to feed and clean the tank). We ended up chosing to have it be 40" tall.
But with these ideas in mind we set out on the construction.
The stand is built using the usual construction plans you can find on Reef Central, each corner is supported by three 2x4 peices, and the overall strength is amazing.
On goes a few coats of KILZ primer!
Doors are mounted! The wood used is marine grade ply-wood, overkill but we wanted to be sure the doors would not warp under any conditions (They better not, they fit only exactly the way they are!).
I unfortunately didn't take many photos during the decorating process but it was pretty straight forward. We used some bamboo reed mats we found for sale in Hawaii to cover the stand, everything but the top and the doors would be covered in the mat on the outside.
The trim would be stained pine for the small pieces, and the large pieces that go around the top and bottom would be made from Cherry, no stain, with carvings made using a dremel.
Front:
Back:
Doors:
The doors are the marine grade plywood, covered in a different style of matting. The carvings are the ones you find all over Hawaii for the tourists.
I'll try and add some close ups of carvings and such soon as I can.
The sump/refugium is a 40 gallon breeder. Return pump is a Mag 12, ans the skimmer is a Octopus RPS 2000 recirculating skimmer.
This weekend I'm going to try and plumb everything together as well as order lights. We're looking at doing 4x T5 55watt bulbs and 2x 250watt metal halide bulbs. The lighting may seem overkill but we plan on running the the Metal Halides as infrequently as possible (4-5 hours a day when we are home), and have everything do well off the T5's for the rest of the time.
Once we have the lights we can start working on the canopy!
