Mountains of sawdust (360g plywood, LED, Arduino build)

Ah.. I feel the taint of Chromi coming over the horizon.:worried:





So when are you going to get a reallll camera? Your cell phone crutch is getting pretty wobbly. :D

For a $100 you aught to be able to pick up a pretty useful camera that can also take movies - which you need to record all your rugrats with anyway.
 
I have a Canon DSLR and a nice 3-sensor DV camera. My problem is simply laziness. With the cell phone, I can email photos straight to photobucket, then sit down at the laptop and cut/paste the URL. With the DSLR, I need to go find it in the closet, take pictures, find a USB cable, remember which PC has the photo management software on it, transfer the pictures to that PC, upload them to photobucket. . . I've got an ATS, an LED rig, and a controller to build. I don't have TIME for all that. :D

And FWIW I solemnly swear to not put damsels in this tank.
 
Wow! Just finished reading the thread and am thoroughly thrilled by your build. I really enjoy the philosophy behind people's builds, and yours is a great example. I'll be following along as you move forward.

I can't imagine how many hours you must have put into the planning (many more than the building, I'd expect). I get close to overwhelmed at times with the 20g that I'm working on--this obviously blows that out of (into??) the water. However, I find the planning to be just as much fun overall as the building, so I envy you the chance to dream/design on this scale.

Anyway, enough rambling, and congrats on your recent milestones!
 
coming together nicely, dwzm. i definitely agree with letting the rocks sort of work themselves out in terms of scaping. as long as it's stable, i think the random sort of approach tends to come out looking better than fretting over each individual piece and never quite getting to where you're happy.
 
Thanks for the comments guys. I have to say, I was really attached to the randomly placed rockwork, but when I added the sand, some of it shifted and I don't like it. Now I have to either eat my words and carefully place the shifted rocks, or live with my philosophy and an aquascape I don't like. :D

This morning over breakfast (I have to use every spare second in a given day) I glued up a bracket to hold the light rig for the ATS. I have the plumbing parts for the ATS and will hopefully assemble it soon. Next up is ATO.
 
I have an excuse. When I finally make it to an LFS or local reefer to get my hands on some "real" live rock to seed the tank, I'll HAVE to do at least SOME rearranging to accommodate the new rock. So maybe it'll just RANDOMLY turn out that certain rocks end up exactly in certain positions.

Yeah, that's the ticket. . .
 
Might start a separate thread about this out in the main forum, but will post here first for ideas. One of my "fears" with this system is proving true. It runs cold. Granted I don't have all the equipment online, but I'm within spitting distance of the total wattage that will be on the tank, and the two Jager 300w heaters are on almost 24/7. So I'm thinking of insulating.

Also thinking of insulating for noise. It's quieter than other systems I've had but still not dead silent, which I want. Wondering if anyone has experience with reasonably priced DIY soundproofing. It seems like if you google for soundproofing products you get a ton of wildly expensive stuff that I'm guessing has a cheaper (non-specifically marketed) alternative.
 
What exactly do you want to sound proof? Are you trying to get rid of high or low frequencies ? I have experimented with several types of wall sound proofing in my music studios over the years.
 
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I would think that foam board insulation would give some level of soundproofing.

BTW, I'm still moving rocks around in my 30g tank, seven years in. :lol:
 
Would like to soundproof the stand, since that's where 99% of the noisy equipment is coming from. It's basically the two large pumps, so it's a mid frequency hum. Probably somewhere in the hundreds of hz range.

I'm already accepting that the doors on the stand will not be "open fabric" as on the hood. So for the doors I'll have 3/4" thickness to play with. Not sure if I should make them from some dense, solid material and then skin them with fabric, or take another route. For the rest of the stand, it's just 2x construction and drywall on the outside, so I can work batting or solid panels of material into the voids between the studs from the inside.
 
I would think that foam board insulation would give some level of soundproofing.

I've thought of that but I'm guessing you'd want to pick a specific material for the frequency range you want to block. Foam insulation board is not very dense and rather rigid so I dunno if it would work in this case - I'm guessing I need something heavier and "softer".
 
Heavy materials are one option, but considering the 3/4" restriction, you could try making something similar to a sound window. It would basically be a double pane door sealed together with caulking and the space between the panels in a vacuum. I have done this with glass before, but I assume if you can seal wood to water tight, you should be able to make it air tight. Then put rubber dampeners between any place where hard materials come in contact to deaden any vibrations. It is a bit elaborate, but if you want zero sound to be transfered, it should do the trick.
 
We went "low tech" and used ceiling tiles when we had to insulate for sound on our tank (before we put the sump, etc., in the basement). Worked pretty well but it was only a temporary solution. Not sure if I would have been happy with it as a long term solution.
 
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