My 60G Wanna-Be ELOS Cube

[DudeDah]

Well, at one point I thought about doing an exhaustive build thread but decided I'd just share the results. It's been a LOOOONG process but I have been pretty meticulous about each step and that just takes time. Here are the results:

TANK: Standard Issue Marineland 60G Cube
STAND/CABINET: Custom built by Dave Moore Furniture & Chairs in So. City out of 3/4 Walnut Plywood.
SUMP: Custom design/build by BK, drain, ATO chamber, skimmer chamber, extra rock chamber, return
SKIMMER: AquaMax ConeS CO-1
HEATER: Eheim Jager 150W
REACTOR: IM MiniMax Full-Size In-Sump for GFO
RETURN: Eheim 1262 (big but dialed back with GF valve)
ATO: Tunze 3155
POWERHEAD: EcoTech MP40wes with Battery Backup
LIGHT: Ai Hydra 52
SUBSTRATE: Tropic Eden Reef Flakes

EXTRAS: 140mm Computer Exhaust Fan, Custom fabbed screen (sounds dumb but this turned out really slick and a FRACTION of what the LFS wanted), Custom Durso (all plumbing was painted black with Fusion Spray Paint except some fixtures were painted Grey with Duplicolor to match GF valve).

 

[drummereef]

One of the sickest tanks around. Nicely done DudeDah. :thumbsup:

 

[makeshift101]

im jealous! very nicley done

 

[Damon.Webb22]

VERY nice. Well done! Good aquascape.

 

[DudeDah]

One of the sickest tanks around. Nicely done DudeDah. :thumbsup:

Well, I had some pretty good coaching.

 

[Schplitter]

Nice tank
Nice stand
Nice sump
Nice light
Nice light bracket
Nice DJ power strip

You get the point. This is very,very nice!!

 

[Pife]

I am just echoing what everyone else has said. Great looking tank.

 

[smoothdog]

Very well planned and executed! :thumbsup:

 

[Tradewinds]

Damn... it's so nice you even got Brett to show up.

Looked up the cabinet maker on the web, he makes some great stuff - your cabinet included.

 

[DudeDah]

Very well planned and executed! :thumbsup:

Well glad it at least APPEARS it was well planned. There are a couple of things that were "hindsight" improvements. The Computer fan is the big one. There was so much humidity in the cabinet that the door warped and there was a good amount of condensation. Fortunately one fan has completely ELIMINATED the issue and the door has even warped BACK into square.

I was concerned about the weight of the tank on the stand and had Dave add the wooden brace the the DJ strip is mounted to. I wish I would have had him do that from the beginning and made it taller and then cut a hole the DJ strip could have slid into. As it stands I made some brackets from angled aluminum stock to mount the DJ strip.

 

[DudeDah]

Damn... it's so nice you even got Brett to show up.

HA! Brett was an AMAZING resource with tons of great suggestions. We had some very lengthy discussions and I have quite the picture and text trail of the process.

Looked up the cabinet maker on the web, he makes some great stuff - your cabinet included.

Dave does really nice work. Does it old-school too with hand tools and is a great guy. All of the fasteners are hidden and it's all supra clean. He's very particular which I appreciate. He'd be thrilled to hear you appreciate his work.

 

[Boosted Rxp]

Very nice

 

[kegogut]

Love the rock work.

 

[Mr D smack]

Pretty awesome setup and the rock work is cool

 

[DudeDah]

Thanks for all the kudos folks, yeah the scaping was fun. I think the rock came from a total of four shops in order to find the right pieces. Wanted something minimal and modern instead of the LUMP IN THE MIDDLE that I've done in the past. Pretty happy with how it tuned out.

On to the hard part...