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building a new tank

Joined
Feb 24, 2005
Messages
895
well out of boredom of looking for conannys babies ive begun building an interesting tank. for a few years now ive had an old street lamp cover sitting upstairs. i think it will hold around 20 gallons or so(its sitting on a 10 gallon bucket not a 7 salt bucket). ive taken a 3/8 peice of 12x12 glass and drilled 2 holes for the plumbing and siliconed it to the bottom. im plumbing it so that i can have a sump underneath. im going to use two stand pipes for the overflow and return in the center of the tank and drill holes in the live rock to slide over the two pipes to form a column of rockwork in the center. im still trying to figure out how im going to light the sucker. im leaning towards a small 70w metal halide pendant(that way i can maybe use the tank for bandensis:biggrin2: and still keep corals in it and it not be too bright.) so that i dont have anything sitting on top of the bowl. im going to build a stand for it to sit on that would hold at least a 20 gallon sump if not a 40 breeder that i have that way i could add another 10-15 gallons to the system. hopefully when im done ill somehow for the first time have a system without wires hanging out the back of the tank. i think it will be pretty neat cause everything i put in will look like godzilla due to the distortion.

anyone got any suggestions? ideas as to how to build a mh pendant rig without blowing 200 bucks since ive build the entire setup so far from scraps etc?

ill post some more pics once i finish the woodwork and build the stand.
 

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Joe,
If you are going to build a stand anyway, why not build a support for your lighting attached to the stand (add a hinge and you can flip it out of the way)? For our 15 gallon hex Merc tank we use an outdoor fluorescent resting on a black concrete stepping stone form ;>). When we started the Mercs, I found a red filter (high temp plastic film) but you can also find blue if you want an actinic look (we started with blue). The light stays cool enough so that the film inside the cover does not melt and I don't believe the first film was even high temp rated.

We did find a 125 Watt MH pendant on eBay a couple of years ago for around $125 (16 inch diameter tank, 4 feet tall) but you still have to deal with that huge and heavy ballast.
 
Im trying to envision the tank, but Im having trouble.... (I love unorthodox tanks btw).

So will this be a domed top, with a glass bottom, and plumbing to sump going through this bottom?

If so, How do you open or acess the inside of the tank?
 
paradox think of it as a gigantic gumball machine top. then i just siliconed a peice of glass on the bottom hole and poof a tank. and theres a 6.5 inch hole in the top for access
 
ok heres the stand ive built. i wanted it to be like an end table for a sofa or a couple of chairs in the den. the table itself is about 32x32 which is plenty big for a couple 10 gallon tanks under it for a sump system. the raised lip is so that i can fill it full of all the stuff i find on the beach here at home and in the bahamas then im going to get a couple peices of glass cut for the surface. still gotta sand, stain again, then poly, then sand again, then poly, then sand again...

so what do yall think so far?
 

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ok so the poly work is done and ive got the sump system almost complete. still have to put in the return line off the bottom of the tank and get my old protein skimmer fixed then itll be ready to go. ive got a 20 for the liverock/refugium tank, then it overflows into a 10 where ill have the skimmer and return pump and heater. i just need to do a safety run and make sure the 10 gal can hold the excess water during a power outage:roll:.


for the lighting i think ive found a solution. ive been looking into LEDS and ive found a company that produces a 200 lumen LED in white 10,000 k and and 170 lumen or so in blue 455nm. im thinking of doing 3 of each color in a pendant form for over the tank. ive just got to work out the heat sink and fan situation for them. in theory though this should provide more than enough light to at least grow softies, mushrooms, and zoos if not also lps.
 

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Nice!

DIY yourself a 70 watt DE MH set up and you are good to go. Maybe just build a cap out of the same wood as the stand. OR - find one of those MH spotlights and mount it on the ceiling of the room.
 

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