ragnarok513 Posted April 15, 2012 Share Posted April 15, 2012 Not really sure where the rules of this content is at, but here's my entry. I was planning on building a pico reef anyways and if I could get into the contest then great, if not I'll still continue on work on my pico reef. The tank is a 6x6x6 Marina Cubus. I plan on sectioning the back off to turn it into an overflow. Gonna also build an enclosure to have all the wiring fit inside so there's no ugly mess of wires coming out of this thing. Equipment Rio 50 Water pump Marina 10w preset heater 2 Leds (1 white, 1 blue) from Rapid Led Don't know of a good place to host images at the moment so I'm just attaching one for now -Ray hrm..my image got rotated =| here's a link to my Google Plus album https://plus.google.com/photos/105115654992...459158669505937 Link to comment
Jacob042426 Posted April 15, 2012 Share Posted April 15, 2012 I think it's a little late..... http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=296857 Sorry. Link to comment
ragnarok513 Posted April 16, 2012 Author Share Posted April 16, 2012 Oh bummer, I read the rules of the contest and it doesn't look like something I can do anyways. I don't actually know what's going in my reef or what equipment it will have yet. I'm still setting it up and spend the whole weekend buying materials and building my tank. Here's what I have so far... Link to comment
ragnarok513 Posted April 22, 2012 Author Share Posted April 22, 2012 I was able to put some more work into my tank last week, I painted the acrylics black and glued them on with silicone. I didn't do a good job though with the silicone and gotta spend some time patching that part up. Also got my LEDs from RapidLED and they look great! I'm not gonna be able to see how they look in my tank. I'm working on building an enclosure for my tank so I have something to mount the LEDs to. The heater didn't fit in my tank so I returned it. Not sure if I'm gonna have room for a heater with this setup. -Ray Link to comment
Kazooie Posted April 22, 2012 Share Posted April 22, 2012 Wow, the is sexy. I might have to do that to an extra cubus I have lying around! Link to comment
Mr. Microscope Posted April 23, 2012 Share Posted April 23, 2012 Nice! What are your stocking plans? Link to comment
ragnarok513 Posted April 24, 2012 Author Share Posted April 24, 2012 For livestock I'm gonna go with just corals and maybe a few tiny snails and hermit crabs. Haven't decided what kind of coral to get for it. I'm just focused on building out the tank first =] Here's an update, I built out the base of it and cleaned up some of the silicon. Tomorrow will be a full week after I painted my tank so I'm gonna do a leak test. -Ray Link to comment
ragnarok513 Posted April 25, 2012 Author Share Posted April 25, 2012 The paint finally cured and I felt comfortable putting water into it. I found a few leaks on the edges to the back of the overflow and tried to patch them up. Have to wait till tomorrow to see if the patch worked. Here's some pictures of this thing running with the pump in it. -Ray Link to comment
ragnarok513 Posted April 29, 2012 Author Share Posted April 29, 2012 I spent a lot of time this weekend putting together the enclosure for my tank. I'm trying to build out the enclosure so that it is easy to take apart and maintain the tank. Here's my progress so far... You might see this and say this looks exactly like the tank that TheNanoReef is building in this thread: http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=298968. I saw his thread a month ago and thought it looks really cool and wanted to replicate something like it. This tank would be small enough so that I could have it in my office at work. The top half is detachable so that you can get access to the tank, I'm planning on making the top lid panel detachable too so you can get to the LEDs. Link to comment
RK_tek Posted April 30, 2012 Share Posted April 30, 2012 Coming along very nicely. Can't wait to see it wet Link to comment
Kazooie Posted April 30, 2012 Share Posted April 30, 2012 So what are the dimensions of the false-wall? Link to comment
ragnarok513 Posted April 30, 2012 Author Share Posted April 30, 2012 It's a very slightly under 6'' x 6''. Only slightly under so it could fit in the tank. I don't have a precise number for how far its positioned from the back. I put just enough room back there to fit the Rio 50 powerhead. The separator panel was also placed so that it would fit snugly against the powerhead and leave room for the power cord to come out. -Ray Link to comment
ragnarok513 Posted May 6, 2012 Author Share Posted May 6, 2012 Was getting my tank ready to go and ran a few water tests, found a few issues. 1. It was leaking water from the top because the water level was almost to the rim and once I put the top on the water caught onto the top and started leaking out. I fixed this by shoving a sponge into my powerhead outlet to stifle water flow so it wouldn't blow water out to almost out of the tank. 2. I'm getting tons of micro bubbles. I did some research online and found out I have to create some sort of baffle system to filter out the bubbles. It's too late now my overflow can't be torn down easily. I'd pretty much have to start over. Anyone have any ideas on how else to reduce microbubbles? 3. The water spills out of the tank when I put my hand inside quickly. I have to slowly insert my hand so the water has time to get into the overflow area before it comes out of the tank. Now that I've come across all these issues, rebuilding it with another Marina Cubus tank and a new design is sounding like a pretty good solution for these problems. -Ray Link to comment
ragnarok513 Posted May 6, 2012 Author Share Posted May 6, 2012 I solved the micro bubble problem by showing a sponge down the overflow chamber! this tank might be a keeper after all. -Ray Link to comment
iball1804 Posted May 6, 2012 Share Posted May 6, 2012 Yeah either the sponge or filter floss can catch all the bubbles. But it's lookin really good right now Ray! Congrats! Link to comment
ragnarok513 Posted May 15, 2012 Author Share Posted May 15, 2012 Finally got some time to work on my tank some more. I got a Marina submersible 10w heater from Petsmart; fits perfectly in the back. I didn't do a very good job with sawing out the trim so there's a few cracks I need to fill here and there. Plans for the next couple days are to fill out the cracks completely with glue, sand it down smooth, and apply finish to it to help hide the imperfections. Also need to go to home depot and have them saw me a new piece of wood for the top, the board I got is warped =[ -Ray Link to comment
tam Posted May 15, 2012 Share Posted May 15, 2012 Damn, that looks good. You might try the archaea mini heater if you find that you need one; link. Link to comment
ragnarok513 Posted May 28, 2012 Author Share Posted May 28, 2012 I finally got a chance to apply finish to the wood and it turned out really bad! I thought it would give the wood a nice consistent look but all it did was make it look dark and ugly. Also this thing emanates the smell of finish. I was planning on having this in my office. I share an office so my office mate would definitely not enjoy this smell 8 hours a day. I don't enjoy it either. I've started building out a new tank already as a replacement. Now that I've build this one, I can correct the flaws in the design that the first one was built on. 1) The hole in the back for the power cables doesn't need to be so big. LED light also leaks out from here. 2) The inner scaffolding would definitely get cleaned up. 3) I'm buying birch wood from Michael's now. It's more expensive but the wood I got at Home Depot was warped and also their sawing machinery were not calibrated so I was not getting the cuts I needed. 4) Gonna see if I can layout the blue and white LEDs so that it doesn't look like the tank is segmented by two colors. Front/back layout instead of side by side. -Ray Link to comment
TheNanoReef Posted May 30, 2012 Share Posted May 30, 2012 I'm buying birch wood from Michael's now. This is the stuff I used. The pieces are cut very precisely and you should have no problem using it, also the wood hasn't warped for me. Link to comment
ragnarok513 Posted May 31, 2012 Author Share Posted May 31, 2012 I do like the quality of the wood at Michael's. However, their labels are misleading. I saw that they had planks of wood that were 6" wide and that was exactly what I needed to create the base of this tank. When I got home I started measuring I found that the wood was actually 5 7/8"". In fact all their wood were an eight of an inch short of advertised. I had to buy the 12" wide and cut the width down to 6". It would have made this project much easier if I had the wood cut to exactly 6" wide. -Ray Link to comment
ragnarok513 Posted June 11, 2012 Author Share Posted June 11, 2012 Alright I finally built out the new enclosure! Looks much cleaner than my first one. Today I added live rock and sand to it. When it finishes cycling, I'm probably gonna add a couple of sexy shrimp, then a few hermit crabs later on. Of course corals will be going in too. Haven't decided on type of corals, gonna have to find a good source of frags. -Ray Link to comment
Jenna Ann Posted June 11, 2012 Share Posted June 11, 2012 VERY nice!!!!! What is that blue mat its sitting on? Link to comment
ragnarok513 Posted June 11, 2012 Author Share Posted June 11, 2012 It's an aquarium mat I got this one right here. http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod...fm?pcatid=14697 Since it's in my office, I want to make sure that any leaks or spills are contained. -Ray Link to comment
Builder Anthony Posted June 11, 2012 Share Posted June 11, 2012 is this the first one you built or a second project? Link to comment
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