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iCephalopod's Solana 34g Cube Retrofit


iCephalopod

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iCephalopod

Hey Guys, this is a cross-post from my local forum. I thought I'd share here too since I did a lot of reading and research on nano-reef.

 

Solana 34g Retrofit Build
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New tank unsullied. The alarming looking crack at the bottom is just from a crease in the felt that's glued onto the bottom of the tank.
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Preparing to drill for plumbing: Durso Standpipe to sump, emergency drain to sump, return
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Drillin' Time! Taking a break after 20 minutes of drilling.
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Overflow & refugium wall using 1/4" black acrylic from eStreet Plastics. Due to space restrictions in my stand and sump I decided to put my refugium in the tank. I diverted a 3/8" mur-lok tubing line from my return into the refugium and made a small cut-out on the top of the wall between my refugium & return chamber to allow water to flow back in from the refugium. This seems to work really well and will hopefully be the easiest way to encourage pods to move to the display area.
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Making sure the Weld-On 4 adheres the acrylic together. Chamber 1: Emergency drain & Durso Standpipe; Chamber 2: Refugium; Chamber 3: Return & heater/probe storage. I cut the teeth for the overflow on chamber 1 using a table saw with a DeWalt 60T fine finish blade. It would have been better if I used a router table because the table saw blade left radial cuts on the backside of the acrylic. However, for my purposes the table saw worked just fine.
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Time to paint!
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I used 3 coats of Rust-Oleum Universal Black Satin spray paint & 2 coats of Varathane Polyurethane Semi-Gloss Heavy Use Formula. I had a few options including using a plastic overlay, but it would have driven me crazy getting it exactly straight and air bubble free. This method was pretty easy, we'll see how well it holds up over time.
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Backside shot. The polyurethane is still wet, it dries clear.
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I was thinking about doing an overhead fuge light that would drop in flush with the top of the tank, but I would have had to get the water levels and chamber walls just right. Instead, I decided to go with a HOB fuge light, so I chipped the paint away to make a window for chamber 2.
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This silicone is great, it's structural and better than what's available at Home Depot. I bought it through Amazon.
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False wall siliconed in and holes drilled for my return line and to join chamber 3 to the main tank. I will be using chamber 3 to store my heater and probes. In order to get the chambers water tight I had to silicone more than I expected. The Weld-On 4 made a strong join between the plastic connections, but evidently it didn't make a proper seam. I had to fill in the plastic to plastic corners and edges with silicone to get it water tight. If I had to do it again, I would have gone over the edges of the joined plastic with Weld-On several times to make sure it was water tight. It was too small of a space to try and do that once the whole piece had been siliconed in.
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Bulkheads and low profile strainers installed in chamber 3. My chambers finally passed the 4th water test after resealing the inner edges several times with silicone.
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The tank is up! My LR & livestock have been transferred over. As you can see, this tank is quite a bit taller than my original so I will be adding more rock.
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DIY lighting: Luxeon ES 3W: RB x8, CB x7; Luxeon M 12W 4000K x2; SemiLEDs 3W hyper violet dual core x5 on a makersled heat sink. There's still some finishing to do. I plan to use molex connectors and heat shrink tubing to pretty up the wires.
Post build thoughts: Wow, this was a lot more work than I expected. Since this was my first tank related DIY it took a lot of time to figure out how to do everything and then re-do it to get it right. I had to rip out my siliconed wall 3 or 4 times to fix various issues. If I had to do it over again I probably would have simplified and bought a pre-built corner overflow, siliconed it in, drilled a return & overflow hole, and called it good. If you don't count the tools I purchased I probably ended up saving a little money, but considering the time it took to do all this custom work, I don't think it was worth the effort.
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