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Nano-Cube 6 Stand


Deep Thief

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Hey there everyone,

 

I thought it was about time I posted up a build. My wife is an elementary school teacher. She is in a self contained unit and the principal said yes to a tank. I was originally thinking along the lines of a 10 or a 20. The LFS I use had a used 20 that was a customers. The owner of it and I could never come to an agreement on a price so I passed on it. My brother finally convinced me to look into an AIO. So right before Christmas, we are in the shop and about to check out, when there sits a cute little used NC6. Needless to say, it came home with us. Merry Christmas Muffy! I, being the tinkerer that I am, could not just sit it on top of some crap school desk. Off to Lowes I go with a whole bunch of ideas, alot of which came from here.

 

 

MY Supplies to start

stand_parts_1.jpg

 

 

The door of a stand seems to be the hardest thing to accompolish, so I cheated a little, I just used edge molding to go around a wood shelf panel and now it looks like a raised panel door

door_1_1.jpg

 

 

Next step was the top to go under the tank itself. This is actually the second one as I messed up the first. On the first, I tried to follow the corner of the tank exactly, problem was, I wanted to have molding bend around the bow with it. Real problem was the bend was toooooo tight and it would not work. Everytime I tried to bend the molding, it would break. I tried cutting relief cuts in the back, which was fine, but the front would splinter and break. So with the first top scrapped, here is the second one and I just kinda followed the bow of the tank on out to the edge. Now the molding, after soaking in water, would bow nicely around the front. I had a buddy here and as I held it bowed, he used a hair dryer to dry it so it would dry in the bowed shape. Worked like a charm.

top_1.jpg

 

 

One of the main problems with a tank this size is, Its this size. Really sucks being this small. I had to weigh the options of the sizes with the room available (more on this later). I had to decide how wide to make the door, while making it still look good and still have some room to put stuff in the stand and not have it be this little crap opening you can't get anything in. Yes the cut in the piece of wood on the top under where the top will go, was on purpose. This way I can pass power cords through this hole and plug them into a power strip.

stand_1.jpg

 

 

Here we are now ready to stain with the trim molding, door, top, and stand ready to go.

ready%20for%20stain_1.jpg

 

 

In the process of staining everything on the extra dining room table that we had gotten out for X-Mas dinner and I never put up yet.

staining_1.jpg

 

 

And for the finished product. I tried to use an off black, kinda charcoal color to match the trim of the tank as best I could. Well I choose Minwax, Onyx and it wasn't as OFF black as I thought it would be. Thats ok it still looks good, I think.

finished_1.jpg

finished%20inside_1.jpg

 

 

 

Well my Muffy wanted it set up after I was done with it, so to my tank I went. Out came about 3gallons of water, two seeded rocks and two of my best pieces, 3gallons of new water, and I also gave up about 5lbs or so of some sand, all of which = Instant cycle. The only problem with some of the measurements, when I thought of the door, I didn't think about the molding going up the side and the hinges taking up room. So if you look close the door is actually offset so the hinges miss the molding but it all still fits. Hope you enjoy the pics. I will be moving it into the school tomorrow for her and talking to her students about it while I set it up. Sorry, I didn't think the pics would be so small, I will have to work on that. First time posting pics on here as well. Cheers, Mark

finished%20water_1_1.jpg

rock%20_amp_%20water_1.jpg

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Yea, My puter is a POS and to facilitate the uploading into my gallery, I downsized them, well that made them really small on here as well. I will work on it. Mark

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Pics are fixed, I am an idiot. I used the URL from the thumbnails of the gallery I am using and not the large pics URL's. Sorry, I'm a pic posting noob. Mark

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Came out looking really nice. Can't wait to see the progress.

 

And I won't bust on your pic posting noobness. Especially considering the time it took me to setup that second gallery for the reef tanks. The software was a bit more complicated then my Astronomy Gallery software.

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Does your wife care for reefs as well? If it's only you than I'd figure the routine maintenance and testing involved with a nano would really ad up to a lot of time, but if she's comfortable with caring for it, it's not really an issue.

 

 

It looks like a great little setup (hopefully not too tall for elementary schoolers, but keeping their hands out of the top is probably for the better) and I'm sure the kids will be in awe of it.

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Does your wife care for reefs as well? If it's only you than I'd figure the routine maintenance and testing involved with a nano would really ad up to a lot of time, but if she's comfortable with caring for it, it's not really an issue.

 

 

It looks like a great little setup (hopefully not too tall for elementary schoolers, but keeping their hands out of the top is probably for the better) and I'm sure the kids will be in awe of it.

Well my wife has been around reefs, but this is offically her First tank that is just hers. So we are kinda breaking her in to it. Her aid in the classroom has had freshwater all her life. At least she knows the waste cycle and such. We are going to set it up so that a student uses the magfloat to clean the glass every so often. Full blown testing, I will do. Water changes, I will probably do. I am going to run some chemicals to help filter the water (read Chemi Pure or Purigen) and some filter floss to clean big particals. We will probably have the student also clean the filter floss (under supervision of course). Should be a good learning experience for all of them.

 

We definately didn't want some kid going up to it and making a wish and dropping a penny in the tank. That or feed the hungry fish part of a PB & J, so thanks to my brothers urging, we went with the AIO. The kids love it, I took it in today and set it up. They had 50million questions for me while I was setting it up. Cheers, Mark

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