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RK_Tek's 25g rimless-DIY Addiction


RK_tek

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Well, I've been holding off starting a thread for my tank until I had something useful to post. Yesterday I finally got my stand finished and I just recently finished a new controller for the LEDs.

 

The LEDs are Cree XR-E's. 6 CW and 6 RB. The fixture is electrical conduit and the lamp heads are from a floor lamp that an old roommate left behind. I stripped the guts and fit a heatsink with a 60mm fan an 4 LEDs into each one. I have various optics for them so that I can adjust intensity and color mixing after I get the scape I like. A DIY Typhon LED controller runs the 2 meanwells.

 

I found the tank in a garbage pile while helping my sister move to Baton Rouge. It's a Tenecor Simplicity 20L AIO. After LOTS of polishing with Novus plastic polish, I have it looking pretty respectable. The filtration has been modified to make a fuge section where bioballs used to be. I ran bioballs when I had some cichlids in the tank and they worked well, but not for a SW setup.

 

The stand has been the biggest holdup for this build. I had started on the lights over a year ago and finally got them wrapped up around October. The original plan was to build the stand over Christmas break, but the shop at school had the power locked. A paperclip and screwdriver fixed that and I managed to get all the pieces that had to be laminated cut to rough size. After two months, I've finally had enough free time from my architectural thesis to finish it. The entire stand is made with 1/2" Baltic Birch ply and the top, bottom shelf, and legs are laminated to 1". I built a kitchen table a few years ago, and bc the tank will be right by it, I wanted the stand to match. The only hardware used was 8 bolts(one in each leg) and the hinges for the doors, everything else is held together by rabbits, mortise and tenon, and old fashioned friction and gravity. All the furniture I build can be disassembled and packed flat for moving. All the electrical is mounted to a panel and hidden away behind the doors. There are openings routed into the back at the top and bottom for running cords.

 

Below are some pics of the build. Feel free to comment; but I doubt I'll change much, if anything.

 

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Find your image in photobucket. Find the 'Share this photo' options, should be four. Click the last one 'Img code'. It will copy to the clipboard. Paste the image in your post.

 

edit: You figured it out. Looks nice.

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I like the picture above your tank. Oh, and i like your tank too. :)

Haha, thanks. Both of my roommates have wiener dogs. I just have aquariums

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Finally got everything from my 10 gallon transferred over. The corals are still mad bc it took a lot longer than anticipated. I live in a house from the 30's with no insulation and the water temp was still at 65 when I got home so I added a second heater and got things going. I had a xenia frag land on the elkhorn and break a piece off, so that had to get mounted. Then I had to drill some rock for acrylic rods so it would stay where i wanted it too. The scape isn't quite what I want it to be, but when I bought the rock it all had to fit in a 10 gallon and now the LFS doesn't have any good rock in stock bc business is so slow. I may just buy some dry rock from reefcleaners or something so I can get things looking better. I'm still battling a bit of hair algae and aiptasia that came on the elkhorn, but i'm managed to get a few aps while I was moving the coral. I tested everything during lunch and it all came out at 0. The only rock that was out of water for more than was the pieces I put rods in, so I don't expect much of a cycle. All the inverts are out and about. I'll be heading to Baton Rogue this weekend, so I may come back with a fish or shrimp of some kind if everything continues to test ok.

 

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I HAVE LIVESTOCK! I just got two juvenile ocellaris clowns and a fire shrimp. I'll get pics up when the lights are on and everybody is out. The tank looks so much more alive with the fish and the shrimp just has so much personality.

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Liking the tank.

 

I'm in hammond, and does Baton Rouge have any respectable LFS's I should check out?

 

I got my xenia and green leather at mark's marine. He has opened another store that is just FW since I was last there. Nice guy, and very knowledgeable staff.

 

sweet tank, can you provide more details on the controller? what does it do dimming etc?

 

The controller is a DIY designed by the guys at RC. It has 4 channels of dimming and has both 0-5v and 0-10v output. I have one that i'm going to be using on my picOaquariums ridge15 and direct driving the cooling fans from the 10v.

 

I would post pictures of my setup, but it's a bit embarrassing as it still has jumper wires connecting things and I haven't gotten an acrylic mounting panel that I'm happy with laser cut yet.

 

The controller is Arduino based, but is built on a custom circuit board that a standard hd77480 LCD plugs into. It took me about an hour to stuff the board, solder, and upload the software to the board. The board also has I2C pins that the current software doesn't support, but can be modified for temp sensors or any other imaginable things.

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DSCN5127.jpg

 

Got the arm finally done for my PicO Ridge 15. I made a stand out of some left over Birch ply that I had from my other stand. Slowly making some progress on this...

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I realized I never uploaded any pics of my O. Clowns or Fireshrimp, so here they are. I found another LFS that's not so L, but has way more coral than any others and the owner said he will frag anything I want to make it a reasonable price. So i'll be going back Tuesday to pick some new corals out. In the meantime, enjoy Pablo, Jaque, and Fuego.

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Got some new frags today, an acan, a pavona(cactus coral), and a flower pot. The flower pot is all closed up, so no pictures right now. I also got my Ridge 15 set up last night, so I got a piece of LR for it. I'll be using it to grow out frags/and/or QT when I need it.

 

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Until I get a seperate thread started for my PicO, i'll just keep adding stuff here. These are just some random pics from the build process. Today I cut a mockup of the LED controller faceplate. It might be a few days before I get a final one cut and mounted. The pictures of the light are a little old, I went back and made a new cable that is quite a bit longer and added the last LED. I'm running a 50/50 mix of CW/RB. The heatsink is packed, but I know that I can keep anything that fits in the tank and I don't have to run any optics. The heatsink was cut out of a larger piece that I rescued from the scrap bin at my old job. I cut it down with a circular saw and lots of filing.

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Had a few minutes while I was waiting on my computer to print some stuff so I ran down the hall and cut out a faceplate. This is just one part of it. painted the backside black and then rubbed some white paint into the etched letters on the front.

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Couldn't sleep, so I stayed up and finished getting the light controller put together. I still need to make some little tabs to hold it in place, but it's there. I think I fried a voltage regulator on the board though, so no pics of everything running yet. I ordered a new one and a few other parts to clean things up "under the hood", so I should get that fixed in a few days. Sorry some of the pics of the acrylic are covered in smudges and finger prints, I cleaned everything up before mounting. I'll probably end up staining the base an ebony, or translucent black finish of some sort just to tie everything together .

 

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The controller is mounted in the front(short end) of the tank which is recessed about an inch so I shouldn't have any problems with things getting wet.

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Thats pretty slick. Is the vodka bottle your auto top off?

 

It is. I have some acrylic solvent on the way to make a reservoir to go in the base, but the vodka bottle serves the purpose. With a cover over the display, evaporation is pretty minimal and the bottle lasts a week or so

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irondragon013

A cover makes a huge difference in evap. I think I might go through a gallon in 2 weeks on my 20L. I think my water changes affect it also though.

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