35 Gallon Hex

[armyfishnj]

I have a 35G hex whici is a freshwater tank at this moment. I am looking at making it a reef tank. Any ideas of how to make this happen??? I am looking at trying to cut the tank in half with all of the rockwork in the middle of the tank. All help is appreciated.....

[TheCurriculum]

1st read the begginer articles

read these articles first

 

Ok did you ever use a copper dip or any other fish treatment in that tank. if you did you may not want to use it as copper will KILL your corals.

 

Rules of Thumb or whatever you want to call them

 

Lighting

5w to 8w minimum to support soft corals without much growth

which means 175w lighting at a minimum

Check out hello lights or any of the other fine lighting options for DIY and setup lights

 

 

Water

10 times the total gallon size (you will want to use a couple power heads to get a good cross current)

So you will want 350gph or more

 

Filtration

To start with you can use just Live Rock and Live Sand

You can always add skimmers and such but aren't a most have they are just helpfull in some cases.

 

 

Before you really begin

Read the begginer articles

 

Use the Search feature if you are unsure. Click here or use the search in the top right hand corner

 

/EDIT/

side note... read read read and be sure to have fun when you set up your tank right the first time you will save money and it will last for years to come. Hardest thing to start with is patience. reading and waiting ... for example when you setup your tank it may have just sand and rock it for over a month while the cycle is going on... do a search on cycling cycle LF cycle etc...

[alistair]

I have just set my 35 gal hex tank up with fish and live rock. I would love to eventually include some coral however the 20x4 glass hole on top of the tank will not allow enough space for a good light system to be inatalled.

I have been trying to locate a clear glass top. Do you have one? Where did you get it?

What lighting do you propose to use?

[TheCurriculum]

As far as a glass top why not just go to a home depot or lowes and get some acrlyic or plexi .. acrylic allows more light in then glass. Most homedepots will cut it to spec for a few. You bring in a Cardboard template of the size you want and it shouldn't be a big deal as it should only be a 5 to 10 buck charge

 

You have enough room to build a custom canopy

You can draw up the plans and most lumber yards will cut the wood for a small fee

 

for example

Oak would be more expensive then pine

but you could draw out your hex on card board

Then from that you can get the angles for the side panels

Bring this info to the lumber yard and they can cut the wood to spec. Then you could take it and glue and nail it together.

Use some finshing putting to cover the nails or wood caps. Then stain it.

 

As far as lighting you would have room for a MH 150 to 200w light

Plus a couple PC actinic lights. Check out hellolights or other places. Dig around through the lighting forum and the DIY section

 

This would require some DIY again but nothing that would be to hard. as you can buy already wired ballast for both the MH and PC's. Then add a Fan or two running off of a Power converter.

 

I'm sure you could pay someone to do this but if you did it your self it would be that much nicer even if it wasn't perfect bc you made it.

 

Here's a simple pic (it's in paint and I spent a whole of 2 minutes on it so it's ruff)

 

 

You could also for a more stable hood build the hood large enough to slide over the tank. Then on the back of each slate run an additional slate that is shorter by lets say an inch.

This way the hood covers the top inch of the tank and can't be knocked off. Plus if you used wood caps over the screw you could make a nice patern and still keep it a simple build.

 

Remember cardboard and tape are cheap. Build it out of cardbaord tape it in place on your tank and see what it will look like. Then you can find the size specs on the lights from web sites and see how you can fit them.

 

Most people are afraid they may break something. But hey as long as you glue it and screw it together it's not going anywhere and you can get someone else to cut the wood for a small fee.

 

For even less work build a rectangle box that only covers the middle section, easier to build but wouldn't look nearly as cool.

The rectrangle box would be all flat cuts with no angles to mess with.

 

For example here is my 2.5 stand and hood that I built. The only complex part of this build would be routing the edges (gives the lip look)

http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/showthread...&threadid=23676