I was very sick of looking at the stand that the previous tank owner made when I bought this tank. It was def. sturdy enough, just wasn’t pleasing to the eye. So I went to Lowe’s and started buying…and about 85$ and a car load of wood later, I started the project.
Here’s what I started with (I forgot to get a very first pic, so the one side is nailed up).
Here’s after I got everything nailed up.
Here’s after the coat of stain.
I made it so that the top face board flips up on a hinge so that I can feed/maintain, blah blah.
It will get 1 coat of oil poly tonight (monday) and then a final coat of polyurethane tomorrow night. Hopefully my next project will be a pine top for my 90 gallon, we’ll see if the schedule allows for it, lol.
**I don’t know why the hell that middle picture isn’t full sized, sorry.
The clowns couldn’t care less, they enjoy the change. The anemone loves it because now he gets more light, as for the others, they are still feeling out the whole, can’t see out the sides thing. There was a lot of movement around the tank for the past few nights so everyone is a little freaked out.
Normally takes me about a week to 2 weeks from start to finish (Including stain/poly) to build the stands/hoods that I do, but those are a lot more intricate and built seperate from the tanks.
As for filtration, penguin 350b, and a aquaclear 20, or 200, something like that. I’m going to do a sump tank once I get more into the reef part, but as for now, I don’t need it. The tank is predrilled which is nice. Tank stays super clean thanks to 3 turbo snails, 20ish blue leg hermits, 3 peppermint shrimp, a sally lightfoot crab, and the sand sifting goby. I’m def. no perfectionist and this was actually better than what I pictured in my head. My main boggle was the fact that this tank was treated for ich in it’s freshwater days apparently, so the seals were all blue, so I needed to cover those up by framing the tank.
Its so high because the tank is only 14"ish tall (this is my small tank for my bedroom), and I wanted to not have to bend over to see the tank. I then went 8" off the top to provide enough room for the light that I have on the tank. The light stands on legs that has the bottom of the light at around 4" off the top of the tank so it doesn’t heat up the water. the total height top to bottom is only 5’.
very nice man… my brother just sold his 46 gallon saltwater setup tank on ebay. kind of sad to see it go cuz they are so nice to see but i guess its time for a change. we built a top for his that had the lights enclosed and all. it feels good to be able to make something from nothing and be able to enjoy it. :tup:
