70g Cube

[Greenhornet]

Hi Everyone,

 

I've been in this hobby for just over a year and am always learning new things everyday. I started out with a 29g tank and am upgrading to a 70g cube (30x30x18). Adam from Artfully Acrylic built my tank and he did an awesome job. I had an excellent experience working with him from start to finish. I picked up the tank yesterday.

 

 

 

 

--Richard

[khalid]

That's a beautiful tank!

[jimlin]

any pictures of the stand?

[Coral Hind]

Nice tank, looking forward to seeing this set up. Is this going to be a standard reef tank?

[Cliff Puckstable]

That tank looks so pro. I can't wait to see it up and running.

[Greenhornet]

I'm thinking of making it a mixed reef tank. The tank will be in wall where the old tank used to be. I had to extend the stand because the new tank is deeper.

 

 

Edited November 12, 2012 by Greenhornet

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

Oooo thats going to look nice in the wall!

[ArtFully Acrylic (Adam B)]

I'm thinking of making it a mixed reef tank. The tank will be in wall where the old tank used to be. I had to extend the stand because the new tank is deeper.

 

 

Hey Richard, was a pleasure meeting with you this Saturday! I do hope you enjoy the tank!

 

Just seeing your post and want to make a mention on your stand build...

 

You have setup your stand where the weight of the tank is being borne by the screws in the wood essentially. Generally speaking, this isn't a good thing and I don't recommend it.

 

The good news is that it wouldn't be too difficult for you to set it up right. Wouldn't take a lot of time or cost you a lot of extra money.

 

Look at the picture below...see the 2x4's that run in each corner flush with the top/bottom frames? You need to get some fresh 2x4's and cut some of these to fit in this location. Take your total intended frame height, subtract 7 (height of two 2x4's), and you have the length these need to be.

 

These need to fit in between the top and bottom frame so that they bear the weight of the tank...not the screws as currently setup. Once you have these cut, you can use the existing vertical pieces of your frame, cut them to be an inch shorter than the total frame height then screw them into the INSIDE of the top/bottom frame. Then, you screw the weight bearing 2x4's into these. The ones on the inside solely act as "screw strips" essentially just to hold the weight bearing 2x4's in place. The reason the screw strips are cut short is to ensure that they don't actually bear the weight of the tank. Also note that the order in which I have you doing this is also intentional with the weight bearing pieces going in before the screw strips are screwed in.

 

Assembly can be made easier by temporarily clamping the screw strips to the top/bottom frame so that you can get the weight bearing pieces in place, but you need to let the frame weight settle into these before screwing the strips into place.

 

Give me a call if you need some extra guidance on doing this. It is a little difficult to put into words here without going into an extremely long post.

 

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[ArtFully Acrylic (Adam B)]

And here is a pic from a different angle so you can also see that the screw strips are intentionally left short...

 

[surf&turf]

Good catch Adam!!

[tpallas]

Looks good, Adam did a good job on this tank and it looks great in the wall.

[Greenhornet]

Thanks! I'll make the adjustments.

[Amuze]

Looks good!

[swffan]

That tank looks awesome! Nice work Adam!

 

Can't wait to see this one up and running

[Incredible Corals]

I had no idea it was going to be an in-wall. That is going to look amazing!

[flooddc]

Looks good.