My new 300 gall build

[slayer]

while the frames were getting sandblasted and then powdercoated, i decided to make the base and top for the stand. I routed out the overflow holes for the top. The top is 3/4 inch plywood and the bottom 1/2 inch plywood.
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[slayer]

with the left over plywood i decided to make a control station. With all my equipment now having to be crammed under the tank and no fish room or garage to play in anymore everything had to be organized. I wanted all my controllers and monitors to be in one location and wanted to be able to monitor and control the whole tank from this one point.
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[sailfish]

Nice I really like the depth of the tank.

Joe

 

[slayer]

Got some more done with the control station. Ended up staining the wood and cutting out slots for 2 american dj power outlets. Im going ot place my ac3, calcium reactor ph monitor, tunze 7095 controller and wavebox controller here. Im along with other stuff going to plug my skimmer pumps, cabinet lighting, and actuator switch on here. If you notice i also placed a green led on the unit. This attaches to my ro/di unit and tells me when the auto top off is filling up my tank. The plan is to have this behind my side cabinet door, so when i open the door this is directly behind it flushed to the cabinet stand.
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[slayer]

So i now needed a place to plug in all my other accesories that were constantly running and a place for the power outlets for the ac3. So i took the remaining wood i had left and came up with this. Its also got space for me to mount my tunze drivers.
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[slayer]

After i was done making this i realized that the power outlets would probably be located right above my sump, so i needed to protect them with some kind of cover to avoid splashes and moisture. This time i had to run to lowes to pick up some lumbar. I also had some scrap acrylic laying around and decided to use it for the cover. This unit once stained will basically be glued to the piece in the above pic covering the power outlets.
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[slayer]

Time for a sump.. I got a used 45 gal from optimum (thankx greg), and got sal and josh to drill the tank (saltwater city). I had two holes drilled for my pumps. one for my return and the other to feed my chiller. I ordered the glass for the baffles from a local glass company and siliconed them in place. This time round i listened to melevs advice and placed the baffles an inch and half apart to stop bubbles "sling-shooting" around them. (he recommended at least an inch at his meeting). I like long sumps as it allows bubbles to get trapped in the baffles. They also allow the settling of dirt and debris along a longer travel route. This will make it easier to shipon out the crap every week. The middle chamber will also act as a hospital/ time-out section for any aggresive or healing fish.
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[slayer]

Im going to use 3 400watt mh bulbs, 3 250watt mh bulbs and prob 4 icecap 660's to light up my tank. With all this juice i needed a place for the ballasts to go, and more importantly a place where the heat could be dissipated easily. I do not have the space under the tank, and did not want to place the ballasts there anyway due to heat building up. So i decided to make a big heat sink. I cut a piece of plywood and made long channels in them the exact size of the length of the individual ballasts. I took a piece of roofing metal and cut it to size and then attached it all together. The roofing metal works great. It conducts heat real well.
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[ldybkr]

Looks great so far. I like the baffles the way you did them.

 

[slayer]

thank-ya

 

[slayer]

With all the posts about aquascaping recently and looking at some of the crazy stuff they have done over on reef central i decided it was my turn to go and do something wild. I had a bunch of "dead" live rock that i had used in tanks before that was sitting around and decided to put it to use. I made an outline of the back of the tank with some eggcrate. Then i threw on all the rock i had to make sure i had enough. Then instead of using small marco or figi rock that most people have been using on their rock walls i decided to use big rock and create some stucture. I had a couple of obstacles that i needed to work around such as where would my tunzes and vortechs go? if i had a solid rock wall against the back pane. But for now i started to make the wall.... I used a masonary drill bit to make holes in the rock and attached them to the eggcrate with zip ties.
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[slayer]

and soon this is what i started getting....
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[skriz]

Love the giant heat sink...brilliant!

How are you going to get the eggcrate to attach to the wall of the tank?

 

[jimbracco]

rock? lemmie know when/if you are gonna buy rock...i need to fill a similar startup soon...whats up with the powerbuys lately...awfully slo still showing july as the last

 

[skriz]

jimbracco;210743 wrote: rock? lemmie know when/if you are gonna buy rock...i need to fill a similar startup soon...whats up with the powerbuys lately...awfully slo still showing july as the last

Sorry, MACNA has taken up any and all time that I'm not at work. What would you like to see for a pb?

 

[ldybkr]

How long will it take to Leach out the lime?

 

[tsciarini]

oooohhh....:wow:

 

[glxtrix]

Glad my reflector write up came of some use....and that someone actually read it, lol. Can't wait to see more pics of this

 

[slayer]

dont need rock for now,., i think i have more then enough,,,the guys are busy busting their behinds with macna...i'd let them off the hook for now:up: .. Yeap read your thread lee... here come the pics of the canopy and stand...

raj... the rock are stacked so they stand vertical on there own right now,,fingers crossed they stay that way..

 

[slayer]

So after sandblasting the bare metal and powdercoating the stand, canopy and top heres what i got...
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