DIY 20.8 gallon cube...

[r00onmac]

decided i needed something bigger for my clowns, and i love the idea of having a cube shaped tank but didnt like any of the ones available and really didnt want to spend any money if i could...

basically the design is a 20x20x12h which comes out to 20.8 gallons..

i have the whole idea and beginning documented on RC http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=839248

but ill copy and paste my post to here so those who dont want to click can read...

Okay here it goes...sorry for the bad pics, my fiance has my digicam so i used my phone...


the tools:

utility knife and slotted screw driver

Cordless saw with hacksaw type blade,,, you can use a regular hack saw, but it is almost necessary to save the black plastic rims

Smalles guitar wire... 75 cents

first is first... use the saw to cut the corners at an angle so that you cut through the plastic but not into the glass... this sounds really easy but wasnt so simple... i chipped the edges of almost every piece i cut... more about that later...

Once all edges are off it looks like this:

Take the wire (and preferrably pliars if you have them) and pull the wire down between the corners of the sides, when it comes to the bottom just push the glass over and use the utility knife to cut the silicone and release the side from the base...

This is all of the sides lined up, i also have the bottoms lined up next to that...

Next i took the utility knife and scraped all of the silicone off of the sides... i tried my best to get all of it on all sides but i really just wanted to make sure that the sides would line up and not have room for any air to break the seal.


Take the pieces and tape the edges together and use a square to make sure it is actually square shaped, i thought it was straight until i put the square on it and noticed it REALLY wasnt

And once you have run the silicone up the inside of the tank and run your finger over it to smooth it out it looks like this:

What i have going on now is i took the two bottom pieces and two of the smaller side pieces (scraped already) and laid the two big bottom pieces down on the floor... then spread silicone onto the two smaller pieces and laid them across the seam... my pic wouldnt upload so ill post that later..

 

[r00onmac]

now for the continuation....

here is the pic of the bottom that i made last night

it is the two regular bottoms from a 10, with two of the 10x16" sides siliconed across the seam...

last night i also attached the black rim all the way around the top and siliconed it on,,, as well as filled in the gaps between the edges of the black rim with black silicone... aside from being a little globby i think it will work just fine for my purposes...

this morning i flipped the tank over and attached the bottom that is now half dry to the tank... so now it looks like this:

in turn i siliconed around the two 10x16" that are attached to the bottom, and i have started adding the black rim around the bottom as can be seen in the picture...

in putting this bottom on (which is theoretically square because the pieces are both 20x10 exactly i had to take the tank off square to make it touch on all edges... so that means either my math is wrong,,, or my square is wrong... or a little of both... but either way the millimeters i needed to shift it will not be noticable once the tank is together...Also because of the original way the 10 gallons were setup there is a slight amount of overhang in the back of my new custom tank... i siliconed heavily at that seam on the outside and dont expect any problems from it later... as soon as i think the tank as setup enough to flip i will do so, that way i can silicone the inside of the bottom to wall corners.. all in all i think its been a solid build... i will be water testing it tomorrow around 7pm and i will leave the water in over night just to make sure no leaks develope... if not... across the livestock goes after lights out on thursday (about 930pm, maybe earlier if i get hella anxious..)

 

[TimSchmidt]

Looking good. Any problems with nicking the glass?

 

[r00onmac]

yea, in the end of the sawing i got impatient and cracked some corners off... but ultimately i was able to arrange those towards the back of the tank and as you will see in later pictures its on the overhang area so it will never see water...

 

[r00onmac]

tank was leak tested this morning... it had a slow ( less than one drip per second) leak in the two back corners and dead center of the bottom of the tank (where the two seams cross like a plus sign)

i re-siliconed those areas and left to dry under my halide... i just filled it again about an hour ago and it held water tight... no drips, no leaks...

one question: it is obvious that glass isnt steel or concrete, etc.. so it will flex slightly with the weight of the water, but how much is an acceptable amount? i had it sitting on carpet while leak testing so i could see if drips developed but i noticed that in the center of the tank there was more carpet in contact with the glass than around the rest of the bottom... now theoretically this could be a 1/32" flex due to weight but without a way to measure it i am slightly concerned...

my options now are to put in the 20 lbs of sand from the bucket... then the 5 gallons of water from my display minus a bit to keep the fish and corals in... design the rockwork... and put in the fish without acclimation (because all 5 gallons are water from their display tank) and then slowly add new salt water over a period of a day or two until the tank is full....

OR...

fill the tank as much as i can (about 8 gallons because thats how much spare salt water i have...) then put the water from the display minus the container with fish and corals and then acclimate over a period of an hour or two... and then go get more water and put it in slowly until the tank is full

Also i dont have any styrofoam for under the tank, but ive never had any before so i dont know what to do... this tank has a much larger surface area underneath and i suppose the styro does stabalize it...

 

[r00onmac]

well now that i feel like im talking to myself... ill let myself know that i have about 9 gallons of water in the tank now with my fish and corals... the zoas opened up almost right away and with the light closer to the water level in this setup they turned almost a purple/blue with green skirt... i hope it stays...

the torch seems to be having the hardest time adjusting to the move as far as corals go, but i attribute that to forgetting to "fan it down" before moving it... i just moved it upside down and im sure he wasnt fond of that... the shrooms and xenia took off spreading out immediately...

my juvi onyx is out exploring everything, my ocellaris is hanging out in a little cove... the light is really bright and as soon as it went out tonight he came out... so i give him a few days... the shrimp are staying surprisingly close to each other considering their past hostile behavior but im sure that will change as they realize the space they have available to them... i like the rockwork i put together, its kind of like an island with outlying large hunks of reef rubble... pics to come when the tank is full tomorrow (hopefully) and the dust settles more... i may buy another rock or two as well because the height of my rockwork is kind of low, but the MH will be only like 2" above the water's surface once the tank is full so maybe that isnt so bad...

ive setup different zones of flow and expect to be able to put a nice piece of monti cap in the back to grow in the flow up towards the MH and i think it will look great... i can see it now..

ok ill stop fantasizing with myself and go now...

 

[reefman23]

rOOonmac... i like what you have done here. It takes guts to go about building a tank from scratch. I am a little concerned like some of the others at RC.com that the seems can become weak points and leak/break. As far as the flex question, I am not sure as to what is the "norm".

You mentioned a MH... how many watts are you lookin at for that? 2" above the surface is nothing and you will almost certainly run into heat issues.

Anyways, good luck and sorry that not many of us are responding to your thread... it tends to be that way with some of these more complicated DIY projects.

Jesse

 

[r00onmac]

well i thank you for responding jesse... id appreciate any feedback, even if its "your a nut" like that one guy on RC did...

its my 150 watt DE with 14k pheonix.... i will most likely find a way to raise it up, but i dont foresee many heat issues (at least this summer)... the room i live in is a chilly 64 with AC on and much higher with it off seeing as i am in Miami...



i dont care if the tank doesnt last 15 years... but i need it to make it through grad school... so about 4 more years MAX... 3 if i stay on target...

 

[r00onmac]

quick pics of it up and im done unless people have questions... back to my life of reading and not really posting...

im going to get another 7 gallons of water today.. and that should all but fill it to the top... maybe still an inch or so of space which i will just fill later...

 

[TimSchmidt]

well glad the tank holds water but I think when your water get closer to the MH your heat will raise quite a bit, but your room is cold so who knows? Did you end up putting a piece of foam under the tank? Sorry that you didn't get the responses you were looking for though. Just keep posting pics to update, we all like to see tanks develope.

 

[r00onmac]

no foam, but i will be sure to get some for august when i move... really setting it up was just for my fish to have room because i move every year (im a resident assistant in college) so august 10th or so i will be breaking it down and putting the fish and torch in a bucket,,, filling my jugs up with the water from the tank and moving it with about 1" of water,the sand and the rocks over to my new building... i would break it down completely but i dont have enough buckets.. ill be sure to set it on something soft like a folded bed comforter so there arent any bounces and breaks...

 

[r00onmac]

Okay so after an hour or longer leak test in which there was no leakage with the tank full and a powerhead moving water around i have developed a slow drip now that the tank is full...

at first i thought it might be water that had spilled when filling the tank but after i wiped it up and left a towel there i came back to find it saturated yet again...

what options do i have now?/? its not coming out of the corner like i had suspected because i see no dripping, so the only guess is that it is coming out of the bottom... which is impossible to get to with the tank full... should i just leave a towel and deal with the drip or do you think it will get worse? if it wont get worse i can deal, because it looks like it cant be much more than a drop a second or less... but more than nothing...