Jimmy's 90 Gallon Build Thread

Yes... I am picking up the trim tonight. I'm having my fiance's father build the doors. He's a cabinet maker and will do a wonderful job. Doors tend to make or break a project.

 

Yes, I cut out these pieces myself.


This bubble trap region looks kind of like it's not parallel, but it is. Must be the silicone or something.

Water test tomorrow.

 

Looks great!

 

It's been crickets in here. Anyway, some more progress. The 80/20 I ordered was around 1.5" too long to fit in the canopy without binding up on either the front doors or the back fans... so we had to fix that.

Fixed...

Cut with a plywood blade on a circular saw (mounted backwards). Lots of lube.
Then some rough assembly:

This frame will hold the two multichip pendants directly and will hold smaller frames for the supplemental lighting. The positions of the rails will change as I decide exactly where to mount the multichips and what not.
What it'll look like in the canopy:

From above.

The top will have a cover. I hate light spill. I may make it just a "drop on" cover so I can remove it if needed.

Spent a lot of time thinking about how I wanted to do trim work. My main dilemma was that because I left the front so open, with the doors... a full column set (2 vertical risers with a gap in between) would result in very thin vertical pieces. To me, this wouldn't look that great (columns are supposed to be strong, right?). So, I decided to use a 1"x4" strip of finish walnut to create the main body of the column. This presented another problem... the corner of the stand would be exposed, leaving an unfinished edge. To counter this, I got some edging and said... I'll work around it.

I'm still working on solving the issue of how to get around the corner bump out. I think I'm going to go with an angled piece, which would also help prevent sharp corners on the top that could suck to bump into. This will give it a "cut off" corner. This is the trimwork so far, just set into place... and this picture is actually an oak stand in. I'll be using this oak as the top rail or cap piece for the crown moulding.



Lots of fun decisions to make soon. I found some gorgeous walnut to use for the columns and I'll be routering the edges to make it nice and attractive.

 

Coming along nicely. +1

 

Looks great...I am in just about the same point you are with building my stand...trim and doors. Might I suggest you change your eggcrate top to some Clear Netting - Bulk Reef Supply. It doesn't block light, and will stop all small fishies from jumping, where the eggcrate will block light and small guys will fit through.

 

I'm debating that. One downside is that my lights are rather heavy, so I'll need to be able to set them down while moving them out. I can do netting or whatever whenever.

 

So... got to playing some more and changed up things a little again. I will admit, some of these cuts are not quite as easy as they might seem.

Dry fit to bottom of column.
I believe the first set of trim I put together will be the top... This helps me get any minor mistakes out of the way before moving to the bottom trim seems which are completely open (not covered by oak trim board).



I do have the oak trim board (the cap piece) about 3-4 pieces behind the crown moulding set here. My goal is to match the oak piece to the crown *perfectly* so I need to finish the crown part before I can match the oak to it. Also haven't decided exactly how high up I want to mount it. If I mount it high enough to completely cover the black trim of the tank... it doesn't leave much trim on the stand for attachment, and it's a heavy piece. As a result, I may leave a little black trim layer (which is completely fine by me).

 

Just a teaser.

 

I should mention, the vertical pieces haven't been stained yet. The right one does have a preliminary coat on.