making a ATS

I'm making a Algae Turf Scrubber and thought I'd do a build out of it. This is my first time working with acrylic and so far it has not been too hard. I'm no expert on ATS, but I thought I'd try to make a nice one even though it's my first one because I'm going to be making a sump/fuge soon and thought the experience with acrylic would be good.
I used my dremel cutting attachment to cut the acrylic and it worked great with the almost an 1/8 in (forgot the exact measurement) softer acrylic. I don't think it would work on the thicker and harder stuff, but this is plenty strong for my application. The grinding wheel worked for little cuts that I needed to see better, but I had to cut it in very small sections so that it would not melt the plastic rather than cut it.
The pvc will be my spray bar, and I will be using 2 23w CF "day light" bulbs in it.

 

Here are some of the pieces going together.

 

Looks good so far.

I have always been interested in these things. Maybe someday when I have a fish room.

 

I need to go get my screens and do some drilling to put the spray bars inside as well as put in the return pipe in the side of the lower part, but you can get an idea of what I'm doing with these pics. I will be running 2 screens on one side each with the lights hanging in the middle from my stand. I'm putting it on a 90g system and will be running roughly 9x10 screens ( I have room to make them bigger if I want) achieving the recommended 1 square inch of screen per gallon of display.

 

Pretty impressive DIY. I am a fan of ATS I have never seen one like your design though. Following to see what is looks like in use.

 

Thank you, I'm pretty stoked on it! Most of the time I'm a function first type of guy, but I'm trying to stop having all my DIY stuff turn out funky, so this it pretty good for me if I do say so myself..... so far.

 

coming out nice,always wanted to make one..cool looking tortoise in the first pick..

 

so I got my screens and thought that I might as well use two of them together for more surface area to "fuzz" up seeing as they only cost 60 cents each. I ended up cutting some of the zip-ties you see in the pic off to re-size, and think it might be better loose than tight for more aeration/surface area. I got some mirrored plastic for my sides, and bent the tops so that I would not be loosing light. I will leave some room in the top to vent heat, when I get to putting them on.

 

Mirrored plastic, good idea !! The pvc spray bar has me intrigued, and how you are going to get the flow right.

 

if you are using the glue from tap plastics (the thick stuff in a tube not the super viscous stuff) you will want to get the tips I have here, but they are 90cents each so you don't want to toss one for each time you glue. I use the TP tips I made to clean them, but you have to be quick. Most of the time you will not get all of it out and need to come back with a needle to poke it out, but it's worth it. If your a hunter or a nor-cal kid you'll have a food saver and you can use the sealing part I've shown to heat your plastic to bend it. I just used some little pieces of wood to trick it into thinking the lid was closed, I'm sure you can figure it out if you have one. I would not use this method for anything that I thought would have some load/stress on it (like the corner of a tank or filter), but it worked well for my mirrored parts. My lights are going to be 2x 26w 6500k CF. The tubes on the lights are the smallest I've seen on a CF, I think they might be about the size of a t2? I've never seen a t2 so I'm guessing, but like I said they are the smallest I've seen........ not that it matters or anything :