Rocketman's New Dual 175g Bullnose Build Thread

If things go well it will be this weekend. All the parts are in and I picked up the mis-sized piece from San Jose. Still a few things to figure out, but I think we've got everything we need to put the lights up.

 

That is great to hear

 

Holy crap. It's amazing to see what's possible these days... I'm really curious on the finer points of tuning a setup like this. Nice work Rocket!

 

great build cant wait for more pictures

 

UPDATE:

Got all the fish in from World Wide Corals via Delta air freight.

- The Sailfin Tang is looking really bad. She was barely moving when I took her out of the bag, to the point where I thought she was dead. I did a similar acclimation to the Potters mentioned earlier and she seemed to pep up a bit. There was no way I was going to put her in the tank with the Powder Blue so I put her in the fuge. She's been down there for an hour, heading back down after I finish this to check on her.

- All the other fish look to be in good shape, including the couple extra that arrived : I got a huge Limbaugh Chromis and a Schooling Bannerfish (Heniochus) for the semi-reef side.

- On the semi-reef side I now have the three Potters, Heniochus, Vlamingi and the Limbaughs. Additionally, WWC sent along some Green Star Polyps that will go in there too.

- Lights are in work

 

Sounds like you are moving along great, hope the sailfin makes it.

 

Another Update:

- I am starting a new TV show called the "Fish Whisperer" where I nurse sick fish back to life The Sailfin will be fine. She's swimming around the fuge with abandon.

- All other fish are doing great and eating.

- We got the first set of lights up. Not totally finished, but they are on and look great. Pics and progress below:

The basic goals of the lighting set up are:

1) Keep as low a profile as possible so as not to spoil the view through the living room.

2) Come up with a way to match two different sets of lights on the two different tanks.

3) Have something that looks cool and matches the character of the house.


This first pic shows how we're going to do this. What I did was get two pieces of 1/2" glass cut to the same shape as the tanks and have a hole cut in the middle to let the lights show through unobstructed. The mix up I had on the cutting was that both holes got cut to the size needed for the Solaris (48"x9.5") and I needed 44"x12.5" for the Aqua Illuminations. Luckily it was an easy fix, they just had to cut an extra 1.5" notch out of each side so no harm done.




The glass is going to be hung from the ceiling using some pretty cool cable hardware. The pic below shows the cable and hardware.




We first set the glass on top of the aquarium on top of a bunch of Moe's cups so we could use a laser PLS (Plumb Level Square) tool to match the holes in the glass with where we need to put the bolts in the ceiling. Pretty darned cool tool! It allowed us to get the thing perfectly lined up.






One we got the holes marked, drilled and filled with the coach screws, we hung the cable and the glass.

.


We got the Aqua Illuminations all set up.




And put them on the glass.




The only thing we've got left to fabricate is the top cover for the lights so both sides look the same. You'll have to wait a while for those pics.

Pics of some of the fish, thanks to Tighe.

Purple Tang:


Tomini:


Powder Blue and Potters:


Blurry Powder Blue, but cool pic through the end of the tank.


Cleaner Shrimp:


End of the semi-reef tank showing Limbaugh and Schooling Bannerfish (Heniochus diphreutes):
Heniochus diphreutes:

 

Very cool work, looks great

 

It's really impressive how well the tank turned out. The whole system is very aesthetically pleasing, from the curve of the glass, scape and design of the lighting.

Just beautiful and beyond professional looking.

 

Corailline and 2in10, thanks for the kind comments. I'm hoping the operation of the system will turn out to be good as well. This has definitely been a long time in the planning and building.

The professional side comes from Tighe who is in the construction business. Without him this would be nowhere near where it is today.