DIY 300 Gallon Stand and Canopy

About a year ago, I bought and moved into my first house. I've had a 300 gallon acrylic tank that I bought several years before the house, and I'd been waiting a long time to get a house to set it up. Here's the build for the stand and canopy. More posts to come shortly.

And here are the first of the build pics... Allow me to preface this by saying I am overbuilding this stand by a good bit, but I'd rather overbuild it than underbuild it.

First I start with a good, strong base. 4 x 4's oughta do the trick. 45'd with my new miter saw, and you have four perfect corners. I wish I had that miter saw when I was building my 75 gallon stand.



Next I get started on the vertical supports. D'oh! Somehow I bought one too few 4 x 4's. Off to Lowe's to get another one on the way home tomorrow.



Now to make the top of the frame. 2 x 4's work better here, because I can put stringers between them for extra support of the tank's bottom. You can also see that the back corners are 2 x 8's cornered to each other. This is to accomodate the dual corner overflows of the tank. If I used 4 x 4's back there, they'd be in the way of the two standpipes.


And here's a pic of it all screwed together. You can see how I redistributed the vertical supports so I could put it together. I'll have the rest of them in there tomorrow. The miter saw is a life saver. This thing is perfectly square at every corner! Man, I'm getting excited!



I've got a sheet of 1/2" MDF that's going to be cut in half to serve as a flat bottom for the stand as well as using the other half for a floor for the inside of the stand. I have a sheet of 3/4" MDF that will be the top of the stand that the tank rests on. A flat top is important for an acrylic stand so the weight is distributed evenly. If the tank flexes, there's a chance it could pop sending all of my water and fish to the ground. No good!

(Disclaimer: I'm just copy/pasting these posts from another forum that I frequent. I made these posts over the course of a year, so if the language implies that this carried on over a good length of time, that's because it did!)

Here's one of the sheets of oak that will be the siding for the stand and canopy. It's really pretty stuff.



Made some more progress today. With another trip to Home Depot, I picked up the rest of the 4 x 4 that I needed to finish the vertical supports. I got those cut, centered, and anchored down. I also threw in the 2 x 4's that will support the interior floor of the stand.





Not pictured is the rest of the progress I made. I cut the 1/2" MDF that will be the bottom base of the stand, the 1/2" sheet that will be the inner floor, and the 3/4" sheet that will be the top of the stand. Let me tell you what...you don't know sawdust until you cut MDF. Regular lumber seems like it doesn't make any dust at all once you start cutting that stuff. This thing was already heavy as hell before I started work today. Now it weighs even more!

Next on the agenda will be to cut the oak panels for the sides of the stand, but I'm done for the night. The Camaro is tucked in the garage once more, the doors are down, and I'm getting ready to hop in the shower. I'm looking forward to the next day of building!

In lieu of going out on a Saturday night, I spent the evening playing with wood. I made some decent progress on the stand, and now it's time to share the results!

In this picture, you see the inner floor of the stand. This is what the sump and everything will sit on inside. I have it notched out for the vertical supports and this is just before fitting it inside.



...aaaaand installed. The fit was so snug that it doesn't need screws to hold it down.



Now it's time to flip it over and install the base.



All screws were counter-sunk for flushness of the base.



Now a picture with it flipped back over and the top sheet fastened in.



Good lord this thing is heavy now! I'd estimate 300 pounds or more.
Well it was still early and I felt like getting a little more done, so I started cutting the oak panels for the sides of the stand. I only cut the front sheets for now, because I was starting to get hungry. Here they are sitting in place, but not fastened in.





Man, this is some beautiful wood if you ask me. The tight grain and the pattern are amazing. I can't wait to get it finished up with the stain and trim. I might not use the piece that's on the left in this picture. You can see how the pattern is a bit narrower on the left sheet. I've got a third sheet that's more like the one on the right, so I might cut that one for the front and just use the piece on the right on the sides.
Here's a close-up of the oak. It has tiny little knots in it, which I think are neat.

Well I decided it was time to get my ass back in the garage and get to work on the aquarium stand. After pulling it down off of the counter, I tipped it over onto its back to start taking the front oak panels on. After a healthy dose of finishing nails, they were all in place. Now it was time to do the part I've been dreading most...cut the openings for the doors. Dropping the saw blade into the wood isn't exactly the easiest way to start a cut, and it can be tough to get it exactly straight on your line too. Fortunately I have no deadline (well, other than what I impose on myself) so I can take my time and be careful.

Oh yeah, she's really starting to take shape now.





I have the side panels cut, but I'm not installing them yet. I won't do that until I get it in the living room. It's nice to have the side 2 x 4's to grab a hold of to put it on the counter and take it off when I'm working on it. That'd be damn near impossible for me to do on my own if I put the end panels on right now.

You might ask what my plans are for the doors. I'm going to use the panels that I just cut out, take some 1 x 3 oak strips, dado the edges of them, and slide the oak panel into the dado groove. It'll look a little something like this when it's done:



The one on the left is everything pushed together flush, and the one on the right is sort of an exploded view of the parts. Now the panel won't be quite that deep when I put the door together, and I'm going to do some molding on the inside lip for a smoother transition. It'll be nice when it's all done. It's going to require more effort than just cutting rectangles from a big sheet of wood, but I think this will look much nicer.
And finally, just a gee-whiz picture. This is where I store the stand when I'm done working for the night. Yes, it is a pain in the ass to heft this big, heavy bastard up there. No, I don't enjoy putting it up there each evening.

Here's today's progress pictures! I started and finished the doors today. I picked up my table saw this afternoon, got it home, put it together, and started slicing away almost immediately.

First I wanted to do some test cuts to make sure I could achieve what I was trying to do:



You can see the first test cut on the bottom edge. I felt it was a hair too close to the back, so I bumped the fence on the table saw back a little bit to start the dado in a little farther. Here's a rough test fit of the panel, which still hadn't been cut to size, inside of the test dado.



Fits pretty well! Now to repeat this cut (which required three passes over the table saw blade) for each of the 16 strips. Sorry, no pictures of the pile of finished strips. After the strips were done, it was time to cut the panels down to size. Four cuts for each of the four panels later and it was time to glue them all together. Here's a shot of them clamped up and drying.





Never mind the difference in color. The doors are the same color, that's just the white balance on the camera getting fooled. The first picture is being illuminated by sunlight, and the second picture is under fluorescent light. The second picture is more representative of the natural color of the wood.

Here's a shot of what the doors will look like on the stand. Sorry, not the best picture. I had to hold the camera with one hand and the door with the other. This will do for now just to give you an idea. I'm going to match the doors to the openings the panel came from for the most fluid appearance of the grain. It's going to be really nice when it's finished.



Here's the pile of sawdust left behind!



Everything fit together pretty well, and I must say I'm happy with the results of my first foray into building doors this way. I think tomorrow I'm going to move the stand and the tank inside for final assembly and things will really start to come together.

Aquarium and stand in the house!



I'll tell you what, I couldn't be happier. The stand is perfectly level in each direction. Maybe 1/4 bubble off, but that's closer than I could have asked for, and I don't feel it'll be necessary to shim the stand.*

It sure wasn't fun getting it in the house, but it's going to be worth every bit of effort put in when this thing is all put together and filled with water. I still haven't installed the doors, obviously, but they'll be going on soon, and I'm going to start construction on the canopy as well.

It doesn't look quite as big as it really is in this picture, but that's because it's the farthest object from the lens, and the fact that my furniture is huge, too. That chair on the right is 5 feet wide. It's a fat boy chair.

*I did end up going back to shim the stand. I wasn't at all happy with it being as far out of level as it was.

I've got two days' worth of progress pictures for you guys today. First I'll post yesterday's shots of my plumbing progress.

From one end of the stand to the other. You can see the programmable power strip, above that, the UV sterilizer, and at the far end, the sump and pump.



Here are the bulkheads for the drain and return lines for one of the two corner overflows. The clear tube is the drain line and the black tube is return. The drain is 1-1/4" inner diameter and the return line is 3/4".



Here's the UV sterilizer...all 27 inches of it! In front, you can see the inline ball valve. That's coming off of the return pump and going into the UV sterilizer to control flow. If the water goes too fast through the sterilizer, it won't be able to do its job.



This is the open end of the sump and the return pump. It's got a T fitting at the top to run water to both return lines. If you've got a keen eye, you'll notice that only one side is plumbed. I ran out of tubing putting it all together. Looks like I'll be stopping at the fish store to get a couple more feet tomorrow.



This is the drain line for the other side going into one of the two spouts in the sump filter. Next to it, you can see the unplumbed return line bulkhead.



And another view of the sump. You can see both spouts in the sump. There are slots cut in the underside of the white pipe for the water to drain out of. It gets screened by the blue filter pad, and then trickles over the bio-balls underneath for biological filtration. It all passes through one more filter pad before being returned by the pump into the tank. No, all of the bio-balls are not in the sump right now. I have a five gallon bucket in the garage full of them that I need to rinse off and return to the sump.



And that's Saturday's progress!