8x4x3 Plywood Fun, bunch of pics

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
Appreciate it, I will get some more pics soon, hard because I have about 3 feet between the front of the tank and the wall. May put another strip of LED's in the light, a bit dark in there. Still gotta varnish the bottom some day, if I hit the jackpot with some more litters soon I may dress the tank with some sort of veneer or something, not in a hurry though. Next on the budget is maybe another 1.75 cuft of k1, possibly another dehumidifier, and eventually I will need a backup electric generator as now I run around 1250 gallons in aquariums total and will definitely be acquiring some more rays soon. All in due time. Can't wait to see my water bill, definitely dripping like 300-350 gallons a day :(.

Was a fair bit of work, definitely if you took a week vacation you can get most of this done, but I was in no hurry, and I wouldn't say the work was particularly hard (most of it anyway). 8x4 is nice because that is the size of sheets plywood comes in, everything fits very well and the measurements are quite easy.
 
Ihsnshaik said:
Very nice! Also where did you get the air ball? I've seen them but never seen any for sale at any lfs.
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Sorry must be missing something, air ball? A bit confused, if you mean the ball valve for the air pump it's just a basic home depot pvc valve, I know it doesn't control much it is mostly for on and off purposes. If that's not what you are referring to, do you mean the bubble discs (I have 4 in there btw) or plz reference which picture you are looking at.

Overflow box is nice guys, I lose something like 7 gallons with the half inch it is skimming in a power outage, plus it is holding my ceramic rings in there nicely.
 
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davenmandy said:
Sorry must be missing something, air ball? A bit confused, if you mean the ball valve for the air pump it's just a basic home depot pvc valve, I know it doesn't control much it is mostly for on and off purposes. If that's not what you are referring to, do you mean the bubble discs (I have 4 in there btw) or plz reference which picture you are looking at.

Overflow box is nice guys, I lose something like 7 gallons with the half inch it is skimming in a power outage, plus it is holding my ceramic rings in there nicely.
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The bubble disks I was talking about! Sorry should've made that clear. This makes me want to build a tank or at the very least plumb a new sump or some sort lol
 
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Ah the bubble discs, ya they are everywhere I go, Petsmart, Big Al's, I cant use stones because my rays love to play with them and the stones end up crumpling on me. I guess I could use the more expensive aluminum oxide ones but these discs do just fine with the rays, they can tug on the plastic all they want and they stay intact.

Gotta say the filtration is pretty loud, I left myself some room to play with the 4 drains I could make some sort of herbie or beananimal if I wanted (DC pump is controllable), but obvious this build wasn't meant to be glamourous but functional, noise doesn't bother me, and its in the basement anyway. I do like the 3 barrels though instead of the traditional tank, just something different to look at you know? All that really matters is that it does it's job.

One small issue I ran into as well is the lids, which were just the cheap greenhouse siding, actually stick to the liquid rubber on the brace and take some off with it when I lift them. This is likely because I didn't dilute the first coat with water while doing the brace, I'll have to strip it and varnish it instead eventually. My biggest source of paranoia right now is the wood warping. You could run your truck into this thing and it wouldn't budge, however water can do funny things to wood. We had to use one non-pressure treated 2x4 on the brace because home depot was closed at the time and that's all I had around lol, you can see the off colour in the first picture of the one board. Getting under the tank to varnish will really not be fun :(.

Since it is in the basement algae shouldn't be an issue, but I would like to get a UV to kill pathogens at some point in the future as I always like to run my tanks with 2 pumps anyway in case of failure, plus since I owned my UV for 4 years I have never once had a bacterial or fungal infection or really any harmful pathogen, so I do believe they are helpful in that regard. All these improvements I want to keep making just means I need some more pups being produced :)
 
Haha thank you, we could have easily done this cheaper, and also not overkilled it with so many bolts, studs every 12" instead of every 6", not sunk so many screws into the plywood and spent so much time sanding, etc. etc. but I am a perfectionist by nature, and the extra $1000 and bit of extra work takes a great deal of worry off of my mind so I really didn't have a problem overbuilding and spending some more.

Btw, plywood was 3/4", can't remember what type, but it was the one that comes already pre-sanded and without the knots in it, etc.
 
millerkid519 said:
It was 3/4 birch plywood. Ya it turned out good I just wish it was in my basement
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Nah man too small for your basement. For your basement we will build that 10x10 or 12x12 within the next little bit I am sure. Good times building it, so why not right?
 
davenmandy said:
Nah man too small for your basement. For your basement we will build that 10x10 or 12x12 within the next little bit I am sure. Good times building it, so why not right?
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I would definitely do it but I don't think my landlord would like me knocking out the wall to get it out when we move haha. I even have all of the equipment I need. The biggest pain was getting the drips set up on 2 different levels of the house.
You realize you ate basically married to this tank man you had something new, used, and borrowed for her
 
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