Finally finished

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
R

Reiner

Dovii
MFK Member
Oct 14, 2005
604
386
102
52
Los Angeles
In November of 2004 I bought a used and very scratched up 180 gallon acrylic tank.
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I sold the stand and canopy shortly after and started out building my own and as you can see I stained and varnished evrything before assembly that way I don't have to crawl around inside a stand with stinking varnish fumes.
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Here is the stand almost done with the doors still waiting to be mounted.
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and the canopy finished
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after numerous hours of sanding and polishing the tank it was finally scratch free on all the 3 visible sides and I started constructing a styrofoam / concrete background
left side
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right side
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with concrete
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Then around May this year the project was finished and sitting in the garage but could not be moved inside since we did remodel some rooms in the house and the room where the tank was going was part of it. So I filled it and started a fishless cycle with pure ammonia and after that was finished I started to take fish out of my overcroweded 80 gallon tank inside and had it running in the garage over the summer until now. Last Sunday 11/27 after 1 year it finally got moved inside. As you can see I built the stand and canopy wider then the tank in order for it to sit fluch against the wall and to hide the pipes.
side view
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front view
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I still need some more rocks on the left side and some plants but I just glad it is inside now. Thanks for looking and any comments are welcome.
 
Looks great! can you writ a step by step on the background. I've seen some on other sited but I trust our members more. :thumbsup:
 
repair said:
Looks great! can you writ a step by step on the background. I've seen some on other sited but I trust our members more. :thumbsup:
Click to expand...
:iagree:
 
Looks like a public aquarium exhibit. Good job.
 
Honestly guys I really just tried to copy this article as close as possible. Keep in mind pretty much any concrete will do. I could not find the specific concrete that is mentioned in the article so I used regular masonry concrete but the other stuff has polyester fiber strands in it that makes the concrete a lot stronger. So if you can find it try to use the concrete from the article. For my 180 gallon background I used about 1 1/2 bags about 100 pounds. Granted I might have used a little much but you know how it is when it is all mixed up with water might as well use it.
http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/diy_aquarium_background.php
 
That looks Great :clap How hard is it to build your own stand?
 
The hardest part of it all was just to get the seriously deep scratches out of the tank. Since most of the scratches were from cleaning from the previous owner (he had crushed coral as substrate) in a left to right direction I started with 320 grid paper in vertical motion and scratched up the whole inside of the tank until I could no longer feel the horizontal scratches. Then I went to 400 grid paper and sanded horizontal until I could no longer see the scratches I made verticaly with the 320 paper. After that I went to 600 and sanded vertical again and the 800 grid and horizontal again. That left the tank with fine scratches and looking like milky frosted glass. I then used Novus #3 heavy scratch remover paste and then Novus # 2 fine scratch remover paste after that and then the tank was scratch free and you see the results in the pictures. But I have no idea how many hours that took.(best guess is between 10-20)
 
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