Ak77's Nano Journal

[AK77]

Hi Guys and Gals,

I thought it would be a good idea to finally start a journal. Like most things, I do it all back to front but get there in the end lol. You might recognise some of the photo's from the I'm Baaaaaaaack thread. I'll be updating this one, rather than that. Anyhoooo........

After being out of marine keeping for about 18 months, due to a leaking Juwel Rio 180 and selling all my stuff, I got the urge to have another tank. I decided to make my own from acrylic and here is the result.

I then added two Wave Solaris 18w T5 compact lights and put the marine bulbs in the as I accidently bought the freshwater ones. With the addition of the lights, I put in some 5kg of live rock and a few soft corals. The rock had well over 10 brittle stars in it and lots of other tiny critters.

 

[AK77]

I decided to go ahead and make the sump for my cabinet. I spent this evening cutting the acrylic to size and then solvent welded it together. As I was running out of day light, I called it quits. Tomorrow I will put the base and top of the sump on, but tested the body for size.

Here's a picture of the cabinet with the draw and door removed to fit the sump in. I will need to remove the draw front and attach it to the door for a false draw effect and keep the cabinet looking nice.... another job for the morrow lol.

The sump (partially complete)

Sump in cabinet... it fits ... just

I also made a 25mm durso with an adjustable air valve to keep that baby niiiiiiiiiice and quite The valve is threaded into the cap. All the rest is solvent welded together, with 25mm inside those grey fittings.

I'll update more tomorrow, as I have to finish the sump and then drain part of the display tank, drill it and the cabinet top and solvent all the pipework in place, without flooding the place . Told you I do everything the wrong way around lol.

 

[daveo_irl]

Good work AK.

I still am in awe of the colours on that LR.....amazing.

 

[Anguilla82]

good job
looking very nice!

really good rock, lots of life on that.

 

[shibby]

welcome back AK i remember you started you 180 about the time i did back in the day!!

good to see u up and running again, will follow with interest!

 

[Buddyboy67]

Great build AK..nice to see it develop

 

[scott133]

hi ak

the tank looking good and the live rock is amazing where did you get it from have you desided on what fish you are going tto add to that tank

regarrds scott

 

[AK77]

Good work AK.

I still am in awe of the colours on that LR.....amazing.

Thank's Dave. Personallly I think it was the camera that really made the colours vibrant. My girlfriends away in Canada at the moment with her camera, so its back to Kocrap camera for now, although I've just bought a DSL body so hopefully will be taking some sweeeeeeeet pics in the near future!

good job
looking very nice!

really good rock, lots of life on that.

Thanks Rob. There is a lot of life on the rocks. Since I have #### all in my tank aside from a few brittle stars, I find myself watching the tiny organisms on the rock. I saw some kind of pod just out of what must have been an old polyp, to grab a bit of food, then disappear back inside. Its kind of made me appreciate the functions that live rock performs a lot more.

welcome back AK i remember you started you 180 about the time i did back in the day!!

good to see u up and running again, will follow with interest!

Hi Shibby! That's right mate! The 180 which decided to leak all over my bedroom floor at 3am lol. Yay!! Good times!!

Great build AK..nice to see it develop

hi ak

the tank looking good and the live rock is amazing where did you get it from have you desided on what fish you are going tto add to that tank

regarrds scott

Hi Scott. I got it from someone locally. I wish I'd got more but I didn't have the funds at the time. I still don't lol. God, being poor sucks!!

I'll update this thread in another post. I have been a busy boy today and swearing at inanimate objects a lot. More to follow shortly

 

[AK77]

Ok here goes.

This afternoon, I finished off the sump. I put the bottom on and a couple of support bars at the top, to stop it flexing when filled with water. I waited about an hour and then filled with water to test it. If this had been a bigger tank/sump, I'd normally leave it over night to really allow time for it to cure but, since this was only a small one, an hour was fine.

Once the sump was done, I then proceeded to drain down the back section of the tank. Like the complete @$$ that I am, I forgot to turn off the heaters, and while I was using a syringe to suck the remaining water from the tank, I could hear this fizzing noise. I thought.. "those ###### lights. I only just got them! Is something up with the bulbs??? Nooo.... idiot here realized when his arm touched against a very hot glass housing that the heaters were still cooking away lol. Anyway, once the back section was drained, I moved the chaetomorpha to the front and hooked up my Koralia nano that I bought months ago and never used.

Next, I removed the pipework (Thank the lord for John Guest fittings ) and pump and then had to negotiate the acrylic heater supports to get my drill into place. Below you can see my Makita with a Trend 25mm forstner drill bit.

I was really anxious about doing this because if I didn't get the welds right on the acyrlic, it would leak. I lined up roughly where I needed to drill and proceeded to pull the trigger

I was happy with the hole it produced. These Trend forstner bits really are accurate. So accurate in fact that I spent the next 15 minutes with wet and dry paper to open up the hole a little more as I couldn't get the 25mm pipe into it lol. There also needs to be a minute gap for the solvent to wick into and melt the two parts together.

I proceeded to drill the 15mm return tube hole. This would be where the water is pumped back up from the sump. I really did not have a lot of room in this back section at all. It would have been 100 times easier to do all this before I put everything in the tank!

 

[AK77]

As I was worried about the pipes leaking because the solvent didn't wick between the joints, I decided to make a couple of flanges, so that I could weld them to the pipes first, then to the base of the tank, thereby making a water tight seal... well in theory lol. I test fitted the durso pipe to get the flange at the right height in reference to the durso inlet at the top.

Happy with the position of the flanges and the after welding them to the pipes, I proceeded to fit them into the tank and then solvent weld them in place.

That done, I put the sump into the cabinet.... and promptly took it out again as I forgot about the pipes poking through the bottom. They were too long and needed to be cut back in order to fit the sump in fully.

As it was getting late, I just screwed some acrylic to the back of door and the draw front which I had removed so that I could get it put back on..

Door back on and pretty much job done.

The only thing I need to sort out now really, is the noise. I either have the choice of the sound of public toilets, where the bog gets flushed every 30 seconds, or the authentic underwater diving bell experience, where the air is gulping down the pipe

I think shortening the pipe and throwing an elbow on it might do the trick, we shall see lol.

That's it for now. I still need to get to the LFS to get a CUC in there. I'm thinking along the lines of a watchman goby with a pistol shrimp. I may get another small fish in there and with the addion of the sump, the bioload will be greatly reduced once I get some more LR in there and possibly a skimmer.

Hope you like

 

[Buddyboy67]

Great piece of handy work there..seems to be running well...lucky with yer heaters as well...blew more than one up over the last 30 years doing that trick,lol...

 

[AK77]

Thanks buddy. The gulping is seriously doing my head in, as is the toilet flushing sound. I'm just waiting on the RO unit to fill up a bit more water and I'll shorten the tube and either put a tee piece or an elbow on, hopefully it will sort out all the problems.

 

[owlbassboy]

this is a stunning tank and build mate hope my build turns out half as neat. where do you get your acrylic and the stuff to work with it from??

 

[AK77]

this is a stunning tank and build mate hope my build turns out half as neat. where do you get your acrylic and the stuff to work with it from??

Hi mate,

Thank you very much. I'm glad people like it. I'm happy with it, although the noise from the down pipe is doing my head in at the moment lol.

I get my acrylic from ebay. This is all made from 5mm extruded acrylic. Its clearer than glass, and wont break... and with 3 nephews aged 2-5, glass isn't an option lol. Unlike glass aquariums where the panes are bonded with silicone, acrylic tanks are joined using solvents to melt the panels together. Once this has cured and the solvent evapourated off, the joint is ridiculously strong. You couldn't physically pull it apart. I tried before I started making this tank, on a few test pieces. After my first tank burst its seams and I sold everything off, I wanted something that would last. This fits the bill

If you were making a bigger tank, say over 1m long, then you need to think about going up a few millimeters.

For cutting the acrylic, I use either a circular saw with a fine cut blade (rough cutting) and for final precision cutting, I use a Bosch GMF 1400CE router, although any router will do. I also use a Ryobi router on a router table with a profiling cutter for finishing the edges. I also use straight edges to guide the router/circular saw. I also made a jig which allows me to make identical cuts, which comes in quite handy. Once the tank is joined together, I use a mini blow torch and flame polish the edges. It gives a much more professional look and its fun to do as well.

For joining, you can use a variety of solvent welds. This one is made using Tensol 12, although its quite gloopy and tends to "string" when you pull away from the joint. Bondrite make several acrylic welds, including one specifically for extruded acrylic and cast acrylic. Cast acrylic is even clearer than extruded but it is more expensive. I need to order some welding solvent from bondrite myself. I think its WC121 for extruded. Its like water. The idea is that you set up your panels using corner clamps, then using a needle tip applicator, allow the solvent to wick between the joint. This can be pretty tricky as you don't want any air bubbles in there and also, if you accidently allow too much solvent to come out (which frequently happens) it will mark wherever it touches and if its the front pane of your tank.... you're in trouble lol.

Cheers,

AK

 

[daveo_irl]

Excellent work AK. Very well thought out and executed.
I am learning a lot for when I eventually convince the better half that we need a bigger tank + sump!