I had an old tank - about 30 inches long - at my parents house in the shed there - hasn't been used for about 20 years which I planned to use. I didn't want to just sit the tank on the sideboard so this was my first idea:
TH3_0298 by
tim-uk, on Flickr
This is a rotten drawing but I basically wanted it raised a couple of inches and enclosed with big front opening and two "port holes" in the sides.
Base was just a piece of old contiboard with some cls wood as supports:
TH3_0311 by
tim-uk, on Flickr
I got some oak coloured contiboard from B&Q and made up some sides - cut the side holes and screwed the lot together:
TH3_0773 by
tim-uk, on Flickr
My wife would only let me have one of the "cupboards" in the sideboard for the gubbins to go with the tank so after a lot of thinking decided on getting a big external filter and linking this to some old filter empty canisters I have had for years - I had a lovely 48x15x18 tank about 25 years ago.
TH3_0797 by
tim-uk, on Flickr
Was going to be a tight fit so decided on putting all the electrics on the cupboard door:
I bought one of the £10 chinese thermostats from ebay and made a box for it:
TH3_0795 by
tim-uk, on Flickr
I then mounted some metal clad boxes for the sockets:
The little transformer boxes are for leds which i planned to use.
TH3_0813 by
tim-uk, on Flickr
TH3_0818 by
tim-uk, on Flickr
I cut some holes in the back for the filter tubes and used some oversize tank connectors to protect the pipes:
TH3_0808 by
tim-uk, on Flickr
I used some corrugated trunking to carry all the wires:
TH3_0798 by
tim-uk, on Flickr
TH3_0807 by
tim-uk, on Flickr
I plan to have the filters accessable so added some sliders:
TH3_0812 by
tim-uk, on Flickr
Sophie said:
Lovely cabinet there. The wood is gorgeous. Having a tank the same size on top?
smaller tank for now, but in the future would love a bigger one so much of the work and filter considerations etc will hopefully allow for this in the future !
Thats all for now, next post will describe the first problems I encoutered !