So could you tell me what they coated everything with...I might want to use that.

I'll find out the name of it from the guys tomorrow. It's a 3 part system, there were two base coats that were like a cross between black primer and paint, it had a really rough texture and just soaked right in to anything that was porous like the back of the drywall. The final coat has gone on like rubbery plastic almost. They said it's commonly used in swimming pools and truck liners.

So haven't seen any updates on this lately...what is the latest news?

I'm hoping for an update by Monday. I guess when the glass arrived to the builder who's manufacturing the tank, the top edges had been cut by the supplier really brutally. There was too much of a variance in height from one side of the panes to the other for the guy to grind it down in his shop, so the glass had to be sent back to be re-cut. The tank was supposed to be in before christmas, but that has delayed everything.

At this point we're waiting on the tank to start painting the exterior of the enclosure, and if all goes according to plan it should hopefully be installed on Monday.

The rest of the house is motoring along nicely however!

The only other thing I've been pondering is my lighting situation. I was dead set on Radions for the past few months, but I'm seriously re-considering metal halides now.

Halides will get you going cheaply enough (startup) and by the time you're ready for your first bulb-swap there will be a bunch of new and better fixtures not to mention better diodes (in them or for DIY). You want to get the thing running soon so I like your thinking.

yah, that's honestly what I've been thinking, especially with the kinds of bulbs Cree has been announcing the last couple of months. It would be like 5 grand to do my tank with all Radions, which is so hard to swallow when there's a good chance they'll be obsolete in a year. I fully believe LEDs are the future, but if I'm going to sink 5 Gs on anything, I want it to be a 100% fully proven technology that does every thing I want, and whose limitations and considerations are 100% known. I think Ecotech really stepped up the game in terms of what people are going to expect from now on. Full spectrum LED fixtures is the way of the future and while I think Ecotech did a great job on their first attempt, I don't think they're completely 'there' just yet1 (neither do they, clearly, or they wouldn't have built in an extra un-utilized channel to the radion). Once all the other major players work through what was already in their R&D cycles, I think we're going to start seeing a whole suite of really impressive and compelling fixtures out there. It might even be a matter of simply waiting for Ecotech to release their next round of light pucks that fully utilizes what the hardware is capable of, but if that's the case, I'm certainly not interested in paying full base price plus what I'm sure will be a hefty 'upgrade', times 6, later.

Moral of the story, if I'm going to spend 5 thousand bucks on LED light fixtures, spending it after MACNA 2012 is probably going to get me a heck of a lot more for my money.

might seem like a dumb question, but if you have even considered leds, and by the sounds of it, it has crossed you mind, why not DIY? some modulars would be much cheaper and offer a lot of the same color options as radions. I dont know if they are quite up to par side by side, but for the money you'd be saving, and the fact that they are modular means you could swap out the bulbs in a heartbeat if they came out with a newer more powerful modular bulb.. thats what I think anyway haha

I'm really excited to see how this whole project comes together!

Thanks! I'm pretty stoked too. It's so close now I can practically taste the salt water lol. I had to start a tiny 5 gallon pico here in my temporary condo just to keep me from going batty

I had considered building my own LED fixture, but originally discounted it because I had no time, place, or tools to build one. Now that I think I'm going to start out with MH it's more of a possibility as the new house will have a workspace that I could build something like that in (though I don't have any tools, or technical know how what so ever!) so I could take my time without delaying my tank if I decided to go that route. However, one of the things that REALLY attracts me to the Radions is the software that comes with it, and I'm most definitely not going to be able to reproduce something like that on my own, so I'm still going to remain open to a fixture if one that I fully trust with my system comes along.

I chose to go the LED route, but I also chose DIY instead of fixtures. $5000 or more was too big a pill to swallow. My DIY light has come together really well so far and with the BJB connectors, it has been soooooo simple. Price wise, I'm looking at less than half the cost and a little elbow grease. I don't know electrical either, but it's coming together. :) You should look at Modular LED as an option. I hear they are simple to put together too.

At last! There is a tank!

Kevin and some guys were at the house today installing it. Wish I could have been there to document it (it's HUGE!), but I stopped in to take some pics this afternoon.

Dining room side
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...n/IMG_2039.jpg

Office side
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...n/IMG_2038.jpg

Overflows
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...n/IMG_2040.jpg
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...n/IMG_2041.jpg

Now, there's one problem that may or may not be major, and I'm hoping someone here can give me guidance. Kevin is headed out of town for the next 10 days and I don't think I'm going to be able to reach him, and they are literally putting the panel on the office side that will seal the tank in to the wall as we speak. After that, they will be mudding, taping, and tying the drywall in to the enclosure's corners, so removing the tank if this is a problem is going to become exponentially more destructive, expensive and time consuming, so I need to know if this is a problem now.

The plywood that the tank is sitting on is 3 inches thick, they had to build it up so that the cabinet framing had something other than the steel stand to attach to. When they made the plywood, it was bowed and the centre was higher than the sides, so they installed bracing on the underside to pull the plywood flat. It appeared to have worked, but now that the tank is on, I can see that there's like a quarter inch variance in height from the centre of the stand to the left and right sides. On the right side (when looking from the office), you can see all the way under the tank to the dining room.

Here's a pic of the foam/plywood interface in the centre of the tank:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...n/IMG_2043.jpg

Here's a pic of the foam plywood interface at the left edge (when looking from the office):
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...n/IMG_2042.jpg

So my question is thus - how much allowance is there in that foam for compression? Will it compress enough to compensate for the slight bow in the plywood, or am I going to be looking at a snapped tank when I fill it with water? I really could use some guidance...

That's really bad man. I'd never fill that sorry. Stand needs to be level even with foam. Foam is not really for compensating for an overall unlevelness in a surface but more for imperfections in an overall level surface.

yah, I thought so too. I just got off the phone with the builder, they're halting the finishing and are going to try and fix the plywood in the morning. If they can't get it to flatten out by adding more bracing to the underside, the entire enclosure needs to be ripped out.

This would be where I wish we could swear in this forum.

be thankful you caught it now and not later when its enclosed and the tank cracks after you fill it....

Man this is gutting.

Hopefully we can fix it with a thin layer of self leveller or something. Literally the entire enclosure is at some point anchored to that piece of plywood.

What's worse, I now need to explain to my fiancé that my aquarium will be the reason for another week or two delay to us moving in to our already months late house.

Eek...I feel your pain. Every step in my new house feels like I'm centering it around the tank and no-one seems to understand why except me. Things like this seem okay to builders but to us....no way! I'm glad you caught it now.

Egads!!! :eek:

You've already been given this advice but you'll hear it once more from me: under no circumstances can you fill that with water. Sorry man! But like said, a delay here of a couple days to a week is peanuts compared to what you'd be facing with a blown tank.

Shoot some expanding foam underneath the foam board you already have on there, don't overdo it or it will lift the tank and don't use the low expansion window/ door foam as it dries soft, you want the one that dries stiff, you can stick a piece of rigid tube on the end of the nozzle so it can reach to the center, works great seen it done a number of times, make sure you level the tank before it sets.

Can't you build a very shallow dam around the plywood and pour a levelling compound in it? Then you'd have perfection?

I like those ideas a lot, you guys think of everything! But on the flip side .. if he's paying professional builders/framers/carpenters/whatever to put this in, then they should be on the hook to make it right. It's their problem to fix.

THose are excellent ideas, they may not even need to take the tank out! I'll broach them both with the builder tomorrow morning. Thank you, I knew I spent hours trolling fish forums for a reason ;)

Too true, but at this point it's about speed. Mark was right though, house builders don't really understand the allowances of an aquarium I don't think. What's 'good enough' for most carpentry jobs can be the difference between failure and not. When Kevin originally installed the stand, he put a 1/4 inch (1/2? can't really remember) sheet of really high quality oak plywood down on top. It was perfectly flat and would have worked great for the tank's purposes. But when the carpenter started working out how he could build the enclosure, I wouldn't let them pierce the steel of the stand to anchor anything to it so they had to replace Kevin's plywood with a 3 inch piece of plywood that they made on site by gluing several different sheets together. I stressed as hard as I could that it needed to be flat, and to be honest, late one night after it was done I went in there with a level and verified that it was myself. It seemed to be perfectly flat a couple of months ago. I'm not sure if I just suck with a level (though in my defence it is a rather large area to check with the tiny level I had), or if the wood has warped slowly as the glue has dried, but it is what it is now. As it stands, they're geared up to have the inspection for occupancy mid February, and that can't happen unless the house is in a state of 'near completion'. If we need to rip out the entire enclosure, the painters basically have to stop on the main floor for a week while the structure is re-manufactured, then they need to re-seal the insides of the enclosure, and all the while electrical and everything else that depends on the painters being done or near done will be on hold, and mid-february inspections wouldn't be possible. I fear I would be headed for divorce if that were to happen.

Again, thanks guys for the suggestions

Adam

Don't know what others think of it but there is an awful lot of air bubbles in the silicone holding your tank together there Adam, just my 2 cents .

+1

It seems odd to have that many. I was wondering if it was just a close up shot and they were tiny, but after a second look, that's a lot of big bubbles.

I thought that is plastic cover, else that is bad

I'm not a tank builder so I could be wrong but I thought the space between the panes of glass was more structural, and it's the corner bead that prevents leaks. The silicone to glass bond is insanely strong. I think the bubbles probably don't affect the integrity of the tank - it just doesn't look very nice.

Man, I don't know what to suggest. I understand your frustration of "please just get this fixed" but rushing things now is a mistake.

It might be worthwhile at this point to take the tank out of the equation and continue with the build after possession. This lets the housebuilders painters etc finish their job and hopefully your possession date doesn't get pushed back. Then you can also investigate the silicone bubbles further and explore relevelling options and so on. This is your tank, after this much planning and anticipation, why accept anything less than perfect?

On the other hand though, part of me says if you pay a housebuilder to build a house, it comes with the expectation that they do the job right. Even if it pushes possesion back, this is their fault, not yours. I totally sympathize, we went through a lot of similar stuff when we built our house. It's brutal how much stuff is just eyeballed instead of properly measured.

I am going to look in to the bubbles a little further, but my gut reaction is that it's not going to be a problem. To be honest I didn't notice them in person, I don't know if it was the lighting or my camera, but they look considerably more pronounced in the photos than they do in real life. Also, the silicone will all be hidden by framing, so I'm not really concerned with the aesthetics.

Had a little pow-wow with the project manager and his main site foreman today and we talked about both self leveller and the spray foam, and what would need to happen to re-do the whole tank. One way or another, there needs to be a minimum 3 inch thick sheet of plywood under the tank to anchor the doors and the cabinet framing, which will still need to be made by gluing thinner sheets together. There's no guarantee that the second attempt will come out any flatter than the first. It would be an absolute last resort option.

So that leaves us with self leveller or spray foam as a first choice. After talking about it, we ruled out the self leveller because the gap between the bottom of the tank and the plywood starts out really, really tiny, and is only really exaggerated on the one side. There's a good chance that due to air getting trapped/liquid leveller not filling all the right places, there could be large bubbles that get trapped underneath and the leveller doesn't compress at all. So we're going to try the foam route because it can be applied using a long hose, and if there are some imperfections, it's slightly compressible.

fingers crossed.

Is the metal stand level?

If it was and a person laid a bunch of plywood on top which we can assume are uniformly the same thickness... would the result not be level?

I don't quite follow how if the metal stand is level the top can't be.

Good luck!

yep, the stand was definitely level, It was perfectly square and the floor it's sitting on is dead level too. I checked obsessively before and after they put the stucco on the outside of the house because the added weight can cause houses to settle a little (same reason this builder doesn't tile until after the stucco is on).

I think it's because the plywood is actually warped, which blows.

I love the attitude of builders and how quality can't be guaranteed and it's not their fault. I remember a toilet in my house that we built that when you sat on it, it was obvious it was badly un-level left to right (left side about 1" higher than the right). I complained to the builder and they were all "yeah, that's the quality you get when everything is made cheaply in China, what are you going to do." I said "Well, *I'm* going to insist that you replace it." "But there's no guarantee that the next one will be any better." "Well then you will replace that one too. This is not acceptable." .. I understand as a builder you have to draw the line at replacing everything for free indefinitely but at the same time there are just some basic tenets of quality that shouldn't have to be insisted upon.

No guarantee that the next attempt at plywood will be any more flat? Yeah, I can see how that could be a problem to build. They have to make a perfectly flat piece of thicker plywood out of flat pieces of thinner plywood over a perfectly flat metal surface. It must be basically impossible to build something like that given the circumstances and all. :neutral:

Hopefully the guy finds some clamps and some weights to put on said plywood as the glue dries. Maybe you need to suggest that they use clamps and weights. Heck, maybe show them a Lee Valley catalog! :lol:

Sorry for my rant. I'm surprisingly very upset for you over this!!! :lol: In any case, good luck, I'm sure it will work out sooner or later.

I don't get why the builder is laminating a 3" thick piece, I would have just used 3 - 1" sheets of plywood. Screw the first sheet to the top of the stand, 2nd sheet to the first and so on.

Exactly! What is the big deal? If the stand is level, I certainly don't need to be a rocket scientist to add 3 sheets of 1" ply on top.

asylumdown didnt want anything drilled into the stand which i think he should allow at this point to help cut his losses. You could just drive a couple screws through the high spots in the plywood to bring them down level with the low spot. Screwing into the stand shouldnt create any issues. I had to do the same on my stand (all wood) to lower some high spots in a slightly bowed piece of 1" plywood.


next time have the builders aclimate the plywood to the house for a couple weeks and make sure it sits perfectly flat. "fresh" wood from the lumber yard will do all sorts of wierd stuff until most of the moisture has come out of it.

Heh, next time. That's actually really funny. 2.5 years and oh-my-god-how-much?! over budget, I hope to never move again. Building a house is not for the feint of heart.

I'll see what happened there today (I have been at school all day).

On another note entirely, I was in Red Coral in Edmonton on the weekend and saw their display tank with all Radions. Soooo glad I did as it made up my mind almost instantly. I love, love LOVE all the features of that little fixture, but man, it looked like I was looking at a tank with the dimmer switch set at 50%. Every time I would look away and then look back, I felt like my eyes were re-adjusting to a poorly lit room. I kept having to ask if the fixture was at 100% power. I know there's that whole bit about our eyes not being as sensitive to the dominant wavelengths in LEDs and all, and that the Radions can probably do a great job growing corals, but I care as much about how my tank looks to me as I do about how the corals respond, and the light the radion puts out just doesn't cut it for me.

Halides it is.

Don't let them use glue! Otherwise they grab 3 flat pieces like Greg said level the first and mount the next to it win screws. No glue!

Haaaaalides ;)

thats what silicone is for:wink:


you could acclimate the plywood to the house for a year if you want, as soon as it gets exposed to a humid environment, like above a sump, all bets are off:lol:

I understand why you wernt impressed with the radions over the display at RCE.... but in all fairness, the tank design and the way the light rack is built made it hard to get the lights hanging where they will do the most good......did you ever get over to see anyones tank that was lit by them?

I'm at my house now (cuz staying at school till 10:30 is just the tops), and it looks like they've corrected the problem, I just can't tell how. The back panel is on the tank, so I can't see where the foam meets the plywood anymore, but I crawled underneath and looked at the holes for the overflow and there's no longer any gap (I could stick my pinkey finger in that space yesterday). The tank now appears to be sitting completely flush to the plywood on both the right and left sides.

I can't see and extra expanding foam under there, so they must have figured out a way to force the wood to cooperate. The site foreman had said he was going to try brute force first, it appears to have worked.

I'm gonna find out what they did tomorrow.

Now the only remaining issue that I can see is that the back framing panel is smaller than the front, so the top of the tank, where the euro bracing is joined to the glass, is totally visible. Oy. That's gonna be getting fixed!

No, I would still like to, but I ended up having way less time over the holidays than I thought before I left town. I also stopped in at... Aquarium Illusions (I think that's what it's called) and they have a single radion over a clam tank. I thought the same thing there. I need to see if Levi is available again soon though cuz his pics are baller, but I have a boat load of scholarship/grant applications due in the next week and Kelly is moving back to Calgary, so it might be a bit before I have time.

House build is still slow, but steady. We're apparently going to be moving in at the end of February now, but since this is the 5th push back of the completion date and I couldn't extend my lease at the short term place I was staying (the owner moved home and needed it), I'm technically homeless for the first time in my life. Thank goodness for an understanding father with extra rooms.

Assuming we can move in this month (though, to be honest, I'm not really confident that's going to happen), the tank likely won't have water in it until we're in, which is a bummer as I wanted to get the cycle out of the way when I wasn't there to look at an empty box of water every day.

Anyway, the painters are working diligently away in there right now, so here's a roughly finished looking enclosure, sans doors:

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...n/IMG_2133.jpg

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...n/IMG_2132.jpg

On order now through RCC:

Deltec SC2560
Vertex RO/DI
Return pump of a brand and model that I seem to have forgotten completely
2 Ecotech MP60s to compliment my pre-existing MP40's

Need to order still
pump to bring water up from the basement
Auto top off system (details yet to be determined)
pump to empty WC chamber of the sump
Heater
Controller (if I go with Halides)
2 extra profilux dosing pumps for my doser

Still not buying lights. Going to wait until the last, final, gasping moment for that one. I was thinking about it and reflectors are going to get seriously in the way of what I had originally planned for the return piping. Sigh. It's only money right?

Brett I totally agree with you man, I think Adam would love to join the LED club, it's a totally rad place to be!

On a side note Adam you have PM.

The new Orphek DIF units sorta remind me of halides (I like the looks of those!). I'm not ruling out some high-tech single point light sources *some* day. But that's a buttload of paychecks away :lol:

Things are looking pretty damn slick there btw!