[Chin_Lee]

Chin Lee's 300 gallon cube journal

Feb 2006
I saw a 300 gallon cube tank for sale by Cody (Stinky) in Calgary on Canreef.
The size was nice at 48"x48"x30".
Price was great.
Location and weight of this bad boy was bad – it probably weighed close to 700-800 lbs.
When I finally decided to buy it, Ruth had already bought it but was very nice to "let" me have it. Thanks Ruth.

April 2006
It was time to drive to Calgary to pick up the tank. A group of very nice people in Calgary agreed to help me move the tank and I will be forever grateful to you all - thank you to the following people that I remembered (if I missed your name, sorry L) Mike (Andestang), Arek (Pokolec), Danny Zubot, Tony (Delphinus), Nate, Paul (JSTR) , Jim (Sergeantpilot).
I am most grateful to my good friend Anthony (Seahorse_Fanatic) who decided it would be fun to drive out to Calgary with me. I haven’t figured out if he’s just crazy or bored J but nevertheless, he was a great help in making this all happen.
I rented a full sized cube van, drove 950 km (about11 hours) to Calgary, loaded the tank into the van, and drove back another 950 km to Surrey all within 24 hours. The tank was unloaded into my garage thanks to TomR, Callum (HockeyNut), and of course Anthony.

The cube van which drank $300 of gas in 24 hours.


Getting the tank all wrapped up ready to be moved up a flight of stairs and into the backyard.


A few good fellas waiting for their workout.


Between April and July, three things were done:
1) I removed the center positioned overflow to the rear of the tank. Because the tank also had euro-bracing at the bottom, the entire overflow was positioned four inches away from the wall. This created a very interesting water movement situation in the tank because there is a space behind the overflow.
2) Sand was glued to the bottom glass to create the look of a sandbed aka Faux Pas sandbed. Envirotex Lite was the two-part epoxy compound that was used to mix the sand into. You mix the epoxy up, pour in into the tank and spread it evenly, then use a coriander to evenly spread the sand on the epoxy. Unfortunately it didn’t turn out as nice for me because I was unable to spread the epoxy evenly enough because I was unable to lift the tank and let gravity spread the epoxy evenly. But with a few more layers of epoxy and sand, I achieved the look that I wanted.

3) The base stand was built in the basement and prepared for the tank move down to the basement.

July 16, 2006
The tank was moved from the garage into the basement thanks to Anthony, Morgan, Mo, Dan (Midnight) and Jason Mckenzie. For both moves up and down stairs, a wooden sleigh was built and used. The tank was strapped to the sleigh and various thick ropes were used to allow multiple people to pull. In both instances, only 2-3 people were able to push but 4-6 people were able to pull the tank with ropes.



Over the next few months of August – October, I pondered for many hours on how I was going to aquascape the tank. I had ideas of putting all the rocks on PVC structure so they were all elevated off the bottom and various PVC structures to put the rocks on. (these ideas did not work out in the end)
I knew I wanted a shelf on the overflow that I could “hang” some rocks from so I glued together some glass and made two level shelf on the overflow. This idea worked out really well in the end.


The first two fishes to go in the tank

The faux pas sandbed made it very rough to work in the tank hence the purple striped bedsheet in the tank.

The tank was placed high up and only about 16 inches from the low basement ceiling. This is primarily due to the height of the sump in the back room and the height of the bottom of the overflow. This created a challenge for me to create a canopy that could allow access inside the tank. I took the idea of a moving canopy from several local reefers and I went to Lee Valley tools and bought:
- a pair of 38” two way slides http://www.leevalley.com/hardware/page.aspx?c=1&p=51775&cat=3,43614,43616&ap=2
- two over-the-top slides http://www.leevalley.com/hardware/page.aspx?c=1&p=41861&cat=3,43614,43620&ap=1

The over the top slides allow the cabinet door to be lifted and pushed completely out of the way.

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