Christy's 180 build

[christyf5]

Yeah, the lighting on that tank is ambient plus a 65W CF unit I found in a box so the pics aren't that great but she really is quite stunning. I can't wait to get another and watch one of them change

[Stephanie1974]

Great Job! It sure takes a while to get the job done properly, but you did an awesome job! It looks like I have quite a bit to learn before I can say I am advanced in the hobby.

[christyf5]

LOL, ok this has been my last 24 hours or so, tank-wise.

Yesterday, race home after work to paint newly acquired light rack in the waning sunlight hours. Put cardboard on lawn to keep grass from attaching itself, set light rack on cardboard, get a coat of paint on, watch time to get second coat of paint before I have to race off to a cooking class. Come home, rescue light rack from cold and bring inside. Turn off skimmers as paint still smells to high heaven. Paint doesn't dry well at 5 degrees.

This am, look at light rack, not too shabby, couple spots look thin, maybe I'll get another coat of paint tonight. Turn room light on to provide ambient light for fish in new tank. Make sure new fish haven't jumped out (paranoia).

Afternoon...raining. No extra coat of paint (its spray paint and I need like a 30ft radius of nothing nearby as apparently I'm quite liberal with the paint). Phooey!

Come home after work, new wrasse deader than a doornail. WTF? Unimpressed. I loved that fish the second I clapped eyes on it. FML

Pout for awhile. Lets get this light in order. Ok, drill holes to insert eye bolts for hanging....drill useless, I'm gonna be standing here half the night to get one hole drilled. Set battery to recharge. Don't people use corded drills anymore? Matt finds me a corded drill and drills the holes for me and goes back to the hockey game.

Look up at beams. Hmm, they're not where I want them to be. Guess I'm gonna have to drill more holes. Lets place the rack where I want it and see where it measures up.

Hmm, rack doesn't seem to fit. WTF? Get out tape measure, rack is 72.5 inches long. $%#! I forgot the tank is set into the wall at the front and framed at exactly 72 inches. Guess I should have stressed that point. Go upstairs and eat dinner while pouting

Matt suggests cutting the edges of the "feet" tabs off as they're hanging over quite a bit. Solution! This proves to be more difficult than expected. Hacksaw seems to be missing. While he goes on the hunt, I figure I might as well splice the mogul socket onto the special plug that goes into the ballast. Seems easy enough. Trim off the plastic, get the wires set up. Where are the murets? Over there. Ok I'll just take the cords over there. %$#! Forgot the porcelain mogul socket is attached to the cord. Porcelain and concrete are two things that shouldn't meet at high velocity. Its now in two big pieces and fifty billion little ones. Awesome. Get out crazy glue, glue big pieces back on and finger to other part of mogul. Get finger off mogul, finger sticks to thumb. Me and crazy glue, yeah we're a good time.

Ok, most of the mogul socket is on there, good enough, what are the odds I'll cut myself on that sharp edge? Guess we'll find out later

Found the hacksaw, trim off the tab edges. Labour intensive and Matt takes care of that. Yay! It fits where I want it. Matt decides to place cross braces so I can hang it using the spots where I've already put the eyebolts in on the rack. Yay again!

While he's doing this I laugh to myself. He catches me laughing and I tell him that the eurobracing on this tank is quite wide. Wider than I figured. Not wider than I measured because I didn't measure it or take into accoun that there is only a 15" opening that doesn't have glass (ie each eurobrace is 4.5" wide). My reflectors are 14.5" wide. My VHOs are going to be brilliantly shining into the glass of the eurobracing. he just shakes his head.

SMRT.

Ok, time to call it a night. Sheesh.

[superduperwesman]

Holler... more pics please

[christyf5]

Of what? Theres nothing in it. At this point I'm afraid I might break the camera, or glue myself to it

[superduperwesman]

You could post some pictures of that ahah.

I don't know... it just felt like it should be time for more pictures? GUess I thought it was a lil further ahah

Trim is awesome btw!

[christyf5]

No, sadly the last thing to do before I fill it with the contents of my 90gal is switch the lighting over. So everything sort of came to a grinding halt while I waited for the light rack to be built.

Currently on my 90gal I have two mogul metal halides. I'll be adding a third and I have that all wired up and ready to go but once I get the lighting off the other tank I pretty much have to move all the livestock over ASAP. So I'm just waiting for my next day off to get that done. Friday is the day....I hope

[JDigital]

Oh Christy... you always make me laugh... Sorry to hear about your troubles though..

What are your plans for the VHOs now?

[Lance]

Good stuff!

[christyf5]

Originally Posted by JDigital

Oh Christy... you always make me laugh... Sorry to hear about your troubles though..

What are your plans for the VHOs now?

Well at least I haven't lost that ability

Well yet again, due to my inability to guesstimate anything spatially or actually get out a tape measure, only about 40% of my VHO lighting is making it into my 90gal. The lumenarcs were an upgrade well after I built the hood and I only measured whether they'd fit, not whether they'd fit properly. The VHOs ended up sitting on the reflectors and a goodly portion of the light from them is actually reflected upwards into the hood (it lights the room quite nicely when the front of the hood is off ). So I would imagine if I keep the eurobracing clean in the new tank, probably about 40% will make it in there too.

I was also thinking I might go with blue LEDs. There is a guy here that custom builds LED light strips so I figured I might measure something up and go with that. I actually will measure it this time though. Thats no guarantee that it will fit though.

The ushios are pretty nice without actinic supplementation. I might just go with them too. Who knows at this point? I bought a couple used radiums to try too, just for fun ($20 for a pair). Its really hard to determine anything until you're looking at it. Currently I'm trying to position the three reflectors on the light rack, what a pain in the arse when you only have one to physically work with. I'm just gonna leave it alone until I have all three to fiddle with.

Another thing I realized while looking at the eurobracing is that my wavy sea will likely get cooked all to hell where its sitting currently. So I'll have to take that into account as well when positioning the reflectors.

Its a good thing I'm not in construction. Or better yet, I didn't build the stand. That could have been scary!

Just found superglue on a third finger. Go me!