ReeferMush's 20 Gallon Nano - New Fish and Dry Goods!!

[ReeferMush]

The drill bits I ordered from Honk Kong finally came in the mail and I have sucessfully drilled my first tank. I used a drill press at 640 rpm with a 45mm diamond tipped hole saw and lots of water and it turned out great.

[ReeferMush]

Here is the sump and the refugium in the back holding water just doing some testing. The sump baffles and the one baffle in the refugium are made from acrylic and held in place by silicone

[ReeferMush]

Here is the light switch for the light on the inside of the cabinet


And the light in action...Lightening up the "control room" and the sump for easy maintenance

[ReeferMush]

The time has finally came to fill the tank and the refugium. I love this part of the build, i've bought some sand had enough salt for the cycling process to start. I bought 15 - 20 pounds of rock and chucked a bag of carbon in the sump and some nice rock in the refugium and filled the display tank with the rest of my rock. There were some chunks left over for the sump and after some check overs I had everything running. Enough said lets check it out!!

Here's the full cabinate shot with a temporally light on the display while I fab up the custom T5 light, my old 12" Coralife fixture with one 50/50 and a 10,000k rest on top of the refugium(also lighting future mantis home)



A shot of the cabinate doors open


A closer look at the future mantis home, I couldn't do this build without having stomadapod, I just love the way they are.


Here's some tumbling action for beneficial algae

[ReeferMush]

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[ReeferMush]

This is the light I fabricated from 3/4" aluminum angles, the T5 ballast bellow, and some facia soffit for houses is the top. I cut holes for the special mounting hardware that comes with the coralife mounting legs. I welded together the frame using the DHC 2000 Cobra torch http://www.diversifiedenterprises.ca/ and cut everything with a dremel. I bought the ballast at home depot for 80$ so including the bulbs the whole fixture comes out under 200$ the bulbs killed me on this one with the whole cheapness part, but most of the these parts were laying around so all I really bought was one 10,000k and the angles.

[the marine apprentice]

Awesome idea using the sofit has lots of ventilation too. Loookin good dude