180g peninsula tank build - First ever aquarium

[Milad]

I thought this was going to be the easiest part of this whole thing but it seems this is the hardest!! I wanted to stand to look really good. This aquarium is "decor" to me and needs to fit in with the rest of the house. Most of the pieces in the house are black laminate so I wanted to match this... simple right? sorta of

Turns out laminate shows ANY bump, dip, etc on the wood. So the first batch of wood I got was totally wrong. So I had to go back and cut two more 4x8 pieces of wood. The stuff that I really needed was plywood G1S (which stands for Good 1 Side). This stuff is sanded and free of bumps, notches etc on 1 side of the wood. Its a bit pricey but its nice. I bought 1/2in sheets. The sketch up diagram worked really well to get the measurements needed. I made 4x8 rectangles in sketchup and

The laminate I bought was called Fromica (sp?). 4x8 sheet of the stuff is $65 bucks but the store I was at had 2x4 sheets for $5 so I bought 16 of them.

Here is the stand with the crappy wood on top


My carpentar buddy came over and laughed at me for buying the wrong wood but he came up with the idea of filling in and sanding the top half so we could save the big pieces of wood. Its gota be smooth for the laminate to go on. We used drywall filler because thats all we had at the time but the stuff that you are really suppose to use is called "Poly filla". Then we just used a sanding block to smooth it down.
Here he is sanding and filling.



The laminate we cut with a table saw but you can use a laminate cutting tool which is really cheap ($6). Slapped 1 coat of contact cemant ($13 for 930ml - ended up needing 3 of these) on laminate, 1 coat on wood.... then you wait till you can touch it and it doesnt leave anything on your finger and you add another coat just to the wood (it soaks the first coat up). once you can touch it and it doesnt leave anything on your finger you stick the two pieces together. Kinda easy once you do 1 or 2. After that, we took a rotor to trim off the 1/8 excess laminate.






This took us something like 6 hours to do.... lol.

[kien]

wow, there are some major tools being used in this build! Looks good, and I'm really jealous that you've got bamboo growing in your backyard!

[Milad]

Ya i got lucky i got a friend thats a carpentar.
Dont look at the yard!! it needs to get mowed and cleaned up but it keeps raining here.

[kien]

Originally Posted by Milad

Ya i got lucky i got a friend thats a carpentar.
Dont look at the yard!! it needs to get mowed and cleaned up but it keeps raining here.

ya, that is just terrible! I feel so sorry for you poor souls.. it rains so much that your backyards become a disgustingly lush palette of green flora :P

[Milad]

btw kien, dont be surprised if you see some simliarties between this build and yours. All the sides of the stand are panels like yours and they are going to be attached with magnets

[Frenchie2]

What about these poor 3 gold fishies stuck in the 3 gallon tank?? Are they going to see a better day?

[bauder1986]

Originally Posted by Frenchie2

What about these poor 3 gold fishies stuck in the 3 gallon tank?? Are they going to see a better day?

there are just gold fish hahaha they can live in anything really as long as its clearer than my morning coffee lmao

[Leah]

Originally Posted by Milad

Ya i got lucky i got a friend thats a carpentar.
Dont look at the yard!! it needs to get mowed and cleaned up but it keeps raining here.

It rains in NorthVan??? I do not believe you. Born and raised there.

Can't wait to see what you do with the tank.

[saltynuts]

all your pics are gone. sounds like a fun build for you.
now you will have to pimp out that gold fish bowl!!!!

[no_bs]

Yes, nice looking build Milad.