Daplatapus's upgrade

[daplatapus]

The bird is finally in the henhouse

[daplatapus]

Well, finally got to breaking out the wet saw last night. I want to create a bit of a rock wall on the left side so you can't see into the overflow box on the left side. But I'd like it to take as little room as possible. So I cut some Marco rock in half and I'll be mounting them somehow to the side panel. Right now I'm thinking I'll be siliconing them right to the glass. The only draw back is trying to remove them if need be in the future. But it seems like everything I've seen with builds that are using eggcrate to build their walls, they silicone that to the rock wall anyway, so no real difference.













I've probably got a couple pieces too many for the 24" X 29" wall I want to do, but I was debating creating a similar style rock pillar on the right 1/3 of the tank against the back wall with a couple protruding shelves. But I want to see how this turns out before I cut the remaining pieces I have.

I also have some pre-finished birch plywood on the way to build some of my cabinet components. I've decided not to put doors on the bottom cabinet inside the stand (where you see the 2 squares). Because the stand is fairly deep, I'm worried things will get shoved in there, never to be seen again, or the space wasted. So I'll be building 2 boxes out of this pre-finished plywood, then slipping them into those 2 squares. Then using Blum cabinet hardware, I'll be making 2 deep drawers per box and have drawers there instead of doors. That way we can make use of the entire storage capacity there for whatever.
The space on the left of the stand is still going to have a full height cabinet to hide the overflow, WP & MP controllers, LED controller and tools for the tank. And a 16" high canopy is going to be sitting on top of the tank to mount my LED rails and prevent light spillage and hopefully contain any wrasses that go in there.

[Trevor W]

Coming along nicely! The new tank and placement looks awesome. Are you planning on extending the rock wall that is going to cover the side pane with the overflow a little bit around the corner and onto the back pane and then have it trail off into your main scape? or will you just be placing it on the one side pane? I really like the idea of going a round the corner a little bit and trailing down on an angle with the piece getting gradually larger or sticking out from the wall more as it comes down. If that makes any sense at all.
Either way I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

[daplatapus]

Well, I think this tank may be in the "One of the longest builds ever" books, lol. I finally got the rare combination of tools, time, materials and gumption for another step. I finally built the cube inserts for the stand and one of the gable ends for the overflow side. I just realized too I never did post any pics of the cut dry rock in place so you can see now what I did. I plan on building an arch off of a pillar to the rock on the right side of the tank that looks like it's sitting up in the middle of nowhere. Anyway, without further ado...

[reeferfulton]

looking real good . i had no idea you could cut dry rock like that . Wicked.
Guessing your sump will be in the basement ?

[daplatapus]

Ya, I have a 150 gal down there now where my 77 and 20 go into now. I'll get this guy running, move the stock from the 77 into it, then shut down my 77.

[reeferfulton]

just read through your build . .You have put alot ! of work into this tank so far . impressed . cant wait to see it running .