'Fringe Benefits'... On hold...

[BlueAbyss]

I've been putting a lot of thought into my tank build, and in the end I think I've decided to build my own 60 G acrylic tank. That is, after I experiment a bit with something on a smaller scale

So I'm starting up the 20 after all. As it goes (and it will go slow, I have a lot of ideas I want to implement and experiment with) I will document it here, including pics (when there's something to see), and costs involved (including time). Here's where I'm at so far:

I went to Walmart today and bought 2 Aquarium Products 100w heaters, thinking they were a cheap model (not the case, Aquarium Products makes Instant Ocean salt which for being around as long as it has must be a decent product). They were hanging on a rack that said 4.17, and the boxes are not at all flashy or overly interesting looking. After getting them for that price instead of the over 20 bucks that I paid at the till (when I noticed they had been mislabeled), I got them home and did some research and sure enough got an awesome deal on a pair of good quality (hopefully) heaters.

While I was down there I went to Canadian Tire and checked out some prices on PVC and other plumbing stuff. I'll be making a trip to Home Hardware to check stuff out there too, one of these days. I have a feeling I'm going to be doing some... lets say interesting plumbing, so this little foray to the plumbing section helped me get an idea of the cost of what I'm thinking about.

So here's a couple things I want to experiment with:

• Surge devices. I have a couple ideas about this and have done some research, so I want to play with this. I'm thinking of a super low velocity, high flow system...
• LED lighting. I eventually want to build my own fixture...
• Building my own downdraft skimmer (more on this later). I decided that I would build my own, related to the build of my sump / algae filter (I say algae filter since most of those little critters that live in refugiums apparently don't survive the trip through the impeller in the pump)

That's where I'm at. Like I said earlier, this will be a slow build as both time and money (mostly money and my lack of experience are factors here. There will be pics when there is something to show everyone!