Jamie's 13.3G Custom

[yellowworld]

Alright guys! today has been a good start so far, I got all the glass for the sump ready and siliconed in place







Then i got it put inside the cabinet and started putting my equipment in and sizing things up

1. Back right corner is the Tunze ATO



2. Right infront of the ATO chamber is the return pump, and to the right of the return and ATO is the fuge



3. Next came the skimmer



4. Then right at the front is the down pipes that feed the whole sump





5. the only thing left to do is to cut a piece of acrylic to sit just on the otherside of the tubes to hold my filter sock, then its water time!!


While i had the sump out i took the chance to wire in my GFCI plug and then cut up an extension cord to wire the whole box to one single plug that i can plug into an existing outlet under my desk

[yellowworld]

Hey everyone, time for an update!! over the last day or so i have been slowly turning this



into this!!









I still have a ton more work to do on it to make it look perfect and fit the same way, i also need to try out a few things to make the foam look identical to the rocks then epoxy it all and cover it in sand but its getting there!

ohh and yesterday this showed up in the mail! its 10 feet of 3/4 inch braided cable wrap! now i can clean up my wiring and make it look pretty too!!



All clean!!

[yellowworld]

So for all of you guys out there that just cant resist seeing what the rock wall is turning out like, here is a little sneak peak!!

























okay so i took more then a few haha but i should be getting epoxy and sand on it in the next week and then ill let it sit in a bucket of saltwater for a week or so to make sure that all the dust is off the rock and that the epoxy did its job, then its on the Light and water!!!

[yellowworld]

Alright so here is the finished product, in its final resting place















So now that that project is knocked off the list I have a few things left to go before splash down can commence!!

I still have to build an acrylic shield that will house my 90 degree cords for everything to get plugged into, and will also fully encapsulate the rest of my electronics so they don't end up with water damage from being in the sump cabinet,

and then i need to pick up, a two little fishies phosban reactor to run GFO and carbon

and then i need to pick up a 150w heater

and last but certainly not least i need to pick up a tunze 1073.050 silence pump to feed the reactor, the return to the tank, the refugium and the water fall

Then i can start to cycle the tank as i build the LED's to light it all up!!

[yellowworld]

Hey guys, i hope you all had a great christmas!! I got some more stuff done over the holidays. were getting close to getting saltwater into it now!! I drained all the fresh water out of the tank and the sump, I also plumed a Phosban 150 Reactor into my return line and cleaned up the extra wireing on the back side of my tank! Enjoy!!

[yellowworld]

Hey everyone, so as promised I'm back with pictures for you guys. I spend the last 24 hours cutting and reworking my rock wall and when i finally stood back and looked at my new creation this is what I saw. Ill take you though everything from start to finish.

So i used:
A Hammer
A Chisel
A Hack-saw with a masonry blade
A Can of "Touch n' Foam" Landscape from Lowe's
and a lot of time haha

This is where i started with the old wall that you've all seen before





Then came the destruction of the wall, i cut off the upper rock that was out of the water and the moved it over to determine where i wanted it to sit



Once i figured that out i had to cut some off the back of the rock so that it sat flush with my wall - thats where the hack saw came into play



After a few hours of cutting dow the rock i was finally ready to start putting it back into place, but I knew that i wasn't happy with the size of the pond so out came the chisel and hammer and away i went until i had chunked out a very substantial portion of the work i had previously done



Then out came the foam and it was time to start rebuilding...

This is the new pond





This what i ended up doing to the rock that was in the middle of the tank - I hammer out quite a bit of it and moved it around until i found a place for it



I added a leg to the ledge just for looks



And finally this is the new scape from the front

[yellowworld]

Alright so now that I have something to update you on Ill update you haha I came home from work last night and found a lovely big brown box at my front door! It had all kinds of goodies in it

[yellowworld]

So I got the RO/DI system done and installed and its now making some sweet pure water!







On the way in...



On the way out…

[yellowworld]

Now that that is out of the way I turned my attention to protecting all the electronics inside my sump cabinet. I started out by rearranging the panel a little bit then planning out the back plate.

[yellowworld]

Today i spent most of the day taking everything I have built apart!


But dont worry it was all for a very good reason haha, so before some of you go and have a heart attack this is why I did it. Im getting pretty dam close to the last few things that need to be done and one of those final things is to clean up everything and tie it all together really nice and pretty like. So i started with a little paint

First on the return manifold



Then on all three of the overflow drains



They arent done yet tomorrow i have to mask them off and paint the exposed(still white parts) flat black then I have to paint all of the conduit hangers red to match. Then they get put back into a freshly painted sump cabinet where the white and red with stainless steel screws are going to look pretty spiffy i think

heres the newly painted cabinet - no more missing paint or scratches from hundreds of bumps putting in and taking out that sump haha



Then once I was done that I started into the wiring again, I had some wires that were bugging me and it just didn't quite look perfect so i went ahead and started to hack apart the wiring and then once i had a big mess of copper and plastic insulation i pulled out the soldering iron and got to work making it all function again

This is the UBS that connects the APEX to the Energy Bar 8 - shhhh dont tell apex i think its a warranty issue



then i tossed some shrink wrap on it to make it look pretty and then put it back in. You can see i also did that with the internet cable between the APEX and the Netgear Wireless receiver



Then i thought hey! lets get some light inside this box! so i started wiring up some LED strips that i picked up, the only problem is there is only one output on the controller box and i don't want to run one continuous strip all over the place, so im going to have to do some fancy wiring to get about 3-4 separate strips wired the way i want them to and all controlled with a magnetic on/off switch connected to the door of the cabinet as i said pretty spiffy





I still have to finish building the acrylic box and get some weather stripping to makeusre that its got a pretty dam close to air tight seal as i can get but thats for another day!