4 Foot Wall Tank - Project log and Product Review

[dakar]

As you may have noticed the new banners in the upper right hand corner of our site, it is our pleasure to introduce our first sponsor to our forums; Bizarre Aquariums. Blaine was kind enough to donate one of his products to us for a review. You will not believe the really cool idea's he's got for unique tanks, coffee tables, lamps, you name it, after you read this, jump over and take a look at his site and you'll see what I mean, if you don't come away from there with some new inspirations...go straight to your RO unit and mix yourself up a tall glass of seawater or straight RO/DI and look again

Actually, not just one, but two of these beauties will have been provided to Captive Reefing. What's the second one for? Are you that impatient? You haven't even seen what it is yet unless you've skipped ahead, no worries, everyone will know soon enough.

Let's roll back a few days when this magically shows up on our doorstep courtesy of FedEx.


First let me say I've never seen anything packed in quite this manner, the box is just over 4 feet long, 8 inches wide, and 18 inches high, weighs in around 40 lbs. Took one look at all the screws holding our new prize captive and ran for the screw gun.


Packed securely enough that even FedEx can't bust it up in a 2x2 frame wrapped in 3/16" MDF and thousands of foam peanuts.


After removing another dozen or so screws... Ah there she is. Glad most of the dogs are outside, I might have a chance to get the peanuts picked up before they are discovered and scattered to every corner of the house.



Oooooo... look at the goodies.

Included from left to right were
Install Instructions/Owners Manual (does anyone read this stuff?)
20" AGA Strip light, complete with a 15w T-12 (new electronic ballast, no more of those little starter cans to burn out)
150watt submersible heater
and 2 Whisper MicroFilters
Everything perfectly in tact.


A shot of the corners that can be completely removed for maintenance and such. The center is permanently sealed to protect the light fixture from splashes.


The tank itself measures a hair over 48" long, 6" deep, and 16" tall. For those not wanting to do the math to find the total volume that works out to just over 19 gallons.
Dry weight is just over 30lbs, wet will be somewhere around 190lbs +/- anything but water. Keep this number in mind should you want to set one on a shelf.

Construction itself looks great, all seams are free of bubbles and appear very solid.
The sides measure .365" thick with the top and bottom measuring .235" thick cast acrylic.

What we have now is the fixings for an extremely unique fish only, low light reef tank, species specific tank, or anything you can think up, we're going with a Pony Corral (seahorses and pipefish). She'll be completely framed into the wall on both sides, so picture a live picture if you will.

Now all that's needed is a victim to bash a serious hole... errr... I mean a suitable wall to mount this puppy in.

Ah here is the spot between the hallway and Angel's office. Yes, she's getting the hallway and living room painted out of the deal too.


I'll be running a couple of new isolated "home runs" to the breaker panel using GFI breakers (HIGHLY recommended, remember salt water is a great conductor), we'll be keeping all of the wiring in the wall so it stays out of sight.

Stay tuned for Part II, time to put down the camera for a spell, go get some power tools and start some serious Tim the Toolman action. :D

This thread sponsored by Bizarre Aquariums.

[Whoyah]

Sounds fun. Let the destruction begin!!!! :bricked:

[dakar]

Part II - hacking up the wall.

Not a lot to write about here, with a little help of a couple straight line lasers, levels and framing squares, and only after bashing a few holes here and there to locate the existing studs and make sure there were no electric wires running in the area I wanted, marked off the location for the tank so that I would have at least 3 studs to support the tank. Actually a slight addition of a 2x4 along an existing stud on the right side gave me 4 to use to put my mind at ease a little more. Three really would have been plenty to support the weight but more is always better.

put my saws-all to work. End result. Big Hole! hee hee


here you can see the base to support the tank, just a 1x8 of yellow pine cut down to size to match the size of the tank bottom.

Test fit;



from the backside


I changed my mind once I saw the fit, the rather than having 3/4" hanging out in to the hallway the tank face will be flush with that wall and trimmed in to look like a picture frame, should look really nice. This also allowed a bit more working room on the opposite side of the wall to gain access to the tank and such. The backside will overhang by 1.5" and some additional support will be incorporated into the trim work, again just for that warm and fuzzy feeling.

Also ran a couple of new 12/2 lines to the load center and mounted 4 outlets inside the wall as well for power, plenty of juice to run such a small tank, again GFI breakers are warranted here, the other option would have been to use outlets with GFI built into them.

Heading off to HD to go pick up the breakers and some trim, I'm feeling lazy and don't want to mess around with routing out my own right now.

But you can get a general idea of where this is going now.

More to follow soon..........

This thread sponsored by Bizarre Aquariums.

[Reptoreef]

Heck yea!!! Should be up in no time...

[dakar]

I picked up some very nice oak trim for the front facing side, put in the new stud to replace the on missing on the side and added a bit of support for the back side that overhangs into Angel's office, tonight all the trim and bare wood surfaces will get a good soaking of polyurethane and mudding up the 'ooopses' from my drywall hacking., only thing holding me back now is the new paint for the walls. She may get that picked up today. Just may get this puppy wet by the weekend

[Reptoreef]

Awesome step-by-step... really showing to be quite easy.

[Shultzybabe]

I bet that Angel's just loving the mess!! Ha Ha. Better you then me. But then again, Repto will have his fun soon enough.

[Grandmaster_Toad]

Looking great so far!! Its awesome to see a step by step work in progress.
Cant wait to see it all trimed in and flowing with some H2O...... Im pretty impatient and its not even mine. I looked at the bizzare website and besides the in-wall tanks I saw some neat stuff. I kinda liked and tables...heh heh
GT

[Reptoreef]

Repto's gonna have a whole lotta fun soon enough!!! I'm thinkin a 180 to a 300 gl in wall with a fish room behind it...HA HA HA.... Oooops, let me get this drool off the keyboard... I must have dozed off. Nope, It was that aweful wishful thinkin getting the best of me.

[dakar]

Thanks for all the nice comments, but yeah GT they've got some just the coolest ideas of things to turn into tanks, some of them lacking a bit in being practical but just the cool and unique factor more than makes of for it.

Repto... I felt the breeze all the way up here of that skillet Chels was wielding as it just cleared the top of your head..... I think Angel's been a great sport about the mess (though her office has a light dusting of drywall powerder all over everything), it's the end results that she's seeing. Got plans to completely re-arrange her office/craft room so she can watch her ponies.

Hopefully more updates by the weekend.