60g Cube - 18 months since I started it.

[lucubrator]

Since I’ve been commenting here for a couple years now, I figured it was about time to show some pictures of my tank.

The first is the first tank that I bought on my own. It was a 29g pine with light stain, but after realizing that it was too thin front to back, I decided on something a little deeper – a 60g cube (2’x2’x2’).

So I bought the tank from MParkis, for almost nothing, with a hole drilled in the middle back, and built the overflow for it. Overflows are pretty easy to make: Just cut the acrylic to a little bigger than you want, cut some teeth with a table saw, or make a jig if you’re handy, and then bend it with a piece of wood and a heat gun.

So I siliconed that in place, and then made a hofer gurgle buster, which seems to be working well. I can’t hear it over any of the other noises in the tank (skimmer, mostly).

Then I used the pond foam to coat the overflow, and make it a little bit better looking, I hoped. It’s nice because you can just stick sps frags into it, but I’ve noticed that it does break down.

[lucubrator]

Then I got on to making the stand. With Dakota’s (and sometimes Rachel’s) help we got the 2x4 frame together, and cut and assembled the ½” oak face frames. The stand to the bottom of the tank is 37” tall, the tank is 24”, and the stand is 12” putting the whole thing at 6’1”.

Then I cut and glued on ½” quarter-round on the corners, filled the nail holes with putty, sanded a whole bunch, and used Jharr’s router to round over the top edges. I really like the clean wooden looking stands without too many frills, so that’s what I was going for.
I set the oak 1.25” above the 2x4 frame so the black trim wouldn’t show when looking at the tank from across the room, but haven’t found a way to hide them better up close.

Knowing that I tend to spill water, and having had a few bad experiences, I decided that this stand would be waterproof. I posted this before, but I used fiberglass sheet and resin to coat the bottom of the stand. If there’s nothing in the stand, then it will hold about 3 gallons of water indefinitely.

I also don’t like seeing any equipment when I look at the tank, so I made two 2x4 extensions to go up behind the tank, to which I could attach 6” doors and hide all the plumbing etc. Those doors are behind the tank in this picture. I also have a 6” shelf at the same level as the tank, that I now use for a stand for my CO2 bottle, and DIY refugium.

In this picture I’d taped off the oak for painting the inside with white high gloss paint to waterproof. I painted the fiberglass bottom too, but it’s now scratched off in some places.

[lucubrator]

First water test!

This pic is a couple of weeks later, when I was satisfied with sanding with the finest grain I could fine, stained and sealed the tank. The grain along the top edge of the tank continues the whole way around. I did the same thing on the canopy when I got around to it. I used a dark mahogany stain that I left on for about 3 minutes before wiping it off. I coated with tung oil, which gives it a nice shine, and can apparently be reapplied when needed. The side doors are on, as are the three 18” wide doors that I made to allow access to everywhere in the stand. Moore makes cabinets for this tank, but they only put one door on it, which makes it a royal PITA to get to anything. You can see in this picture that the bottom black trim is invisible. There’s a bit of the white frame in the back that shows through, and I haven’t bothered fixing it to this day.

The white pipes go to an oceansmotions squirt that I used from a return, but I got waaaay too many microbubbles with 12000gph going through the sump, so I ended up converting it to a closed loop with a quiet one 3000. That pump ended up seizing up on me a couple of times, so I returned it to the manufacturer, and when I got it back, I sold it.

The black bar is what my halides hang from. Since I didn’t want to drill holes in my ceiling, and wanted an open canopy, I decided that this would be the easiest way.

[lucubrator]

18g tall sump on the left with ASM G2 (now with gate valve and recirc mod.), 10g water reservoir, and mag 3 return pump. You can see how much room I have to lean into the tank

[lucubrator]

I made a 12” tall canopy to be able to hide the halide, and here you can see that I’m gluing the sides onto the front with the help of some light weights. The front is held to the sides with just some small triangles, which now make a nice place for dry foods.

In the second picture I’ve attached the back support, as well as the rails that hold the canopy above the tank. I used pocket screws everywhere I could, because they’re so darned cool.

[lucubrator]

The doors were cut long, so I could cut them to match when I was done making the canopy. Here’s a test fit before I routed and stained the canopy. (The closed loop is still in at this point.)

I also routed the top and bottom of the canopy to make it match the tank, stained it with the same color, and sealed it with tung oil.

Here it is all assembled, between two couches. Since the lip of the tank is 5’1” off the ground, I get to stand on the couches to get into the tank, and it’s a little hard to take canopy off, so that keeps my hands out of the water even more.

[lucubrator]

I wanted to keep a mandarin, and read that they need lots of live food, so I built refugium 27” tall, 11” wide and 5” front to back. It seems to work pretty well, and the mangroves in it are growing well, though the chaeto is more important.
It puts out a decent number of pods, but since I pulled the sand out of my tank I’ve noticed that the mandarin is a little thinner

[lucubrator]

Inside the stand I have the same two tanks, as well as a bunch of plumbing. I really like valves, so I have two ball valves and one gate valves. The loop is to give me a little room.
The top most valve is where I do water changes from. The dirtiest water in the tank (aside from in the skimmer collection cup), is the water that comes over the overflow, so that’s where I take the water out from. You can also try to get as much old water out as possible by putting water into the tank that’s a little bit colder than the water in the tank, so it sinks to the bottom, and you skim the warmer water off the top.

The other valve on the cross is the valve I turn off when I want to do water changes. It’s on normally, and any water that doesn’t go into the skimmer goes through this valve and into a filter sock.

The gate valve is the inlet to the gravity fed skimmer – no feed pump! I had trouble with bubbles breaking the head, so the idea with the gate valve is that I can allow as much water as possible through the tube without any large bubbles getting into the skimmer.

So the specs are: 60g cube, 18g sump, mag 3 return, modified maxijet and random via aqua provide flow, G2 skimmer, 20lb CO2 tank for Schuran Pico reactor, custom ~5g refugium, & Milwaukee SMS122 CO2 controller not hooked to anything.

I would post pics of the things inside, but everything’s mad at me since I dosed flatworm exit on Saturday. I’ll be doing a big water change tomorrow in hopes of making the happy. Now that the flatworms are dead, I’ll be re-adding sand and getting a diamond goby.

[Nigritude]

This monstrous thing was the reason I had to park in the streets and endure the wrath of the neighbours. :p

[cab]

For your mandarin, try placing some frozen brine shrimp near him. I did that with mine for about 2 weeks and right now he will eat brine shrimps and mysis shrimps. He has gotten big and he looks very healthy. Also, I use a 20 gal long as a sump and refugium.
By the way, your tank looks pretty sweet. Good work with the stand and canopy.
I wanted to keep a mandarin, and read that they need lots of live food, so I built refugium 27” tall, 11” wide and 5” front to back. It seems to work pretty well, and the mangroves in it are growing well, though the chaeto is more important.
It puts out a decent number of pods, but since I pulled the sand out of my tank I’ve noticed that the mandarin is a little thinner

[swissfish]

i like how you labeled the sump :D

looks good, now show us close ups from inside the tank.

[cagirly2006]

yeah we just got a mandarin about a week ago and so far i think he is doing okay...Just in case u didnt know, Fish Haven carries the Live Brine Shrimp, i got some last night...I dont know if they carry it all the time but he said they usually try to get it when it is available...Also someone at TriCity told me that somewhere online you can buy Live Copepods and just stick them in your tank...Good luck and the tank is looking nice cant wait to see more pics!! :D

[Daniel]

ur canopy and stand are damned sexy.

hope ur corals get un-mad at you so you can start posting pics of what's INSIDE! :)

[Wulfhound]

Nice job luc

[lucubrator]

I've tried squirting cyclopeeze near her, but she's a pansy and swims away from it. I see lots of mysis shrimp swimming around, and plenty of copepods, so there looks like there's plenty of food, she's just not getting to it.

I know AW also has live brine from time to time, but I've never bothered buying them.

The sump was labeled for my dad to take care of things while I was off galvanting around your country!

Thanks for the compliments.

[slurpeshark]

Looks good... cant wait to see pics :O)

[onad75]

Great job on you tank and stand. is that a gate valve on your skimmer? I've been wanted to get one for my g3 but i dont know where to get the parts.

[Nick_Kun]

Good looking tank and stand. I remember when mike p. was selling this tank.

[Nigritude]

complements????

:p:p

[Radiant-Reef]

Good work on the stand.. You can tell you put a lot of work and effort into.. Awesome..

[lucubrator]

Good looking tank and stand. I remember when mike p. was selling this tank.

It wasn't his tank to start, I just ordered through him. I got mine at the same time as Pon ordered his 150? and someone else ordered a 180.

Apparenlty the price on the tank has gone up since I bought mine, because I paid less than cost.

[swissfish]

complements????

:p:p


Haven't seen your tank posted yet ;)

nick i really like the water change set up and might have to steal the idea from you.

[Nick_Kun]

yeah, mike had good prices when he used to sell tanks.


It wasn't his tank to start, I just ordered through him. I got mine at the same time as Pon ordered his 150? and someone else ordered a 180.

Apparenlty the price on the tank has gone up since I bought mine, because I paid less than cost.

[DaChrisDude]

Very very nice Nick. I love your wood-work, top-notch stuff. Good looking setup. I'm also very anxious to see the livestock...

Keep it up!

[lucubrator]

I should mention that the only tools used were a hammer, drill, circular saw, random orbital sander, belt sander, and router. No big fancy table saw, no other big fancy tools.

If you just take your time and pay close attention, you can get most things done.

[Live Water Aquariums]

Looks great Nick. I like the attention to detail.

[lucubrator]

Hey all,
I'm selling this whole setup, but willing to part it out.

Let me know what you want, I've been off r the forums so long that I don't know what things go for anymore. Send me any reasonable offer and I'll consider it.
I'd like to move this in the next few days.

The main things remaining are the tank, stand, canopy, 250w mh, skimmer, sump, freshwater topoff , lots of pumps including a full size and mini tunze.