HDPE Panel/Liquid Rubber/Plywood 240 Gallon DIY Aquarium Build
- Thread starter BearFish
- Start date
Thanks Dis!
I installed lights with the outdoor lighting kits you get from home depot for 15$ and spend some money on LED lights with 5,000 to 6,000K temperature. All 11 light bulbs put out ~11,000 lumens, which is a bit of an overkill. My eyes hurt looking at it. I'm going to need to invest in dimmer switches. I plan on controlling everything with a raspberry pi computer when I get around to it. Here is the tank with the lights on. I've got the sump tank lights off.
I've had trouble with my two 1,200 GPH pondmaster water pumps being excessively noisy/vibration. I suspect it has to do with me running them in-line, and well they are cheap. I should have run a 2" inlet line instead of the same size as the pump inlet. I will eventually redesign the plumbing so the pumps run as sump pumps.
To treat the symptom, I used GreatStuff foam insulation to act as a dampener and structural support to decouple the vibration to the stand/tank. I don't recommend doing what I have done because 1. creates excessive heat, 2. puts excessive load on the inlet and exit nozzles, 3. is very messy and permanent. I cut a cement board short on all sides and notched out holes for the hoses. Than I sprayed the GreatStuff around the edges. The foam expanded holding everything in place and is very messy. Here is an image.
Finally, I've been cycling the tank for about a month, so I've introduced my first 2 fish! A Kadango and Oscar! The Oscar found his way into the drain already and ended up in the bottom tank. He still seems very healthy though. I'll be working on making the tank look more like furniture, and will be slowly adding more fish. Thinking about a couple of Yellow Lab Cichlids next.
I installed lights with the outdoor lighting kits you get from home depot for 15$ and spend some money on LED lights with 5,000 to 6,000K temperature. All 11 light bulbs put out ~11,000 lumens, which is a bit of an overkill. My eyes hurt looking at it. I'm going to need to invest in dimmer switches. I plan on controlling everything with a raspberry pi computer when I get around to it. Here is the tank with the lights on. I've got the sump tank lights off.
I've had trouble with my two 1,200 GPH pondmaster water pumps being excessively noisy/vibration. I suspect it has to do with me running them in-line, and well they are cheap. I should have run a 2" inlet line instead of the same size as the pump inlet. I will eventually redesign the plumbing so the pumps run as sump pumps.
To treat the symptom, I used GreatStuff foam insulation to act as a dampener and structural support to decouple the vibration to the stand/tank. I don't recommend doing what I have done because 1. creates excessive heat, 2. puts excessive load on the inlet and exit nozzles, 3. is very messy and permanent. I cut a cement board short on all sides and notched out holes for the hoses. Than I sprayed the GreatStuff around the edges. The foam expanded holding everything in place and is very messy. Here is an image.
Finally, I've been cycling the tank for about a month, so I've introduced my first 2 fish! A Kadango and Oscar! The Oscar found his way into the drain already and ended up in the bottom tank. He still seems very healthy though. I'll be working on making the tank look more like furniture, and will be slowly adding more fish. Thinking about a couple of Yellow Lab Cichlids next.
Good build - not seen it build like this before, glad it held together after the concerns over the structural integrity
Nice job, I think people are forgetting that 90 percent of the people on here who build these tanks are waaaay over building which I will do also but definitly not needed
