My 240g tank journal

loaches r cool

loaches r cool

Snail Terminator
Feb 15, 2006
1,830
0
0
Gahanna, Ohio
tristan.homelinux.net
Its been nearly a year since I purchased this tank and finally am making some progress! I can't wait to get this completed. So here is my build journal, which I'll try to document every aspect of setting this thing up with as much DIY as I can. There has already been many design changes but I will document everything as it happened, including any mistakes I may happen to make along the way. This is my 'Dream Tank'. I know this doesn't compare to some of the other behemoths out there, but an 8 foot long tank with about 300G total is bigger than I thought I'd ever go, and actually too big for my current house. But we made it fit :). So here goes...

Some quick specs:

Tank
- 240G glass tank 2'x2'x8' Reef Ready (overflows installed) from Glasscages.com (btw I purchased this after hearing nothing but good things from GC, it wasnt 'till later that I started hearing some mixed opinions... so far so good).

Stand/Canopy
- DIY stand & canopy out of tongue and groove pine over top a frame built with 2x4's, 2x6's, etc.

Filtration
- In tank overflows plumbed into DIY sump totaling 66g. More specs to come.

Lighting
- DIY T5HO will probably be 8x54W. More specs to come.

Inhabitants
- This is to be a heavily planted tank for my Loaches (mostly Clowns and Zebras), and haven't decided on rest of stocking. I know clowns aren't ideal with plants, this will sort of be a big experiment. I will mostly only use tough plants though.​

I am also going to try to plumb the tank for automated water changes as well as fully automate whatever I can.

*Since I'll have lots of pics I will only display pics at 400 pixels wide, and you can click on them for a larger pic. Also, as some of you know I host my website and all my pics of my home computer so if my images aren't coming up then its something like my computer or router needs reset, etc, and should be back up within a day or so.
 
First I'll post the pics I took when I got the tank earlier this year:


Met the delivery truck locally and we slid it into the back of my truck.


I actually off loaded the tank by myself. Please excuse my terribly messy garage. Its literally packed full, took me a good bit just to clear out a big enough spot for the tank. Beefed up my saw horses a little before hand, and they held the empty tank just fine. The tank spent a good many months sitting there in the garage. But I spent many of those months gathering equipment and designing different aspects of the tank.

I was a little rushed when purchasing the tank. I probably should have waited 'till I built the stand so I could move it right in. But I mistakingly assumed that GC only came to Columbus once a year. They had only 1 date on there calender, which was just a couple weeks away when I first noticed. Ends up they come up here often, and just delete the old entry and put the new one in. But because I thought I had but one quick chance this year, I purchased what they had on hand (insufficient time to custom build a tank). If I had it to do over again I probably would have designed the overflows differently, or not at all (and built my own DIY PVC ones). Oh well, I am just going to go with it.

Next to come will be the construction of the stand...
​
 
Lupin said:
Now I know you are registered as 'crazy loaches' in Loaches Online.:p: Hope to see more updates!:clap:
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Yuppers. Of course my website link in my sig has always been the same too... but not so apparent as identical threads I suppose :) pretty much all other fish forums I am on (TPT, LOL, AB, TPF, TBR, GFP, MFK, etc) I all use the name Crazy Loaches. This just happened to be the first one I signed up on and I never really liked the name as much after I signed up. No biggie. I know your probably a member at LOL too but I havent tried to figure out who...?

And dont worry there will eventually be a ton of pics! Just will take some time.
 
Some pics of the stand construction:


Starting to build the stand. I am trying to build it so that it can be somewhat easily broken into pieces that will fit in and out of the house easily.



The top taking shape. I know the design is kinda weird, but this is basically going to be able to set on top of the frame of the stand and it will be the part the tank actually sits on.



Building the frame front and back panels.









Starting to take shape... I did notice however that my design was off for the 'joists' across the top. I designed the columns so that the side sections were a little wider than the center. This was to accommodate the sump tanks. But I wanted solid support running from base to top and the pieces on top were equally placed so I've changed them so the joists line up with the columns.



Here you can see what I was talking about in the last pic. I relocated the cross pieces directly over the columns. I'd also like to point out that bit on my drill. One handy piece... it drills and countersinks with one end and a simple flip and the other end has the screwdriver. A simple thing like that can save a lot of time and hassle. With this lumber you probably dont need the countersink, but I use it on other projects to.





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loaches r cool said:
I know your probably a member at LOL too but I havent tried to figure out who...?
Click to expand...
Blue.:) It was one of the first few sites I registered and as blue is my favorite color, that's how my username is born anyway.Hehe..:D

That's a really good stand.:thm:
 
Really nice, I can't wait to see what the finished stand looks like, and I'll also want to see the progress of the tank being put together. Good work :),

-DP
 
More stand pics:


I didn't really take into consideration the overflows when I built the stand. Nothing major, but I needed to cut out a section for the plumbing and bulkheads. The piece isn't weight bearing really so no big deal.



The whole thing built & disassembled to move inside. The front and back separate, the top comes off, and you can also see the plywood backing and the MDF I'll lay across the top.



Most of the pieces in the house. Sorry its messy! I guess I was too excited to get the tank into the house... will have to clean up a bit.



Getting it all put together.



My son is rather excited that I built him a new playhouse.



I just wasn't sure if 2 2x4's was going to be strong enough for the columns. Remember we're talking about over a ton of weight, probably around 2,500 lbs. I'd guess. I figured it would be easy to add a 3rd 2x4 to the front, spanning between the 2x6 base and 2x8 top. That would also turn the 2x6's and 2x8's into load bearing pieces.



Since I was adding the extra piece after the fact, I cut each one so that it was a very tight fight so as to be useful for support. Now I basically have the equivalent of 8 4x6 columns. No worries now.



Everything is in place, 3/4" foam will cushion the glass-bottom tank. I am actually going to cover up the frame with tongue and groove later. I just need to get the tank out of the garage to have the space to work on the finishing pieces.

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