Something Looks A Little Different Today...
Well I am trying to be patient. :) Day six since getting the tank wet. Think the salmon and fish food (flakes/pellets) I have been "feeding" the tank must have some sort of special anti-breakdown properties. Tested for ammonia on day 4 for the first time, expecting to see at least some measurable amount, but nada. Finally, tested today and I have somewhere between undetectable and 0.25 using my Sera kit :)
So, I have been spending my sporadic spare time on getting the rest of my ducks in a row. Priority one the last few days has been to sort out my cladding and get to the point where I could put away a lot of the tools I have been using for the project (that have been piling up in my dining room).
I am not naturally very handy on the tools, but with sufficient planning I can normally work out a solution. The competing factors in cladding the stand were:
* need to clad two sides of the tank
* cost
* some of the timber in the base stand not quite square, so how to maximise chance of all the cladding lining up
* function - easy access
* form/aesthetics - look good and match the room
Time was spent researching how others had clad their own stand and/or added doors. Time was spent trolling the timber section at Bunnings looking at MDF and ply. Worry was that the base materials were adding up in cost and there was no guarantee that with my meagre skills I could get it all looking good and working good.
Then I had a brainwave, at least for me. IKEA sell modular kitchens. If I could find the right size pre-made doors, I would have cladding with an excellent look and finish and possibly even have doors that could open in the conventional way! Logged onto the IKEA site. First thing I see? A splash ad - Would you like to buy some kitchen doors, on sale for $5!!!!!!! :D Fingers crossed....any in the right size, in a colour and finish that I liked?
Found some. Went to IKEA and came back with......16 doors in three different colours and finishes. I knew the one I liked the best, but needed to have a look at them in the room and ask my wife.
So, without further ado, here is what I came up with after a few hours of mucking around. Total cost? $5 x 4 for the doors + $11 for timber + $4 for screws + $7.50 for misc hardware = $42.50. Gotta be happy with that. :p
From this:
To This!
If you are still reading, thanks. The details:
* the doors I ended up keeping are high gloss red doors with stainless steel coloured trim/sides. The protective plastic wrap is still on the doors in the above pic - will look even better when removed.
* ideal function was going to be doors that swung open, but I decided to prioritise form in this case, ie. maximise chances of everything lining up nicely.
* in the before pic you will see the two new horizontal pieces of timber I added recently (the ones with the six screws). They were added to give me two surfaces that were in the same vertical plane - new timber and the bottom-most horizontal timber. New pieces of timber were sanded smooth before painting and nice and square and level.
* after thinking through a few options, including the use of magnets to hold things in place, I came up with a plan that I thought was most likely to succeed --> horizontal pieces of timber were epoxied to the back of the doors and the doors were hung from the new horizontal timbers that I added. Benefits - I knew they would be square and level, much easier to get the doors all aligned. Disadvantages - the doors were going to sit a bit further away from the tank than was aesthetically optimal, but I had been aware of this likelihood for a while and was OK with it.
* worked like a charm. As a unexpected bonus, the weight of the doors actually keeps them sitting fairly firmly on their perches. Revisited the magnet idea to hold them on a little tighter, while still keeping them easy to remove. Ended up opting for an old school option - a little more work to remove the doors now, but much less chance of them accidentally falling off.
One last project for the week. Built my eggcrate structure for the fuge section of my sump. After much consideration, going to try something that I hope will result in long term success for my tank - a duplex system. On top of this eggrate structure will be removable baskets of rock rubble that I hope will become a pod metropolis. On top of this will be a relatively thin layer of macro algae - max surface area for lighting, min depth to reduce die-off. The lower section will be a low flow/low light benthic zone.
Now, just need to work on my patience and wait for my tank to mature.
So, I have been spending my sporadic spare time on getting the rest of my ducks in a row. Priority one the last few days has been to sort out my cladding and get to the point where I could put away a lot of the tools I have been using for the project (that have been piling up in my dining room).
I am not naturally very handy on the tools, but with sufficient planning I can normally work out a solution. The competing factors in cladding the stand were:
* need to clad two sides of the tank
* cost
* some of the timber in the base stand not quite square, so how to maximise chance of all the cladding lining up
* function - easy access
* form/aesthetics - look good and match the room
Time was spent researching how others had clad their own stand and/or added doors. Time was spent trolling the timber section at Bunnings looking at MDF and ply. Worry was that the base materials were adding up in cost and there was no guarantee that with my meagre skills I could get it all looking good and working good.
Then I had a brainwave, at least for me. IKEA sell modular kitchens. If I could find the right size pre-made doors, I would have cladding with an excellent look and finish and possibly even have doors that could open in the conventional way! Logged onto the IKEA site. First thing I see? A splash ad - Would you like to buy some kitchen doors, on sale for $5!!!!!!! :D Fingers crossed....any in the right size, in a colour and finish that I liked?
Found some. Went to IKEA and came back with......16 doors in three different colours and finishes. I knew the one I liked the best, but needed to have a look at them in the room and ask my wife.
So, without further ado, here is what I came up with after a few hours of mucking around. Total cost? $5 x 4 for the doors + $11 for timber + $4 for screws + $7.50 for misc hardware = $42.50. Gotta be happy with that. :p
From this:
To This!
If you are still reading, thanks. The details:
* the doors I ended up keeping are high gloss red doors with stainless steel coloured trim/sides. The protective plastic wrap is still on the doors in the above pic - will look even better when removed.
* ideal function was going to be doors that swung open, but I decided to prioritise form in this case, ie. maximise chances of everything lining up nicely.
* in the before pic you will see the two new horizontal pieces of timber I added recently (the ones with the six screws). They were added to give me two surfaces that were in the same vertical plane - new timber and the bottom-most horizontal timber. New pieces of timber were sanded smooth before painting and nice and square and level.
* after thinking through a few options, including the use of magnets to hold things in place, I came up with a plan that I thought was most likely to succeed --> horizontal pieces of timber were epoxied to the back of the doors and the doors were hung from the new horizontal timbers that I added. Benefits - I knew they would be square and level, much easier to get the doors all aligned. Disadvantages - the doors were going to sit a bit further away from the tank than was aesthetically optimal, but I had been aware of this likelihood for a while and was OK with it.
* worked like a charm. As a unexpected bonus, the weight of the doors actually keeps them sitting fairly firmly on their perches. Revisited the magnet idea to hold them on a little tighter, while still keeping them easy to remove. Ended up opting for an old school option - a little more work to remove the doors now, but much less chance of them accidentally falling off.
One last project for the week. Built my eggcrate structure for the fuge section of my sump. After much consideration, going to try something that I hope will result in long term success for my tank - a duplex system. On top of this eggrate structure will be removable baskets of rock rubble that I hope will become a pod metropolis. On top of this will be a relatively thin layer of macro algae - max surface area for lighting, min depth to reduce die-off. The lower section will be a low flow/low light benthic zone.
Now, just need to work on my patience and wait for my tank to mature.
