30 Rimless Cubed

[scott26]

Well here is a thread for my little tank that I am building to tide me over until I have the room to set up my 225 gallon.

I found a nice tank for sale from a local guy and picked up this nice 30 gallon rimless cube 24x24x12 with a centered trapizoid overflow.

It came with a steel black stand but the design on the stand was not well thought out in my opinion. So I made a new stand out of wood, it is designed to have a 4" lip all the way around it. For now it is just going to be the stand but I will skin it later and make the panels removable.

From this:

To this:

Next I am going to be building a DIY LED fixture out of Cree LEDs that is still in the planning phase.

 

[scott26]

Well I was able to get a little more done. I got the basic bottom, top, and back board painted and screwed into place. I also filled all the screw holes that were left over from assembly.

I also notched out the top board to allow for the three bulkheads.

 

[Reef Breeders Verified Sponsor]

Looks cool, what kind of equipment do you plan on adding?

 

[scott26]

Well I got the wood for it to be skinned I am going to go with a simple white stand with no hardware, kind of modern sleek design.

 

[1Snapple]

dang, looks good

 

[bige]

Looks great. I like those low tanks!

 

[scott26]

dang, looks good

Looks great. I like those low tanks!

Thanks,

Just have to get LED light built then I can start it up.

 

[Clearwater]

Nice craftsmanship.

 

[scott26]

Nice craftsmanship.

Thanks.

 

[revhtree Verified Admin]

Somebody has some skills! Nice build!

 

[zibba]

Nice work so far! Great dimensions. Following along.

 

[Tajjo]

Sweet setup bro. Love the stand.

 

[ruppertb]

looks great

 

[scott26]

My DIY dimmable LED kit is on it way from Aquastyle. It is a China cheaper version but from what I have read they are capable of everything I need them to do. It will be a 24 LED kit 12 Blue, 12 White, on a 7"x12" black heatsink.

 

[jtgordon20]

Love it so far. I want to try those dimensions one day
gotta shoe your LED build. Thinking about ordering a kit.

 

[bella127]

Great start ! Looks like one sweet build

 

[Braves Fan]

Very nice, its going to look great when you have it finished.

 

[scott26]

Love it so far. I want to try those dimensions one day
gotta shoe your LED build. Thinking about ordering a kit.

I will with pictures I plan to do a cluster style LED build to reduce any type of disco effect.

Great start ! Looks like one sweet build

Thanks.

Very nice, its going to look great when you have it finished.

I hope to tell ya, I plan to do some Bonsi looking rockwork.

 

[scott26]

Well I got my LED from Aquastyle and they are pretty great I have to say especially for the price. Another great thing to mention was it only took 5 days for me to get them from Hong Kong.


So here is the package I got from Fedex with all the goodies.

It came with everything I needed basically besides some addtional wire I wanted and a soldering gun. All for $136 after shipping and all.


So I started out by tinning my LEDs first before placing them on the heatsink since I had heard that if you try to tin them on the heatsink it is harder for the pad to heat up and take the solder.

First two tinned 24 to go.

So then I decided to start my placement of the LEDs I wanted to go with a cluster style since I have heard of people having issues with a sort of disco effect if it is not set up just right with the row spacing.

Here they are all on the heatsink and the two in the middle are two moonlights for night time.

Then I attached the whites in one string going in a + to - order until I reached the other end of the driver wire, and same with the blues.


Here is the semi finished product with some extra lead wire to funnel it through my light hanging rod.

I also wanted to keep my drivers and controls in a nice neat box so I got a project box from a local electronics store.


Here it is above the tank I still needed to finish up the project box and wire everything but I couldn't resist just getting it set up to see how it looked.

I used some wire loom to make the power cords look neater.

Here is the underside.

So I had to get my project box all together to make it look good and run.

One knob for white control and one for blue, I also have the moonlight driver in here.

 

[scott26]

Here are some various light pictures it is hard to get the real effect of the blues since they are so bright using my camera phone.




Max white:

Min white:

Min Blue:

Max Blue:

Full power both:

Lowest setting both.

I am really happy with this build and for the cost I don't think it can be beat. I had priced out my other options for this same build using CREE's and it would have been almost $200 more.