DIY QT Screen Cover

[drstratton]

Hi everyone! I'm new here, but I want to share a project we just completed!

So in anticipation of receiving my Firefish pair, we got busy Thursday night and made the screen for the QT. I thought it would be fast, but it took a bit longer and more thought than I had originally put into it. Thus enters my son and a product he just bought for his hobbies. Moldable plastic! I have a Penguin bio filter on my QT so we needed to shape the screen to fit around it.

Product is put into hot water to make it moldable:

Molded and placed into the ends of the screen frame:

Attach other piece and hold for a minute or two. This product cools and hardens very quickly. We placed it in the freezer for a few minutes to speed up the process:

You can see what the product looks like with the corner formed!

The screen was sucking the frame in to much, so we had to glue the corners together and added a cross piece for strength:

Finally in place on my QT. My husband and son are awesome!

My fish arrived and are safely in their new home, no danger of jumping out!

 

[steve&mari]

Nice job looks good.

 

[TheClark]

That's cool, how was the cross piece made? That is a common problem, floppy screens or sucked in with saggy mesh dangling in the water. Well done!

 

[drstratton]

Nice job looks good.

Thanks!

That's cool, how was the cross piece made? That is a common problem, floppy screens or sucked in with saggy mesh dangling in the water. Well done!

Thank you! We cut a piece of the frame to length, then my husband cut two pieces of wood to fit inside so that he would have something to screw into. He pre-drilled and then counter sunk so that the screw would fit flush! You have to be careful or the wood will push into the frame as you try to drill & place the screws. It would be helpful to cut a length of acrylic rod, wood or whatever you might have on hand and place it inside the frame between the 2 pieces of wood to hold them in place.

 

[143MPCo]

this is an excellent DYI project, thank you for share it!
just an FYI, you can also get reversible screen corners like the ones below.

 

[drstratton]

this is an excellent DYI project, thank you for share it!
just an FYI, you can also get reversible screen corners like the ones below.

That would have been very helpful! I definitely would have gone this route if I had realized that the regular corners wouldn't work, I haven't put together to many screens. It was also nice to have my son participate in the build. He enjoyed showing us what could be done with the InstaMorph!