Geeks never finishing reef build 40 gal Breeder

[Lingwendil]

I've never heard of a 40 breeder being tempered anywhere but the bottom, and I've drilled at least six of them for other folks in the past- all Aqueon from the sales. The reports I hear of them being tempered all panes are odd, and I'm not sure if I trust them as fact.

Make a dam out of putty to hold water around the location to be drilled, keep a running hose on the hole as you drill, and take it slow. I've only ever had minor chipout when drilling, and that can be prevented a bit by holding the back of the hole with masking tape or putty, that way the waste piece of glass doesn't start to fall out unevenly from its' own weight. It will be messy, and you'll be a nervous wreck your first time (take it slow, baby ) but I think drilling your own is a fun experience

 

[mshonk]

I've never heard of a 40 breeder being tempered anywhere but the bottom, and I've drilled at least six of them for other folks in the past- all Aqueon from the sales. The reports I hear of them being tempered all panes are odd, and I'm not sure if I trust them as fact.

Make a dam out of putty to hold water around the location to be drilled, keep a running hose on the hole as you drill, and take it slow. I've only ever had minor chipout when drilling, and that can be prevented a bit by holding the back of the hole with masking tape or putty, that way the waste piece of glass doesn't start to fall out unevenly from its' own weight. It will be messy, and you'll be a nervous wreck your first time (take it slow, baby ) but I think drilling your own is a fun experience

I never drilled a 40g breeder but I bought mine used and it was drilled. I have drilled a few tanks and this is the exact same method I use.

 

[geekengineer]

Yeah I think using my cell phone I've read that isn't always a good way to tell if its tempered or not. If I use my laptop it goes black with polarized glasses as you would expect if it wasn't. However it goes black on my tank on the bottom pane as well so hard to know for sure.

 

[geekengineer]

Ok molding I think is done. I thinking of just leaving the doors the way they are.. *shrug*

 

[geekengineer]

Well went out and ordered all the stuff I think I will need except for the lights and PVC plumbing. The rest I can use from my previous setup.

1 tunze 1073.020 pump (already have another one.)
2 3/4 bulkheads
1 Eclipse M overflow (800GPH)
2 3/4 check valves.

I'm going to go with dual tunze pumps for redundancy this time and extra flow this should get me around 600 gph. I think I redo my sump a bit to make the refuge pass through instead of having the flow from the pump supplying it which might been killing my flow too causing me problems. I believe I can drill the tank the instructions on line are pretty clear. So hopefully that will go OK and I also got a drill guide also on order.

 

[Lingwendil]

The side doors are a nice touch for sure, great job!

 

[geekengineer]

The side doors are a nice touch for sure, great job!

Needed someway to get sump into the bottom area.

 

[geekengineer]

OK I got advice from local forum that I should do something with the doors. So here is what I tried I hope this will work. I probably need to tweak where the doors are a bit yet. I just hope I can finish it I'm really bad about leaving unfinished projects. lol

 

[geekengineer]

Well I tried to stain it with polyshades and I not sure if I screwed it up when I did it as it didn't coat very evenly. I hopping that after I do another coat it will look better but not sure.

 

[geekengineer]

Well I took that picture when it was still a bit wet I went down later and looked at it and maybe it doesn't look quite as bad. Hopefully another light sanding and a coat will make it more even.

 

[geekengineer]

I'm thinking what I should have done after looking at the King of DYI build was I should have used a rag to even it out better as I was going along.. Oh well I hate to spend too much time on it not really the end goal is to have a darn tank with corals in it. ;Dead

 

[geekengineer]

Well I hope I didn't screw it up more but I was looking around and found a suggestion of using mineral sprits and a rag to take off dried excess stain if you didn't rub it out soon enough. It lighted it up a bit but another coat will darken it some more. At least it doesn't look quite so brushed and blotchy. I think I used way to much excess at first for this product.

 

[geekengineer]

Well go three coats on the stand and I think its looking pretty good now, but didn't happen to get a picture yet.

One of the local persons on a different forum was telling me all the good things about metal halid vs. LED. I was going to go with T5s but the person on the forum happened to find a deal on a used MH fixture at a LFS. Its a old PFO and it has two 150W DE MH sockets and two VHO tubes and since one of the ballasts was out I got it for $250 which seemed like a reasonable deal. I finally found a not used ballast on ebay that is the exact same one for about $40. It might be the transformer is bad because it has brown solid gunk on the back of it. Sort of makes me think it might got hot.

Here's me looking at the ballast.. hehe

 

[geekengineer]

Well was cleaning up some of my pumps that got all crusted up tonight. Oh what fun..

Here is the lamp I bought with the 2 150W MH lamps. Now the person who found this thing on the local forum said some people take the 2 side VHOs out and replace them with T5s. I may do that later but I just stick with the VHOs for dawn/dust function.

Also here is what my stand looks like now after three coats. I think it looks OK might have been better if I hadn't screwed it up at first, but its hard to tell. I think it looks nice when I look at it in person.

 

[geekengineer]

I forgot to mention I put up a question to marineland about their tanks and they did verify that only the bottom would be tempered on a 40 breeder.

 

[Goodair]

Add a coat or 2 of spar urethane over the stain and inside the cabinet to help protect against the water.

 

[geekengineer]

Yeah I thought about doing that maybe I should. This poly-shades stuff suppose to have both.

EDIT: I did plan to put something exterior wise on the inside of the cabinet.

 

[geekengineer]

So I wasn't able to sleep right away last night so I did some more debugging on my ballast. I think its either the igniter or something is broken on the transformer. The bad side isn't sparking the ignition and running about 198V. However note to self don't put a 750V DMM to the output of the ballast (good side). At least in my case you can hear the ballast igniter sparking your meter to death. It was an very old meter anyways so time to get a new one.

 

[Lingwendil]

T5 instead of VHOs would be a good upgrade for sure, but you want good quality reflectors on the T5s if you go that route. An ATI blue plus and a true actinic would be a good pair.

 

[geekengineer]

Yeah they make retrofit kits for T5s and reflectors. So I have to think about whether I want to just go ahead and do it now or later. The guy on the forum I met seemed to think VHO wasn't a really bad thing, but I worried the bulbs might start getting harder to find in the future.