Adding a canopy.
Being that this display tank is located in my living room, I wanted to make sure that it has a well done and finished look.
The tank overall looked ok, but my old IceCap fixture and the automatic feeder, and my overflow, and my feeding ring, and my chiller return all poking out the back looked somewhat... Well like crap!
While many people who came over gave me great comments about the coral and fish, no one ever said that the "tank" looked good. Now perhaps that is just semantics but it really hits you.
Here on R2R I see some of your rimless tanks, floating Radion Pro LED, drilled and flawless looking systems and I am always impressed. But, I can't drill my tank. My Radion is on my smaller tank and only having a limited budget, I have to very carefully pic and chose my upgrades. Now I completely understand that everyone here gets that... And we can honestly say at the shagrin of our significant others... We expand our budget for our tanks. Sometimes at the cost of date night which I'm guilty of. So this upgrade needed to impress my wife. It needed to scream, FINITO! Even though we all know it's far from over.
So how could I give my system that $5000.00 look and keep it in my 500.00 budget? So the wheels of creativity began to flow.
First step was to find someone who had mad skills in woodworking. My skills consist of general repairs, cutting and drilling. But I am no craftsman. So I was introduced to a local reef shop owner here named Allen. He has the craftsmanship background I was looking for and the partnership began.
I needed to find ways to cut costs and keep it in my 500.00 budget. So the first step was to think about cooling the canopy.
I looked online and researched various fan systems. There is a pretty good selection out there, but I need to move some serious air! These halides get hot and I can't have my tanks temp rising too much. My chiller is a little too small for this tank, so I don't want it to work too hard.
I found these particular fans at a local computer repair shop. They are pretty beefy and run off 110, they have a little more noise then some other models, but they are a fraction of the cost. I also picked up the metal casings for the outside to help dress up the holes I would have to drill.
Next was the color, the old pine look of the base just didn't go well with the house decor,
so I needed to fix that. I went to Lowes and picked up Mixwax stain (Red Mahogany) this is the color selected for the canopy. So I set to staining the cabinet. Just doing that was a huge improvement.
About 5 days later the wood working was completed on the canopy. It looked better than I had expected and for only 279.00 was well on the way to keeping my budget online. So now it was time to install the fans.
This process took about 45 min and a little effort but was not at all hard.
So after all this, what did I end up with?
Before:
After:
Overall improvement cost: $455.67
Depending on heat, I might buy 2 more fans for the right side to allow for more airflow. That will run me another 45.00 and put me right on budget.
End result??? My wife Loves it and said the tank looks so sharp and really accents the room nicely. What are your thoughts?
