My 1st Father's Day Gift

[astiesi]

Well, here are some pics from the first major step in this build. I did decide to go with the glass-holes.com overflow and I am extremely glad I did. Drilling the tank was much easier than I expected and the overflow takes up alot less space than a full length corner overflow. I got the 1500 kit as I wanted the second drain line for redundency. I don't plan on running much more than 700 - 800 GPH through it. Enough talk, here are the pics.

The before picture:


The template was included with the glass-holes kit:


Grooves have been started, so far so good:


One down, one to go:


All done, much easier than I thought:


The finished product:




For anybody interested in attempting to drill their own tank, I learned a cool little trick for telling pane glass from tempered glass. Using a laptop, which has a polarized filter over the display - most do, and a pair of polarized glasses you can see the stress lines which result from the tempering process.

[nstiesi]

Uh.....no love for the help huh?

HA! It came out BA brother, completely BA....I was glad I could participate!

[nstiesi]

Oh my....that is a tastefully modded, reliable, and attractive American C-segment automobile....nice!

[astiesi]

Guess I have to give some love to the help....thanks brother for driving up and helping with the install.

[nstiesi]

Any freaking time!

I'm gonna go check the FS boards for more equipment.......for you, lol. I think we can do better than September.....

You should put up a WTB ad for the sump.

[Frankie]

Nicely done!

[bskinn77]

nice man good work!

[nstiesi]

so when can we expect some updates.....lol

[astiesi]

When I have time to start building the sump and doing some plumbing...hopefully this Sunday.

[Jason1]

that overflow is awesome. def getting that on my next tank

[BigAl07]

Originally Posted by astiesi

For anybody interested in attempting to drill their own tank, I learned a cool little trick for telling pane glass from tempered glass. Using a laptop, which has a polarized filter over the display - most do, and a pair of polarized glasses you can see the stress lines which result from the tempering process.

So you'd put the laptop IN the tank and look through the glass panel while wearing polarized sunglasses? Then if you see "Stress Cracks" then the glass is indeed likely tempered?

[astiesi]

I'm a huge fan of the overflow so far, takes up very little room. The guys at glass-holes.com are great to work with too.

Hey Al...thats exactly what I did. Basically if you rotate a lens of polarized glass (i.e. some sunglasses) in front of a laptop screen you will see at a specific angle (normally 45 degrees) the screen will disappear. Doing this with a pane of glass in between will show "stress lines" when you hit this angle if the glass is tempered.

I knew the bottom glass was tempered so I started by putting the laptop in the stand under the tank and looked through from above. The stress lines were easily noticable. Once I knew what to look for, I put the laptop in the tank and looked through from the side...saw nothing but the LCD display disappear. Being an engineer I thought this was pretty cool.

[BigAl07]

That's WAY cool! No I wish I had a new tank to experiment with

Thanks for the info bro!!

[astiesi]

Alright, I haven't updated in a while and things have been progressing slowly but I have made some progress. In the past month I've managed to do the following:

- I ordered a Reef Octopus NWB-150 Protein Skimmer. I am quite impressed by the craftsmanship and am looking forward to getting it up and running.



- I painted the back black. I used Rustoleum flat black spray paint which worked out really well. I've read about the reduction of PAR values due to painting the back glass but I really prefer the look.



- I picked up a 20L to use as a sump and added glass baffles which separated the 20L into 3 compartments: refugium, return, skimmer.



From here I have to find time to work on the plumbing and then its time for water.

[nstiesi]

What? No pics of the drain plumbing.....there has been progress and you never told us?!