Brhino's 75g Supercommunity Aquarium

**Sandz** · 01-11-2011, 04:17 PM

Brhino, outside of solder and the glue gun what do the whole set of materials cost you on the DIY moonlights?

**Brhino** · 01-11-2011, 04:35 PM

Parts:
LEDs, LED holders, resistors (got lots of spares for each): $10.62 including shipping
power supply: had on hand (old cell phone charger)
wire: had on hand (old lamp cord)

Equipment:
All equipment I already owned and/or had access to at work. If I had had to buy any of this stuff the costs would have gone up.
Soldering iron, hobby knife, digital multimeter, wire cutter, wire stripper, heat gun, hot glue gun.

Consumables:
All consumables I used tiny amounts of stuff I had access to, so the true cost a few pennies but if I had had to buy new packages of any of this the costs would have gone up.
Solder, duct tape, heat shrink tube, hot glue

**Sandz** · 01-11-2011, 05:23 PM

Awesome I have all the same equipment from my days at Intel so I am lucky there. I think I even have a few transistors that are the same as what you used lying around.

**Brhino** · 01-14-2011, 03:33 AM

I picked up a Novus acrylic polishing and scratch removing kit and went to work on the tank. I probably spent about 4 hours on it total over two evenings. I didn't get every single scratch and nick but overall it's looking much clearer and prettier - I even did the black acrylic lid, too.

I filled the tank back up, because now it's time to start the fishless cycle! I'm very excited about this. Only one problem: I'm out of dechlorinator. Dang it. I'll have to stop and get some after work tomorrow. Oh well... in the mean time, the heaters can bring the tank up to 84F.

It is becoming apparent that the big piece of driftwood may not sink by the time I'm ready to set the tank up. I will have to think about a backup plan to weigh it down somehow. It will straddle the filter output plumbing, so it won't be as simple as just screwing it to a piece of slate.

**Brhino** · 01-15-2011, 01:38 AM

The fishless cycle has begun!

The ammonia I got doesn't have a listed concentration, so I started with a teaspoon. Looks like one teaspoon gets me 0.5ppm ammonia. I'm sitting at about 4ppm now, I think. So now we wait...

**Brhino** · 01-24-2011, 02:35 AM

Today is Day 9 for the fishless cycle. Got my first nitrite reading just now! Things are coming together... Probably the big setup day will be Saturday, February 12th. Next weekend shall be furniture moving day.

**Brhino** · 01-29-2011, 02:57 AM

After two weeks of cycling, my ammonia-eaters are full grown. I'm adding two teaspoons of ammonia - which should raise the level to 2ppm - to the tank each day, and when I take a measurement the next day its all gone.

Tomorrow: Operation IKEA Leviathan!

**Brhino** · 01-29-2011, 08:38 PM

Operation: IKEA Leviathan

Here is where my community tank currently sits. Everyone agrees it's a nice little nook for a fish tank. I mean, it's got Darth Vader to watch over it and everything. The only problem is that it's a 29 gallon tank, and a 29 gallon tank only holds 29 gallons of fish. It would be so much more fun to put a bigger tank in there.

Enter: the bigger tank (still cycling in the basement). 75 gallons! I'm not a math major but I think 75 is a lot more than 29. We can put a lot more fish in there!

A standard 75 gallon tank is 48" long. When you add a little width for a stand, you get to about... 50".

**Brhino** · 01-29-2011, 08:48 PM

The little nook with the fish tank has a width of 46". So, we're going to have to do some rearranging. We can't very easily move the wall on the right side of the nook, so we'll just move the furniture on the other side. What's on the other side?

The IKEA Leviathan, that's what. See, back in the day, before our daughter (provided in picture for reference) was born, my wife and I used to have some of what economists call "disposable income". We also had a lot of stuff with no place to go. So, at my wife's urging, one day we went to IKEA and disposed of that income, in exchange for the Leviathan. It holds the TV, and lots of our knick-knacks, and mementos, and stuff that really ought to be put someplace else but we put it there because there was space and haven't gotten around to finding an actual place for it. You've already seen our basement in this thread, you know how we operate.

So, the Leviathan had to move, and today was the day to move it. Of course, in order to move it, it had to be completely emptied out. Fortunately, it's actually three independent sections, so I could deal with one at a time.

**Brhino** · 01-29-2011, 08:54 PM

Cats do not like it when things change. EVERYONE INTO THE BUNKER! WE MUST TAKE SHELTER UNTIL THEY STOP CHANGING THINGS!

After several hours of emptying shelves, shoving large sections of furniture around, and then filling shelves back up, it was finally done. And it looks... pretty much exactly the same.

But it's not exactly the same, because the nook is now 52" wide... room for the tank and the stand, with an inch to spare on either side. Operation complete!