Aquarium: From Start to Finish

    One day sometime in early December of 2003, my roommate and I were sitting around.  We were looking at a half-wall we have in our apartment and wondering what we could do with it.  I said (half jokingly) "How about a fish tank? Something small, maybe 8 inches high. We can keep goldfish or something easy."  With those words and a superb lack of understanding of what this would actually mean we embarked on a lengthy project. The tank got bigger and bigger each time we talked about it.  We finally put a limit on its size after it reached 88"x12"x18".  That comes out to be 84 gallons.  We went back and forth on whether we should get freshwater or saltwater fish. Again our complete ignorance in what it would mean led us to choose saltwater. We chose saltwater because the fish were brighter in color and seemed to have more variety.  Things spiraled with all the things we soon learned that we needed. Professional water filters, protein skimmers, way too many pumps, lots of lights and of course the salt, rock and sand.5tg

	Here's a progression of our stand. Remember that the aquarium will sit on a half-wall and this stand.
	The tank didn't get many pictures taken of it.
	Here the stand and tank are almost completed. It just needs a coat of dye and polyurethane.
	Here my roommate is moving the base up our 3 flights of stairs.
	This is the half-wall that the whole think will sit on. We removed the old top and the stands top has a lip that will cover it. This was done to insure a level base for the aquarium and its easier than trying to match up the height of the base exactly with the previous top.
	Here is the base almost in place.
	The tank, top and base all put together.
	Ahhh finally set up.  The ballast needs to have its wiring finished. The moonlights need to be installed.
	Wow, well we added sand and salt. The temperature was brought up to 80 and with both heaters its holding at 80 during the night and goes as high as 81.5 during the day
	Well, it seems that the center strut isn't as strong as we thought.  The top brace started to crack along the edge of the center strut.  We were forced to drain half the water and cut more  acrylic struts. We now have a total of 5. They seem to be holding after we let them cure for 24 hours.  We added the water back in and we again have a complete sand storm. Its slowly settling down.
	The wiring couldn't be visible in the hood. We wanted it to look very clean and elegant.  We ended up using aluminum U-channel cut and screwed inside the hood to run the wire through.
	Here is the hood with the lights and weather stripping. The stripping was added around the edges to prevent water dripping down the outside of the tank.
	LIGHT! We have LIGHT! The light is a bit blue because one of our bulbs is actinic. This is of course right before I lift the hood and accidentally trip the circuit breaker because I didn't crimp the power connectors enough. I fixed it right away and now it runs perfectly. Future plans for this include adding in T5 lighting to each side of the current ballast. Preferably 3x29" bulbs to each side.