The Planted Tank Forum banner

DIY cherry cabinet, LEDs, etc. for 57g rimless (Many pictures)

14K views 56 replies 24 participants last post by  Hoppy 
#1 · (Edited)
Update: I finally planted this tank and got it going. If you're interested in seeking what it looks like, check out my tank journal.

------------

Hi all,

I'm posting some pictures of my current project, built around a rimless 57 gallon Oceanic "Illuminata" tank. I've had enough success growing plants in a 20 high that I figured I'd try to set up a nice "show" tank for our living room.

I've always liked the look of the rimless tank/hanging fixture approach, and seeing a local club member's beautiful ADA 90p in February confirmed it. The Oceanic tank is not quite as nice as the ADA tanks, but I could get it pre-drilled through the tempered bottom. That was important to me because I wanted to hide the plumbing as much as possible.

The main DIY elements are the stand, the plumbing, and the LED fixture. I'll provide some more details about each in replies to this post.

Many thanks to all of you who helped me, either directly by providing advice in response to my questions or indirectly by posting your own experiences. I can post sketchup drawing files and more specific details if anyone wants them.
 

Attachments

See less See more
4
#2 ·
Cabinet Pictures

Cabinet: I wanted to try something other than the standard "2x4 frame plus plywood skin" approach. I used 3/4" cherry veneered plywood, solid cherry for the doors, base, and top, and curly maple for the trim. The beam across the top front is two pieces of 3/4" wood with a 1/8" steel bar sandwiched between them. This was utter overkill, but I didn't want the top beam to deflect downwards and interfere with the inset doors. And steel is way cheaper than cherry. The whole thing is a rat's nest of construction techniques--I used Kreg screws, glue, nails etc. depending on the day and my mood.

The cabinet sits on four heavy-duty leveling feet, which in turn will sit on 4"x4"x1/2" pieces of wood to distribute the load. I wanted to use leveling feet so that I could level the stand any time even after filling it. (I hate the look of an uneven water line in a rimless tank, and my floors are ancient and likely to sag and settle over time.) But leveling feet are ugly. So I built a false plinth subassembly that surrounds the base of the tank. The plinth hides the feet and makes the whole thing look a little nicer. It slides up and down over the cabinet with some coaxing.

Although the Oceanic tank has no top rim, it does have a bottom plastic rim. I didn't want to let that show, so I built a top frame subassembly to hide it. The top frame slides down over the tank once the tank is on the stand. I cut a profile into it to minimize the gap between the frame and the tank. I can remove it if necessary in case I get any major spills down the sides of the glass, but it's tight enough that I doubt that will be a big issue.
 

Attachments

#3 ·
LED array

LED Array: The cosmetics aren't finished yet, but this is a 27-LED array based around Cree XP-G, XP-E, and XR-E stars. There are two strings of LEDs, one a mix of cool white and blue and the other a mix of warm and neutral white. Both are driven by dimmable Meanwell drivers. The heatsink is a 10" x 32" HeatsinkUSA purchase that I drilled and tapped for the LEDs. Again, time will tell how this thing performs. I'm still thinking about how to do a wood frame for this whole thing, and about whether I aim to hide the LEDs entirely from view or show them off. Many thanks to RedfishSC who gave me a lot of advice on this.
 
#4 ·
Plumbing

Plumbing: This is pretty basic stuff. The main thing was that I wanted to do everything inline and not go over the tank rim. So I'm using an inline Hydor, a PVC reactor, and a Odyssea canister filter to drive the works.

The inflow uses 1" PVC fittings and 1" flex tubing. The outflow uses 5/8" flex tubing and 3/4" PVC fittings for the most part. Time will tell how this all works out.

I'm also in the process of plumbing in hot and cold water supply into the tank. There's no easy way to plumb waste, though, so I think I'm going to be stuck with a hose to the toilet or lawn. Water supply is still worth it just for top-off purposes, though.
 
#8 ·
I didn't drill this myself. This was a "reef ready" tank that had two pre-drilled 1.75" holes; I just removed the big plastic overflow that was installed in front.

The trouble with drilling myself is that the standard version of this tank has a tempered bottom. (I don't know if the reef ready version is tempered too, but who cares--the holes were already there for me.)

If I had to do this all over, I probably would have bought a custom tank from glasscages or something and had them drill it exactly the way I wanted it. The cost would not have been that much more and I could have ended up with a larger tank. Lesson learned!
 
#11 ·
That treatment of the top and bottom of the stand is something I haven't seen before. It looks like a great design. And, a beautiful stand too.

Why not consider a Cherry/Maple enclosure for the LED light, keeping it a hanging light? With that you can keep the glare from the side of the LEDs from being a problem. With your obvious design skills you should be able to make a very good looking light fixture that way.
 
#12 ·
That treatment of the top and bottom of the stand is something I haven't seen before. It looks like a great design. And, a beautiful stand too.
Thanks. The top and bottom subassemblies required some thinking and some unsuccessful trial runs. The tolerances had to be pretty tight to make both assemblies free to move around the cabinet without being visibly loose. Again, I was pretty obsessed with using and hiding leveling feet and with hiding that ugly tank rim.


Why not consider a Cherry/Maple enclosure for the LED light, keeping it a hanging light? With that you can keep the glare from the side of the LEDs from being a problem.
Well, that's certainly the basic plan. I just would prefer to have the slimmest enclosure possible--my goal is to minimize the fixture, not draw attention to it. That goal is in some tension with the goal of hiding the LED point light sources or the glare they throw off. I'm probably just going to use this setup for a while until inspiration strikes.
 
#15 ·
Light fixture is coming along...

I finally got around to doing the light fixture. My wife told me to lay off the curly maple for the light. But I couldn't help myself. She was right--I should have done it all out of cherry. Oh well.

I drilled and tapped the heatsink to allow me to bolt the end pieces directly to it. That's what the holes you see are for. (I'll plug them before I finish the thing.) The rest is just compound miters and glue. Plus I slipped a few Kreg screws in to help hold the thing together while the glue set...
 

Attachments

#44 ·
I finally got around to doing the light fixture. My wife told me to lay off the curly maple for the light. But I couldn't help myself. She was right--I should have done it all out of cherry. Oh well.

I drilled and tapped the heatsink to allow me to bolt the end pieces directly to it. That's what the holes you see are for. (I'll plug them before I finish the thing.) The rest is just compound miters and glue. Plus I slipped a few Kreg screws in to help hold the thing together while the glue set...
That's a lot of heat sink!!!!

How much you have spent on that?


I also agreed that the ability of dimming down is very important both for viewing pleasure and also in case you switch the inhabitants. Multiple colors is also something I preached giving you the ability to adjust to the exact color tone you want and provide a fuller spectrum to the inhabitants that may require slightly different spectrum radiation.
 
#17 ·
Here's the finished product for the light fixture. (There's some artifacts in the photo that make the finish look worse than it is for some reason.)

I switched out the blue XP-Es I had been using. Now I'm using 2 dimmable Meanwell drivers to run:
10 cool white Cree XP-Gs
8 warm white Cree XP-Gs
and 9 neutral whte Cree XP-Gs.

I may put the blues back on at some later date, wired separately with their own driver.

I have the drivers set to deliver about 1300 mA at max, but with both strings running at that power it's just ridiculously bright. That just has to be way too much light, even with the fixture 9" from the top of the tank. Fortunately it is easy to dim.

The overall color balance looks good to me, and with so much headroom in the overall output, it should be easy to tweak one string or the other to get it exactly the way I like it.
 

Attachments

#33 ·
I switched out the blue XP-Es I had been using. Now I'm using 2 dimmable Meanwell drivers to run:
10 cool white Cree XP-Gs
8 warm white Cree XP-Gs
and 9 neutral whte Cree XP-Gs.

I may put the blues back on at some later date, wired separately with their own driver.

I have the drivers set to deliver about 1300 mA at max, but with both strings running at that power it's just ridiculously bright. That just has to be way too much light, even with the fixture 9" from the top of the tank. Fortunately it is easy to dim.

The overall color balance looks good to me, and with so much headroom in the overall output, it should be easy to tweak one string or the other to get it exactly the way I like it.
From the info I've gathered, it would seem this would be rather yellow. Would you agree? I'm thinking it would be around 5000k.
 
#21 ·
You could put 60 degree lenses on the LEDs, and raise the light higher. That would give you much more even light intensity top to bottom in the tank.
I do have 60 degree optics, but haven't decided yet whether to use them. I don't want to raise the light fixture much higher than it is right now. From a design viewpoint (as opposed to a plant happiness viewpoint), 9" above the tank is about right. Most importantly, at this height the wood frame blocks the direct glare from the LEDs unless you bend down and look up. If I were to move it higher, the light would be distracting. And the fixture is already high enough that it doesn't obscure one's view of the entire open top of the tank--that was a major design criterion.

In any case, this is one of the best looking DIY stand and light combinations I have seen here.
Thanks (and thanks to all others who posted nice words). It's been a lot of work, and I didn't have the skills to do it before I started. This is my first cabinet of any kind.

I'm now sort of terrified to actually plant this tank and get it going. I am good with a table saw, but still learning how to use fertilizers, CO2 and so on. Fortunately, there's still some DIY bits to procrastinate on--I need to enclose my driver/dimmer/wiring rat's nest, and put some finishing touches on the stand interior.
 
#19 ·
Wow!! Very nice woodworking and DIY skills you have. I love seeing when people put as much thought into the cabinet for fishtanks, after all you see the stand the aquarium sits on just as much as you see the tank.:thumbsup:
 
#26 ·
Very nicely done!

The only part I question is choking the FX5 down to 5/8" tubing to go through the heater. This seems like a waste of the cleaning power of the FX5.

You might consider building a bypass of 1" pipe/hose around the heater but still keeping the heater in a straight line with the pipe. This way the water will want to continue in a straight path through the heater but the water that is choked by the 5/8" orifice will be routed through 2 X 1" T's and 2 x 1" 90 degree elbows around the heater. Should provide plenty of circulation through the heater while not crippling the flow of the FX5.

Your cherry is very beautiful... and it will get prettier as it ages!
 
#27 ·
You might consider building a bypass of 1" pipe/hose around the heater but still keeping the heater in a straight line with the pipe. This way the water will want to continue in a straight path through the heater but the water that is choked by the 5/8" orifice will be routed through 2 X 1" T's and 2 x 1" 90 degree elbows around the heater.
I scratched my head about that one for a while. I hadn't thought of your idea, and will certainly give it a go if I'm not getting the circulation I want. For what it's worth, here are updated pictures of the plumbing and stand interior.

One picture below shows the whole works, the other shows the plumbing without the filter so you can see what I did to plumb in the water supply.
I modified a PVC reactor so that I could use it as an "input" for water into the tank from the faucet shown in the picture. The faucet allows easy top-offs and water changes, but I'll still use the old hose-to-toilet/lawn approach to drain. (There wasn't any good way to plumb in a waste line, or I'd have done that in a second...) There's a ball valve on the reactor that I can use to isolate the water input. The gray tee on the inlet side is just a bit of future-proofing. It lets me attach anything I want to that 3/4" threaded port. The most obvious use I can think of now is a dedicated drain hose, but for right now I think I'll just go over the tank rim for my water changes.

I've also included a shot of the bizarro reflections that the array generates--at least when there's nothing in the tank to absorb or diffuse any light.
 

Attachments

#31 ·
Curious to hear how you like that Fluval once everything is set up and stable. I had to replace a dead Rena XP3 and considered the Fluval FX5 but ended up going modular instead.
In keeping with the "why did I have to do everything the hard way" theme, that's actually not a Fluval FX5. It's an Odyssea CFS 5000, with some of the standard DIY modifications - notably, re-sized o-rings, and a plywood ring brace for the top clamps.
 
#30 ·
It's really no trouble. The fill rate isn't that fast, after all. And I don't have to hold the faucets open--I just open them up and then close them off when the water is about right.

Um, not that I've actually gotten this tank going yet. It's still dry. I gotta summon up the energy for that soon.

only problem I see is, how will you tell water level when filling when youre in your cabinet turning knobs?
 
#32 ·
I still LOVE your tank. I finally got mine built and finished, and tomorrow is the day it all gets wrapped up.

I love the natural color of the wood. Normally I would do the same thing, but I wound up using several different similar wood species in my stand, and the colors were random enough to look odd (birch, maple, and ash). My way of saving $$ lol, so I stained it a dark coffee color.

How do you like that Odyssea filter? I'd never seen one before.
 
#34 ·
How do you like that Odyssea filter? I'd never seen one before.
It's a little finicky in ways well detailed on the long thread in the equipment forum. But at $55 or so delivered to my doorstep, it was a total steal. I had to do something to limit my expenditures on this tank. (So far, I've also been saving a lot of money by leaving it empty.)

From the info I've gathered, it would seem this would be rather yellow. Would you agree?
You know, it's just hard for me to say. I tend to like the "warmer" tank colors, and I love the green glow that a room gets from a well planted and well-lit tank. My aim here was to have enough lighting headroom between the two Cree strings that I could turn down one or the other string to make the lighting overall a bit cool or a bit warm without feeling that I needed more light.

Again, I need to plant this tank and get it going
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top