[RedIrocZ-28]

Around Christmas last year I had expressed my interest in getting a new aquarium that had more width than my 55gal. I absolutely hated trying to come up with an aquascape for a tank thats only 11 3/4" wide. A friend of mine had purchased his 120gal from a Factory Direct type of place for $175 so I thought I'd give them a shot and see what they had to offer. I found my prize, a Cube tank of 24" L 24" W 24" H. The price was right and I almost bought it myself but my brother opted to buy it for me for Christmas. So there began the journey of the 60 Cube. I had my boss go pick it up in Detroit and bring it back to me since he was going to be there anyway. He kept telling me how huge it was, but I couldn't quite grasp how it could possibly be that large. When I got it, I finally saw what he meant. Its bigger than you think. Much larger than you'd expect a 24" cube to be. So!

Here it sat while I built the tank stand.

Rather unfortunately I lost the memory stick in my Digicam in a rather/quite drunken state at the New Years party... so... I have NO pictures of the tank stand construction. I am pretty angry about it too since it was a big part of my plan for the photo journal.

This photo of the test fit is all I have that shows the tank stand between stacked lumber in the garage and completion. Could I have picked a worse time to snap a picture... that Lady on TV looks a bit frightening :eek5:

Now as you'll see, the scenery changes in the rest of the pictures. Due to some family issues... mainly my parents separating... I was forced to move out of the house and into an apartment. Its not so bad, I can say I'd rather be living at home still saving up a down payment on a house... But thats water under the bridge by now.

Here I am checking the parameters of the tap water at the apartment. Pretty much the same as home.

Here the tank stands in between the new couch and loveseat I bought for the apartment. Its now been over 2 months since I acquired the tank at this point. You can see I have the stand and canopy built and PolyUrethaned to seal out moisture. Both were built from Birch Plywood.

Closeup of the tank still empty.

Finally got settled in to the apartment and I decided I was gonna get the show on the road. Its now been almost 3 months since the tank was purchased. and I finally got my Tahitian Moon Sand. Here it is with 1 bag.

And here it is with 4 bags all smoothed out.

 

[RedIrocZ-28]

Today the lighting and EHEIM cannister filter showed up. I made a little bit of a mess of the table whilst doing the wiring of the lights. AH Supply is who I used for the light setup, I went with the 2x55W Compact Fluorescent setup with 1 - 5500k bulb and 1 - 6700k bulb.

Here is the canopy with both Reflectors mounted.

And here it is with everything hard mounted to the canopy. I still have not replaced the memory stick in my camera, hence the less frequent pictures of progress.

And here she is with the EHEIM tubes adorning the back of the tank and the lights flicked on for the first time. No water yet or course... I just HAD to see how bright it would be.

Aquascape comes this weekend. Going with lots on Anubias, Crypts, and Swords. Thinking of doing some Seiryu rocks and some driftwood with Moss tied to it. Very simple scape, somthing I won't have to take much care of. More pics later in the project.

 

[Finch_man]

Looks great!! Can't wait to see more!!

 

[RedIrocZ-28]

Looks great!! Can't wait to see more!!

Just a few short days and there will be lots more! I'm pretty excited to get water in this thing and get some of the Endlers in there, which by the way was the plan, to have a school of about 50 Endler's Livebearers in the tank with some other as yet undetermined fish. I have 2 - 5gal tanks housing about 35 of them right now. And they're breeding like rabbits. We've had 7 new babies in the last 2 weeks in the one tank. And the other tank the fish are finally reaching maturity, they're about ~2 months old, the oldest ones, still a few babies in there currently.

Anyway its Bed time for tonight.

Thanks for looking

 

[mickeyirish]

looks good.... looking forward to seeing how it turns out

 

[eklikewhoa]

Turning out really nice so far!

 

[Storm_Rider]

put some water in there!!

 

[Ankit]

Looks excellent!

 

[Jessica]

I'm excited to see how it turns out! Good luck!

 

[ringram]

Looking good! Any ideas on how you will fertilize this tank? I'm speaking mainly in terms of substrate fertilization, as the moon sand is inert. Very nice job on the stand and canopy. Did you build the frame out of regular plywood and then glue or nail the side molding pieces on? It looks really smooth and finished - almost like its not the same kind of wood as the frame that I see underneath.

 

[RedIrocZ-28]

Looking good! Any ideas on how you will fertilize this tank? I'm speaking mainly in terms of substrate fertilization, as the moon sand is inert. Very nice job on the stand and canopy. Did you build the frame out of regular plywood and then glue or nail the side molding pieces on? It looks really smooth and finished - almost like its not the same kind of wood as the frame that I see underneath.

I really don't plan to have any demanding plants so I plan to do a once weekly dose of Off the shelf Leaf Zone fertilizer. It worked in my 55gal tank just fine with regular beach sand in it.

The tank stand was constructed of 2x4's. I went to Home Depot and got the straightest 2x4's in the stack. We then further graded them before being cut and made certain the straightest ones were used for the upright's and the flattest ones were used for the upper ring where the base of the tank would sit. The entire frame was screwed together with 3" galvanized deck screws and Liquid nails was applied to all joined surfaces as well as running a bead of it down any 90* angle surfaces. The outer covering of the stand and the entire canopy were built from 3/4" Birch Plywood also bought from Home Depot @ $28/sheet. It was the Good on one side stuff, and messed up on the other. The outer covering was glued and nailed on with a finish nailer. For the stand and canopy, the building supplies cost me about $60 roughly. And many (like 15) long hours were spent in the garage in the middle of January winter in Michigan to make it happen. There were times it was below 20* out there. Makes it rather hard to PolyUrethane anything.

 

[Pooky125]

Can't wait to see this planted! I have a 30 gallon, with the same footprint as you tank, but half as tall and love it, tho wish it was a little taller at times.

 

[unirdna]

Yep, that's a big cube. I enjoy your writing style . Looking forward to seeing what you do with it. The birch plywood looks pretty sharp.

 

[Steven_Chong]

I don't think scaping this tank is going to be a cakewalk either. 24" is a pretty tall tank. You're going to need either a monster slope or some really huge hardscape in order to not end up with too much negative space

 

[RedIrocZ-28]

I don't think scaping this tank is going to be a cakewalk either. 24" is a pretty tall tank. You're going to need either a monster slope or some really huge hardscape in order to not end up with too much negative space

I agree, what struck me as an idea was looking at Kahunas Revenge by Scolley. I REALLY liked his lofty hardscape done with Anubias and small driftwood pieces. I have also looked a lot at your work Steven.

 

[dufus]

This is gonna be cool.
Gotta love the simplicity in the construstion. no special substrate, no expensive lights. i agree with steven though, this is gonna be a tough scape to get a good looking heighth to.

 

[RedIrocZ-28]

Here is what I hope to have when I am done.

 

[dufus]

wow, nice photoshopping.it will look cool if you can get it to look like that.

 

[unirdna]

LOL. That is some great PS work! Good that you have a vision for this tank. It will keep it from becoming a stem field.

 

[RedIrocZ-28]

Good that you have a vision for this tank. It will keep it from becoming a stem field.

Thats my greatest fear. When the project gets close to Go-Time I usually get way too excited and lose sight of my plan.