So, as I've mentioned, there's not much space around the tank, I'd traded the "fish room" (see diagram in Blog entry '[URL="http://reefcentral.com/forums/blog.php?b=359"]Room Preparation[/URL]') for a larger tank, and I wanted to make water-changes as automated as possible. The rear wall behind the tank is an exterior wall, and all the space behind it was used as an already too-narrow driveway; on the right of the tank was the afore-mentioned fish-room, and on the outside of...

So, [URL="http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/store/"]BRS[/URL] ought to be happy chappies, at my expense [grin] - the orders have started to come in. These are two of the four orders I've placed to these guys over the last month or so...

[CENTER][IMG]http://www.0x0000ff.com/imgs/fishtank/fittings.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://www.0x0000ff.com/imgs/fishtank/fittings2.jpg[/IMG][/CENTER]


Things of note in the left-hand (or upper, depending on how wide your browser...

We decided on the door-styles we wanted - a half-french-arch on each door, and over the long weekend, I finally got my act together, screwed up my courage (I absolutely hate doing things there’s no going back from, when I’ve already invested a huge amount of time into the project), and set about dying and staining the wood.

I chose to use Lockwood’s English Brown Oak dye to alter the underlying colour - dyes add a uniform colour to the wood, without obscuring the grain. Once that...

Once the room was prepped, we moved the stand into the room, and I started to make it look a bit more visually appealing. We decided on a Red Oak texture, but I’ll be finishing it with a Brown oak dye followed by a Brown Mahogany stain, topped off with an oil-based varnish. This’ll give a deep warm brown that is typical of many period antiques, and coincidentally match the other furniture in the room.

First order of business was to reinforce the centre of the stand - putting a single...

I moved into this house about 5 years ago, and it's never been decorated since, so with the tank and stand ready and waiting in the garage, it was time to take a long hard look at where we were going to put them. The room is 10’6” wide at the end we want to place the tank, so the tank will take the lions share, leaving gaps at both sides of 15”.

[CENTER][IMG]http://www.0x0000ff.com/imgs/fishtank/tank-location.png[/IMG][/CENTER]

Before any of that can happen though,...