5.5 Gallon AIO build

[fishEH]

  I bought 2 5.5 gallon tanks, tops, and heaters for $15. My original thought was to get into SW with a nano-reef. After a lot of research I decided that even such a small tank would be cost prohibitive at this time. Not wanting to scrap a small tank project altogether, I decided I would build a shellie tank for my computer desk. From the reef forums I learned a lot about AIO(all in ones). This shellie tank shall be an AIO. I didn't want a lot of clutter and external equipment so this approach will work best. Here it goes.
Start with one 5.5 gallon tank


Add a 158gph Azoo powerhead and a heater that came with the tank.


Next I cut a 1/8" piece of acrylic, drilled a hole for a bulkhead and cut teeth for the overflow. Then I bent it using a hairdrier. I could have used and actual heat gun at work but I was impatient. Anyways it worked. I added the vertical baffle and tabs to support the eggcrate using WeldOn 16. That stuff works awesome.


Painted the acrylic black using Krylon Fusion.


Built a DIY LED light. Used five LED clusters from Superbrightleds.com and attached them to a scrap piece of acylic.


Future steps will be to silicone the acrylic into place, paint the back of the tank, and build a platform/canopy.
Any thoughts on what to stock?

[twistedfisher]

thank goddess im not the only tinkerer out there.

good show keep it up

remember if its not out there forsale then its our job to make it and if it is its our job to perfect it!

[fish head]

nice pics showing your progression...and I loved the hair dryer tip!

I've really enjoyed watching how quickly multies can fill a 5 gallon.  I started w/ 3 fry and in a little over a year its full of fish.

Maybe a pair of some other shellies could work in that size tank, like brevis or meleagris (pearl occies) but they might have trouble working out some squabbles.  I'd be interested in hearing what some of the shellie veterans would suggest.

(I ususally use 10 gallons or bigger)

[Sean]

I think for a 5.5G tank, multies or brevis would be your best bet.
Occies tend to be on the aggressive side. Though I have kept ocellatus in 5G tanks. It went very well until the male jumped out..

Either a trio of multies or a pair of brevis would be good IMO

[buddha]

Pretty cool. The only thing I might suggest is maybe another egg crate shelf or too. Good for adding extra media or sponges. I want to see it when it's all done. Pretty cool.

[fishEH]

Pretty cool. The only thing I might suggest is maybe another egg crate shelf or too. Good for adding extra media or sponges. I want to see it when it's all done. Pretty cool.

I plan on putting a media bag with biomedia in it on top of the egg crate, then just setting some pads on top of that. My concern with another shelf of egg crate is difficulty removing the media below it due to the tabs the extra  egg crate would sit on. The chambers in the filter are too small to fit my hands in, fingers at the most. I'll be attaching a peice of fishing line to the egg crate so I can pull it out easily. All other manipulating will be done with an official "pokin' stick". 

[fishEH]

Busy this week so progress was slow. Built the stand and canopy today. Apparentley my measurements were a little off because the tank wouldn't fit. Decided to cut the frame off the top and bottom. It was surprisingly easy.
Here's the end result. Hopefully staining everything tomorrow. 

[Cichlid Junkie]

That's coming along real nice.  What color are you going to stain it?

[twistedfisher]

looks great cant wait to see it all prettied up

[fishEH]

Going for a Cherry color to match the desk its going on.

[fish head]

someone is going to have trouble concentrating on work w/ a tank in view...

that's looking awesome!

[tranced]

looking really good mate, nice work  

love the jar of cable ties in the background, tinkerers best friend lol

[fishEH]

DONE...success
I finished the tank Tuesday night. Three coats of stain and it matches the computer desk near perfect. The filter system is working flawlessly. The LED lights provide the perfect amount of light. The tank is absolutely quite.

The failure....
I filled an extra 5 gallon tank to do a heater test run. The heater gradually brought the temp up to 77* and held it there. Great! However, there were a few things I didn't take into consideration with the practice tank.
1) The tank was in the basement
2) The tank was uncovered
3) There was no filter(pump) running on it

These oversights proved to be fatal on the real tank. I set the tank up Tuesday night. Came home after a long day at work to find the tank at 90*!!! 4 out of 5 inhabitants were cooked. I immediately started doing water changes and I unplugged the heater. I got the temp down to about 70*. I removed the 4 lost fish and left the heater off. Since then the temp has climbed back to 80* but has held steadily. The remaining fish just came out of his shell today but is still hiding. While I realize 80* isn't ideal for them I think it will work.

Things I would do differently....
1) The eggcrate self to hold the media off the bottom. Well it floats. I would silicone it in place next time.
2) Open up the back of the canopy more to reduce the heat build up. I still might do this.

Overall I'm quite satisfied.

[twistedfisher]

looks absolutely great and sorry for the loss but we live and learn and as head said how you gonna get any work done?

[Cichlid Junkie]

The tank looks great, but I'm sorry to hear about your loss...at least it wasn't a total loss.  Have you thought about putting a small fan inside the hood to help with the heat?