Stand prep... and paint.

The aquarium hobby has matured a lot over the last couple of decades but one thing that remained the same are stand colors. I feel like everywhere I look I see the same black, cherry and maple choices. Occasionally there's some white cabinets but let's face it, that's not a good choice. Gray isn't particularly pleasing either as it looks quite dull.

The stand I bought from the local reefer looked great, but it did not match any of my furniture that currently sits in the dining room; where the tank will be. My first thought was maybe just spray painting the stand black seeing how the tank itself will most likely be black and that would have made things extremely easy. Upon further deliberation, I decided to try to match the color to my current dining set. Now dark dark brown is not a color you see often on aquarium furniture, infact, I don't recall ever seeing one. It is pretty common for modern furniture though. Go figure. Maybe All Glass will catch on soon.


To get the stand ready to be repainted, I first went and bought a powered sander so I can strip off all the old paint and the wear and tear on the wood. What do you call the spots that turn black on the wood from just being exposed to elements? Well, whatever it is, it's gone now. As you can see in the pic, the sander did a great job of getting the wood pieces ready for painting. A "live-and-learn" note for you guys; try to do this outside. I sanded this stand in my garage and now there's a fine dusting of paint and wood particles all over everything in my garage. It kinda looks like pollen but Spring is not quite here yet.


After a couple of days of sanding, cleaning the garage and trying to minimize the dust particles in the general area before I paint, I finally sweeped enough to my satisfaction and wiped the stand down to make sure all particles of dust were gone. After it was dry, I started my first coat of the stain on the stand. This particular stain is rather thin (very liquidy) but it also made it very easy to work with.


Unfortunately, the last few days in Atlanta have been raining so right now, 24 hours later, I am still waiting for the first coat to dry so I can do a second coat. I guess cold and wet weather is not so great for painting or paint drying... ah well, when this whole thing is finished, it should look great.

On another note, I just realized that all larger tanks have their mega overflows on the left. I wonder if spacing will be an issue with getting the plumbing down with all those power plugs there.

The foundation of a solid reef. No, not the sand...

Collecting the pieces to form a nice home made reef is fun, but man... I seriously wanted this to be setup yesterday. If you ask me on any other day, you will get the same answer.

A good foundation to a home made reef is research... but once you have that, the next solid foundation for a reef is the stand. Stands are important unless you're a midget. I really wouldn't know what you'd do if you are one. I guess if you get a large enough tank you could go snorkling but sadly that's a fantasy only you can fulfill. (Please, no hate mails; I envy you.)

Unfortunately for the consumers, the manufacturers of the tanks will low ball you on the tank but list outrageous prices for their "custom stands." I'm not sure what kind of vigorous stress tests they run their stands through but painted particle board cabinets are really not worth THAT much money in my opinion. But I digress...

So this past week (2 months) after waiting, searching, waiting some more, eating ice cream and finally waiting and catching a message that someone posted for a "tank and stand for sale" I finally bought a custom made stand for $160.


Okay, so MAYBE I have to swallow my words about what I said about a stand is just a stand earlier. The stand this guy built was actually pretty cool.


At the bottom we have a solid wood stand. This particular one has been in operation for about 10 years. Very impressed. There are no clear signs of warping and it seems like there are enough electrical plugs for my needs. Not quite sure how a timer would fit with it but we'll see once we get there. Ignore the black thing in the back as it just happens to be my folded up poker table top. (For sale BTW)


Although I won't be using the canopy supplied with the unit, the whole setup was very well thought out. There is a groove in the canopy to slide over the plastic trim so it can be hidden. Also, check out the moonlights! Jon was years ahead of everyone else. As you will see on the blue pillow, there is also trim available for the bottom portion to hide the plastic trim there. I told Jon he should build these professionally and maybe sell it for $150. Ha... well, I know that won't fly but honestly, anything can be made out of real wood and can be sold for $300 or less; you got yourself a market there.

Anyway, I'm really glad this part of the search is over. My only dilema now is whether I want to paint this thing black or sand it down and paint it a cherry/almond color to match the cabinets in my house. Almond is a nice color and one that none of the current manufacturers use so it would make it different. That's so much work though... and will I really be looking at it if I'm looking at the fish tank? *Sigh* Decisions... decisions...

Bad LFS and M.I.A. Cleaner.

This past week/weekend I went up to Raleigh. My girlfriend had a sudden and unexpected death in the family and to show my support, I took the Jeep and drove it 400 miles to meet her and her family for the funeral. The trip wasn't completely bad. She learned some nice stuff about her dad and we saw and stayed with some of our friends while we were up there. Of course the trip could have been made for a better reason, but overall, it is what it is.

While I was there, I took a short break to visit Fish World of N.C. which is located in NE Raleigh. Does it sound insensitive? (She WAS taking a nap...) Anyway, while I was there, I thought maybe I'd check out the Raleigh scene but unfortunately I didn't know much about the town and my Google search only pulled up a couple of locations. Anyway, Fish World (www.fishworldnc.com) is really a terrible store. The website said they moved to a new location which is supposed to be all cool and large but I got there and was shocked by almost everything I saw, in a bad way.

First of all, the staff was less than friendly. One person acknowledged I was there and the rest kind of just ignored me. Was it the color of my skin? Hrmm, let's not go there. Anyway, the tanks there were definitely built with people in mind. By that, I mean the tanks were all about 10 gallons each filled with some sand and 2 fish in each tank and that was about it. No rocks, no lights, nada. Most of the fish I saw were breathing heavy, laying on the sand, or hiding behind the single outflow pipe that was in the tank. This was not a good sign.

About half of the tanks there also had cleaner wrasses which as far as I'm concerned means they could care less about owning a responsible store. This was also the only store I've seen that had 5 sea apples (the ones that will wipe out your entire tank if dead), and they also had a tub of snails of which, the tub had no algae for them to feed on.

I won't even get into the coral selection... Let's just say they pretty much had nothing that impressed me besides for what an LFS shouldn't be doing.

Yesterday, a day or two after our return, I realized that my cleaner shrimp is no longer in the tank. This is funny because I didn't see any carcass or shrimp bits, just the lack of white antennas that I am so used to. Okay, so I didn't feed my tank for three days cause I don't own an auto feeder, but I totally didn't expect this. The dottyback (my primary suspect) is going to have to go soon.

Let there be LIGHT!

I swear... Craigslist is starting to become my favorite site. I picked up one of these today. This is the 4 feet long Current-USA Outer Orbit Metal Halide with actinics and moonlights setup. For you non-reefers who are like "WTF is he talking about?!" All I can say is, this is one heck of a light! The reason I went with this one is because it literally covers all the spectrum and it has an individual switch and timer for each of the 3 sets of lights. Now, all I need is a tank and a few buckets of water to absorb all of this energy.

Edit: In the meantime, maybe I can design a cheap tanning bed contraption.