Freshwater Aquarium Project

My Freak T-Shirt at Zazzle

Awesome Fish/Cat/Pet Feeders

I did some redesigning on the top of the stand. Here you see 3 1/2 inch lag bolts driven into the leg posts. On a few of the bolts, they stripped out when I tightened them, since redwood is soft, especially when you screw down into the grain, so I used 4 1/2 to 5" bolts where that happened. Each joint was glued. The lag bolt heads are recessed into the plywood enough so they don't stick out. There is also a washer under each lag bolt head.


Here you see a sheet of 3/8 (11/32!!! lol) plywood that will be laminated over the 5/8 plywood.


I just took a can of the urethane foam to use as glue. Then the board was screwed down with short drywall screws.




The first side boards of 2x6 redwood are glued and then screwed with 3 1/2" (1/4") lag bolts to the legs. You can see a piece of 1" styrofoam (which will probably change to 1/2", which I'll explain later), that I used to check the height of the top side boards.

Edit 8-20-08. If I did it today, I would use bolts/nuts instead of lag bolts, wherever possible.


Here the second set of 2x6 redwood sideboards are clamped and glued/screwed on. I shaved an 1/8 inch off the bottom of the top board and the top of the bottom board with a table saw, to make a flat joint between the two.


And this is the finished stand.


I found this board at Home Depot, and thought it was a great find. Does that look like a fish or what?...lol


Here's another neat find. I think that pattern looks a bit like waves......

I made a frame out of 1x1's as a template to place the holes for the legs of the stand. You can see the legs of the existing tank in the middle, and the legs of the filter stand to the left. You can also see the tree trunk (barely) between the two.


Here you see the 1" styrofoam sheet insulation that I glued to the sides of the hot part of the thermal mass with polyurethane foam.


I thought more mass was a 'good thing', so I'm going to fill each side with some used cinder blocks that came from a wall demolition, and put bricks in the holes of the blocks: