Stand Plans

[Jarmitage]

Hey Guys,

Im planning on building myself a stand for my aquarium to accommodate my filter , aquarium junk, and have enough space for my future sump plans.

My aquarium dimensions. It's not a bowfront, but one of those curved front edges aquariums , glass. ~ 10gallon

Dimensions are : 45cm Horizontal

30cm deep

30cm tall

I would like to make my stand around 95cm tall ( i base this from a existing chest of drawers.. i like the height. )

And around 50cm wide, and ~ 40cm deep.

I plan on using MDF, Screwed and glued.

I downloaded Sketchup as i have seen a few other people use it, so i thought id give it a crack, neat program but uses a bit to much brain power.

Ok here it goes. The little box bit top left corner is for food/chems/fish paraphernalia. The tall space to the right of that is for my filter ( a fluval 205 quite tall ). Under the top left corner box the gap will be used for my power/timer stuff.

Holes will be drilled in the back in the mdf for power cables, pipes etc,

The larger space down the bottom is for my sump ( future project ) I plan on making a pvc overflow system down to the sump, cos sumps are the bee's knees and I would like this to be a nano marine tank once i slowly get the perfect pieces together ( not to mention the difficulty in getting marine stuff in dunedin, live rock etc ) so until christmas this will stay fresh, with my 5 sterbais, 2 bristle nose, and neon blue gouramis.

Anyone got any feedback? Cheers guys

[Sophia]

The design is good but I will have to be the first to say that MDF isn't the best thing to make a tank stand out of as water seepage will eventually turn it to wet cardboard and there goes your tank.

If you are carpentarily inclined and wanting to do it cheap you could use tanalised fence palings, my husband just built me this and the total cost was about $130 including stain, varnish, screws etc. This was done without any power tools even.... (he now has an electric planer) (I lie, he used a router around the edges and a drill for the screws haha)

This fits my 50cm long x 28cm wide tank and like yours the cabinet is about a metre tall so you can sit on a chair next to it and see right in

I asked for lots of shelves too :oops:

[Jarmitage]

hey thats a neat job. Yeah im getting a bit paranoid about the use of mdf. Ive got a old pine set of drawers at home that i am thinking of ripping out the drawers and putting on a hinged door. Its very solid, made out of pine. I will just have to get creative on the hinging of the door, I dont have a router to route out nice holes for the fancy hinges that you can get, so will have to use the cheaper hinges and maybe chisel them in to make it nice and flat closing.

But yeah being able to look straight into the aquarium from a chair is good, Ive currently got it on a real nice set of drawers, problem is that its made from nicely finished rimu and the water drops and scratches are going to wreck it in no time.

[Sophia]

We just used standard hinges that are set inside the door and inside the cabinet on little blocks of wood. They were sprayed black with the screws so they matched the handle. My husband rigged up a latch to the back of the handle so it's like a gate latch. On my last cabinet there was a magnet and the fish jumped every time I shut the door so didn't want that again.