Fish Tank Stand Build

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Smitty

Aquarium Advice Addict
Joined
Nov 24, 2008
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1,206
Location
Gainesville, FL
Howdy!

I got tired of having my fish tank on the counter where it is, I'm going to be moving it! (See thread in Freshwater Plants section). I'm OK at building things and would rather spend 100.00 on supplies than a lot more on a manufactured stand, so I'm off on the adventure of building my own! It has gotten too dark outside to do any more for the night, so I'm posting up what I've gotten done at this point:
 

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Some more photos! I have larger pictures in my gallery if anyone wants to see the big ones.
 

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Very nice. Looks pretty darn sturdy to me. Are you going to do doors or are you just covering the whole thing solid?
 
Oh, there are doors. I have put one coat of poly on and I'm waiting another hour for the next coat. Tomorrow after it has dried overnight I'll be putting on door handles and some magnets to keep the doors closed. I also bought some trim pieces today for the corners that I'll put on after it dries. Here are two updated photos:
 

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Thanks for the comments!

I'm a firm believer that it really isn't that hard, you just have to step up and give it a try. I do have a miter saw and it helped but everything else was done with a skill saw. The only "special" tool I have is a small jig that was like 10 at lowes that make doing corners (like on the door) easier to do. I think it is actually for picture frames.

2nd coat just got finished! I will probably have to wait a week before starting on the hood. I'm still not quite sure how I'm going to do that. I'll probably do the same thing I did on this stand, just wing it and hope for the best! :)
 
Try stopping by petco if you have one near you and take a look at how their hoods are built. I think its pretty straight forward
 
pretty impressive! i have been wanting to try something like this myself!!

one thing i noticed is the top, or what looks like the top, is completely closed. most manufactured stands i see, the top is open which allows the tank to sit on the outer plastic frame rather then the glass... i suppose if you DO NOT use any type of foam under the tank you should be fine?
 
Well, I could have left the top open but I felt it would make the overall stand stronger and would give less of a chance of leaning off to one side or the other. The covering you see is 1/8" board that was a 4x8 sheet. I put that on the front as one whole sheet then cut out the door area also to give it some strength for the side-to-side action.

As to the hood, I do have a lfs that has a lot of stands and hoods. I saw what they did and it gave me a couple good ideas but I'll still end up just fudging something together :) I typically over build most things I do... so I'm sure the hood will end up the same. Because of the amount of lighting I have along with all the ferts I put in every day I'm going to be doing something a bit different... I'll post up those when I start!
 
nice. im currently working on a stand myself. first time ever doing a wood project for me. its not that hard per say. mine isnt as pretty so far in some spots as i would like as i learned lessons along the way. but ya its not that hard.
 
Well, the stand it done! Well.... for the most part. I went to the store to buy hinges because I didn't like the ones I had on hand. Well, found a really nice bronze looking hinge and bought 2 packages. What I didn't know is that one was the correct one, the other was not what I wanted but in the same bin (and wouldn't work at all, wrong size). I went back, got what I THOUGHT was the correct hinge (looked the same-was in the correct bin), got home and went to put it on and it was BLACK! AARRRGG!!! After that I decided I would wait till tomorrow to go to the store.

Anywho, here are two photos. The first is without flash and the second is with flash (which is funny because the first one looks brighter!)
 

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I'm building a stand for my 320g... definitely not going to be as nice looking as yours... you can follow in my thread on my tank build if you want
 
Awesome work, i am currently in planning to build a stand to put my 90g underneath my tv.

Wouldn't the humidity going up be bad for your tv? I have no clue... my tank is only going to be a couple feet from my tv, but it just sounds bad! :)
 
I'm building a stand for my 320g... definitely not going to be as nice looking as yours... you can follow in my thread on my tank build if you want

Sure! The secret to mine looking good is the 16.00 sheet of laminate that looks like wood! lol. The hard part was the stand was 48.5" wide but the laminate is only 48! I ended up getting the corner trim to hide the gap left over. Fits in there perfect so no one will be able to tell.
 
And the stand is finished! All set up and running!

Couple shots leading up the the big move:
 

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And the new setup! Still a bit cloudy from the move, should be settling down soon. I think I lost 1 fish... it was one I rescued that didn't have a tail. I can't find him now... :(
 

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