Pokah's 10 Gallon SPS Nano Build

Step one - Cut glass (Lowes) and put together the overflow.


Line up the pieces an tape in place



Silicone - make sure it's reef safe!!



End product -

Better?? LOL!

Did some work on the tank.

Drilled the hole for the bulkhead. Not the cleanest hole but does the job.



I made a small mistake. The overflow that I made is about 1/8 of an inch too short. Yo can see where I cut the plastic rim of the tank. I didn't need to cut it so high but you won't see it anyway.

looks great so far

Looks great so far but I'm concerned about painting the overflow box...what kind of paint did you use. From what I understand anything but krylon spray paint for plastics is not reef safe and will eventually degrade into the water. Also that 1" ABS bulkhead is socket x socket ;)Don't fret about that hole. Any drilled 10 gallon that isn't cracked is a success in my book

Krylon Fusion on the box. I did a ton of reading before painting because I was a bit concerned about it as well but the fusion seems to hold up and isn't toxic as long as you let it cure a full 7 days. The 1" hole with the strainer is going to be plenty of flow for the small tank IMHO. To be honest, If I have trouble with either, I'll just buy another $15 tank and start over.

You're right, the bulkhead is slip/slip...they sent me the wrong one but I didn't want to wait for another one so I used it. I'll just have to use some PVC cement on it.

If you look at the graphs and the example they showed they said the light goes through the glass and bounces of the outer part of the Paine of glass and more of it escapes when it's painted for some reason.

*This is the paragraph that came with the graph that I'm positing*

we tracked down physics professor Brain Lane, looking for a possible explanation. As he explained, in simple terms, when light leaves its source and hits the panes of glass in the tank, some of that light escapes through the glass, but some is reflected off the inner surface of the glass and heads back into the tank. As strange as it might sound, some of the light also reflects off the inner "surface" of the outer side of the glass pane, too (see the figure below). However, apparently having something "sealed" against the glass, such as blue paint or a wetted blue plastic background stops some of the light from reflecting off the inner surface of the outer side of the glass pane. If anything else was going on, taping the dry plastic background on the tank would have the same effect - but it didn't.
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I know this is going to be a sps tank so every bit of light counts. May be to late now though.