Many of you have shown great interest in my tanks, so I thought you might be interested in how everything works.
I have taken a few photos of the inside of the light unit, where everything is fed from, and I'll give you all a few new ideas, I'm sure!
When constructing this lot, several things needed to be addressed, such as th amount of space behind the tanks, how to supply power for the heaters etc, supply of air and light and maintenance. The one thing I knew from the start was that once the tanks are in place, it would be almost impossible to remove them again!
With this all in mind, planning the light canopy was the most important phase of the project. The photos below will shed light on how I did it. Some of the materials I've used are, to say te least, unconventional, but they work.
The main construction is of timber and plywood. All the electrics are above the tanks, so I had to take care to ensure that water and evaporation wouldn't start fusing things. I used a sheet of 12mm polycarbonate to make a lower cover/light diffuser. The sheet gave me the ability to make the lift-out center sections for access just by trimming off one side of the sheet and leaving the upper side intact. The cover then just overlaps the fixed side pieces and forms a fairly watertight seal. By the same token, the fixed pieces are recessed into the underside to seal against the timber.
To reduce the cost, I used a mixture of standard bayonet light fittings with low energy bulbs and flourescent tubes with standard chokes. The whole lot is wired into one switch for simplicity and run through a 3 amp fused plug. The whole lot uses less than 100 watts of power and I never need to use the room lights now!
The power for the heaters/power heads is run the same way, using connector blocks rather than sockets and all run through 2 x* 3 amp fused plugs (one for each wall).
Air is supplied by two four outlet Clearseal pumps with adjustable output, and these pumps are housed in the cupboard underneath the corner tank. Each tank has it's own feed from there and is split using taps into four outlets, ensuring enough air to do everything in each tank. With the pumps installed in a cupboard, there is only a low hum heard, which you very quickly get used to.
I hope you can use some of these ideas when building your own setups.
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