=Jwin= and Triplemom's Custom Bowfront Canopy Video Submission

Thanks for pointing out the picture. I must have missed it. I hope you don't mind if I take some pointers from your video. It is just so great!!! Thanks!!!

 

Not at all!

 

Looks great!

 

Ah I see so he does lol.

 

Thanks for posting this. I also have a 46 bow front, and for the life of me, could not get the front to bow. I love this. I now want to take mine down and start over.

 

Thanks for all the kind words everyone

I wished I could have put more in the video...the video I made was getting the "jist" of the canopy. I wish I could have put more in, but I decided to restrain myself to keep the video as short as possible.

Some have wondered how the lights are mounted in the canopy. What I did was I made the blocking that holds the canopy to the tank large enough to hold the lights to the canopy as well. I could have been fine making it 1 inch thick to just hold the canopy, but by extending it to 1 inch thick, as well as two inches tall, the lights can sit on the blocking about 1/2" closer to the water than they were before.

And please, feel free to take my design and run with it. Get creative and conform it to your ideas. You could attach your lights to maybe some sort of shelf and have ball bearing guides to slid the lights out on. Or whatever you want.

The biggest thing is to make sure you hinge the whole bow. Hinging just a portion of the top, according to my mom, would have been a huge pain in the rear for water changes. And feel free to PM me or anyone else if you would like a hand on thinking

Once again, thanks for all the kind words on it! I feel I could have done better if I built it a second time, but for a first attempt I'm quite pleased with it.

 

I did my first water change with the new canopy yesterday (all alone as usual, lugging buckets of water, straining my back, whoa is me ). All I can say is if anybody is truly copying our design, DEFINITELY hinge the whole bow. We actually considered just hinging half, and even considered just a little hinged cutout to lift for feeding. Those would have been a HUGE mistake. With the whole bow lifted up, I was able to do scrape the back glass and reach everything during the water change. If we hadn't hinged the whole bow, I think I would have had to actually lift the whole canopy off, which was something I was trying to avoid doing in the first place!

 

Of course he does! Was there ever any doubt!

 

You know what.. I used to do it that way but I was making such a mess that I started to just put the bucket near the aquarium then use an old powerhead/pump I had lying around with some hose on the end that I clipped to the side of the tank. This went a bit slower than the old way, but I didn't spill anything and it was less distruptive to the aquarium too. Just an idea I thought I'd share.

matt

 

Same here. Not to hijack the thread, but I stopped lifting buckets awhile back. No need to, unless you're into that sort of thing.

I have my pre-made water in one Rubbermaid tub (20G size, but with about 15G in it). In this tub is a powerhead that's been running about 24 hours mixing. Next to this Rubbermaid tub is an identical, empty tub next to it. When I'm ready, I attach a hose that's been cut to length already, with a black U-shaped return stuck in the end. One end of this hose has the threaded female that attaches to the powerhead; the other end with the black U-shaped return rests on the display tank's rim. I first drain water from the system into the adjacent, empty tote; and stop when the level is about an inch shy of the the newly made water. Then I just plug in the powerhead in the newly made water tub, and let it fill the tank.

The only hard part of the job is lugging the water removed to the shower stall where it goes down the drain.

While we're on the subject--I seem to learn something new every rebuild of my tank. Next time I go around (which might be soon since I'll be changing my plumbing when I add my new chiller)--I'll put a pipe coming off the return to the DT, with a gate valve on it. It'll be positioned such that I'll simply have to place the Rubbermaid tote under it, and open the valve. This way, the water will be coming from the return pump, right into the "throw away" receptacle bin.

Hope that was clear. I've been doing homework all day, and my brain is somewhat frazzled.