Reef Octo LX1000s HOB Arrival and It's BIG

Wow interesting idea crank.. I had thought the other day about the possibility of just painting it... had you thought of that? Not to knock what you went with.. that is pretty neat - just wondering why you ruled it out if you thought of it.

Very nice tank by the way...

 

Informative write-up. Thanks. Keep the pics and progress notes coming!

 

Definitely thought about painting it and almost went with that idea. I wanted to try something a bit less permanent first and see how it worked out. I figure I can always peel off the panels and silicone if it doesn't work out that well and try my hand at painting. I'll let you guys know how it works out.

 

Yeah well giving this more thought .. the paint might work for the outside, but the skimmer box... not so sure what you could use that as it would be in contact with water... your idea is solid though..

 

At first I thought the skimmer looked really sweet in red.... but when I got to the pictures of it in your tank I have to agree. It really distracts from the real beauty which is the corals/fish/rock. I like your idea of using the acrylic and silicone, that why if you had to send it back for any reason you could just pull it all off.

Looks like a solid skimmer though. I wish they made a slightly smaller one.

 

Okay finished my skinning project and thought I would post some post some pics. Overall I'm happy with the project, considering it's my second time messing acrylic other than a sump in which I didn't care how messy it looked. I kind of like the red accents you see here and there and it's no longer the first thing you notice when looking at the tank. What do you think?











You can see I added some ramps for the water to flow down instead of splashing. Helps with the trickling sound that would happen every so often. I still have some more acrylic left over and still might make a few more panels to cover up the remaining bits, but for now I'm happy with the results

 

Nice work Crank! I bet you can make some spare change selling more cut-outs to other LX1000S folks out there.

It does look A LOT better. Great job.

 

Thanks Matt, if I had a decent work area and a template things would have been a lot easier and quicker. Instead all I had was a dining room, dremel and acrylic blade for the cuts, albeit now that I've done it once I know how to attack it quicker if I had to do it again. Total for this was $20 in materials and 1/2 days work. I'm thinking maybe next weekend I'll cut out a few more pieces to cover up the last bit of visible red in the tank. At that point I'm thinking I'll be done with it. It is a bit of a pain to have to go through the work to fix, what in my opinion should have been done from jump street at the factory, which of course is build it in black acrylic. However, if holds its own in the performance department, it would have been well worth it with a bit of pride for the customization.

At this point I'm back at square one waiting for it to produce, as right now it's not doing much and breaking itself in again after being cleaned and dried. Sooo it's back to watching and tweaking :

Will post updates to performance again when it's ready!

 

Looks awesome. Can barely notice it.

 

Thanks, xmetal. The more I look at it, the sooner I want to cover up those two little threaded strips of red on the sides that hold the nylon screws. Most likely tomorrow. Prepare yourselves for more pics