# DIY Stand



## taz81 (Jul 13, 2009)

Well I had enough of my iron stand and decided to build my own wood stand from Fish and Tips (www.fishandtips.com) website. My overall plan is to build such a stand for a 75 gallon I want to eventually get. I decided to build one for this tank to make all my mistakes on a small scale, instead of on a giant 75 g scale lol. So yeah, it isn't perfect but I thought I'd share the end product, and what I learned. I'm sure a lot of you already know these things, but for those of us who haven't had the experience of working with wood much these thoughts might be helpful.

1. Lowes and Home Depot both will cut wood for you for 25 cents per cut. Considering the cost of powered saws it is well worth the cost. The cuts are not always perfect/square, but I used a dremmel (a 5-10 year old christmas gift left unused until now) to square off the edges. 
2. Do NOT use wood filler until after you have stained (before polyurathane). I knew this ahead of time but felt I wasn't all that picky. It can be VERY noticible. I used two types of wood filler, the elmers type with wood in it already seemed to take the most stain, and ended up darker than the rest of the wood, but that was far better imo than it being too light.
3. What ever you do BE CAREFUL with the wood glue! I cannot stress that enough. Wood glue is the primary reason for almost all of my blemishes. I accidently dripped in a few places, and only wiped them up. It looked fine until I went to stain at which time the wood didn't take the stain near as much leaving the wood blotchy. Thankfully for me most of it was in the back, but there are still noticible blotches on the doors and the top rim.
4. I made a shelf for the bottom (not in the directions) with a scrap piece of oak veneer 3/4" plywood that I used for all of the walls, and just cut out 2" squares where the support poles were.
5. Use quality wood. Even slightly warped wood (especially for the core 2x2's or 4x4's) can lead to your whole project being annoyingly and visibly crooked.
6. Use quality hardware! I cheaped out on most of my L brackets with some cheapo online dealer. The L brackets were not a perfect 90-degrees, exacerbating the "not square" issue, and I stripped almost all of the screws. Because the fish and tips website doesn't specify which 4 corners NOT to put them in, I went out to home depot and got an extra 4 just to be sure. These extra 4 I got from home depot (they sell them in a 4 pack with screws) were FAR better quality for only slightly greater cost. They were actually 90 degrees, and none of the screws came even close to stripping. 
7. If using hardwood for the trim, drill pilot holes. I don't know how many feet of trim I destroyed when I tried nailing it without a pilot hole, breaking it apart to the ends. 
8. I don't know where the fish and tips people are from, but around here there is no such thing as a piece of wood 1.5" thick that is as wide as needed for the top of an aquarium stand. I instead used the same 3/4" oak veneer plywood i used for the sides. Considering I could lay on the stand prior to any of the sides and it still felt completely solid I didn't feel that the structure would suffer.
9. I used that thick resin/acrylic stuff, that you typically see on bars (or everything wood up in northern Wisconsin) for the top of the stand. This somewhat leveled the top of the stand for the tank, and provides a water proof barrier. Be aware that this stuff is hard to see when putting down, easy to miss a spot or two in the corners/edges.
10. Don't work near your aquarium, lest your aquarium get a nice layer of god knows what on the water.
This was probably far more expensive for me than just buying one. But I have a lot of new tools and experience in addition to my tank stand.

Stained Stand: 








Stained Shelf: 








Stained Doors: 








Stained Stand - Side: 








Finished Stand - Doors Open: 








Finished Stand - Doors Closed:


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## tbonedeluxe (Jun 29, 2009)

Thank you for all of the tips and the pics of your stand.
Im going to do a 20g high stand and i hope it turns out to
be a nice stand like yours.


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## taz81 (Jul 13, 2009)

Well thank you very much. the pictures don't show all the blemishes though. When deciding which side is front always feel the wood for any missing part of the plywood (if using). On the front I didn't find until today that there was no wood behind a small spot of oak veneer. This could mean I could easily break into itat some point :\.


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