Update on new 60 Gallon cube

Recently I upgraded (some say downgraded from my 75 gallon) to a 60 gallon glass cube.  The 75 was too big for the space I had it in, and the cube fits perfectly in the corner only sacrificing 15 gallons of water. I'll have to say that the cube looks amazing, the glass is crystal clear, the stand is nice and high to give you awesome views without having to kneel down.   I'm starting to stock some coral in there, as i'm pretty satisfied with the fish, I might supplement the tank with a few more fish, but for now its good.  

Goods in the tank: 

• 30 pounds of fine live sand
• approx. 50 pounds of live rock
• 8 chromis 
• 1 yellow tang
• 3 pajama cardinals
• 3 bangaii cardinals
• 1 true Precula clown fish
• 1 black ocellaris clown fish
• blue spot watchman goby
• 1 pistol shrimp
• approx. 25 hermit crabs
• 1 sleeper blue dot goby
• 1 peppermint shrimp
• 1 emerald crab
• 2 damselfish
• assortment of corals and inverts.
  
  

Electric Guitar build Part 1

Recently I started getting into woodworking and been doing a couple of projects. Mainly I've been doing small things from end grain cutting boards, yard dice, and even bigger projects like toy/blanket chests.  One thing I've always wanted to make was my own electric guitar, or any type of guitar in fact.  I really wanted to make an acoustic guitar but that process is way more complicated and in depth than its electric counterpart, maybe a ukulele will be in the works later down the road.

I decided to document the process of me trying to build my first custom guitar.  After hours and hours of online research, from message boards to youtube to advice from friends that have gone through the process I've finally started the endeavor of building an electric guitar.

First I started the process by choosing the wood that I would be using, after a trip to my local exotic hardwoods store I decided on a two tone guitar style with basswood and black walnut.

Here you can see the rough piece of basswood and behind it the black walnut

Had rip the pieces to size I'm gonna make the guitar an inch and half thick, so I had to rough cut to a little bit bigger than that to leave some room for sanding and planing. Ran it through my table saw but the piece was too big to rip it completely through so I ran it once then had to flip it over to finish the cut on the table saw. 

Here you can see I've already cut the pieces to the right length and depth. I put them together to see how I wanted to glue them up, I first I wanted to put 2 smaller dark walnut stripes instead of one big one down the middle but one I mocked it up I liked the one big strip down the middle more. 

Now it was time for some gluing, applied a generous amount of glue on the joining sides. Type of glue I'm using on this build is Titebond Type 2.

Time to clamp it together, using 7 clamps here

After about 14 hours of clamping, usually I'd leave it overnight but its been so hot the glue sets up really fast.  at this point its time to start planing, you can use and electric planer or an electric hand planer, I don't have a table top planer, but I do have the other two, I decided to use the hand planer to plane both sides. Hand planing was new to me so I had to take my time to fine tune the planer but after that was done it was easy.

After planing both sides with the hand planer, it was type for some sanding, I started with 80 grit on the hand held belt sander, it made quick work of smoothing everything down.

The next type of sanding I decided to do some hand sanding with some 150, then to 220 grit sand paper. This wont be the final sanding, I still have tons of sanding left. 

To make things easier I'm gonna be using my Les Paul as a template for my new guitar.  Its gonna be a modified version of Les Paul/SG/ES line of guitars. First I traced the whole body onto the blank. 

Next I flipped the guitar over because I wanted the cut out or horns on both sides.

I wanted the guitar to have a "Fatter" look to it so I made the body a little bit shorter long wise.

Here is what the guitar looks like after the modifications to the original Les Paul. 

Hard to see in the picture but you can see where I measured and drew where I'm gonna route out for the neck socket, I'll be using a bolt on neck for the guitar. 

Here is the neck I'm gonna be using, I'm recycling a lot of the parts off my old Les Paul.  Most people opt for using a pre-made neck, mainly because the spacing for the frets can be messed up so easily and only the slightest mistake can lead to a permanent un-tuned guitar. I'm gonna sand the neck down to bare wood, right now it a glossy black. 

And lastly you can see here at what its sorta gonna look like once its done.

And that was my first day on making the my guitar! stay tuned for more updates on the progress!

Nano Reef P1

Recently as you might of seen on my Instagram or Facebook, I've dove headfirst into saltwater aquariums.   So instead of blowing everyone's feeds with fish pics I'll be doing updates via my blog for anyone interested in the evolution of my tanks!


Well ever since I've started this hobby I get one question get asked over and over, "How much have you spent?" In this post I'm gonna break down exactly how much it would cost to get a set up like my 10g nano reef. So lets get started!

First lets start off with the hardware.

Lights: $100.  Yes this might seem expensive for lights but in reality its pretty cheap, I custom made the hood and lights.  I similar light fixture premade would run in $300-$500 dollar range.  The reason they are so expensive is that fact that reefs require a certain light spectrum and power to sustain a healthy reef. 

Tank: $20.  Probably one of the more cheaper things in the aquarium. I opted for a rimless tank which makes things a bit more sleek and streamline.

Powerhead: $16.  A small underwater fan that creates flow and current in the tank, you don't want stagnant water.  I opted for a very cheap one, there are models that run upwards in the $400 range.

Heater: $20. Simple coil heater to maintain proper water temperature. 

Sand substrate: $27.  I choose a black sand to match the black trim around my tank.  Its Hawaiian Black Live sand. 

Live Rocks: $20.  I got lucky on this one and had my local fish guy hook me up with some rocks. Usually you need 1lb  for every gallon so I needed 10 pounds and rock usually runs anywhere from $3-$7 dollars a pound. 

Total for Hardware: $203

Running Total: $203

Additives & Supplements 

Coral Glue: $10.  An underwater glue to glue coral to the rocks.

Coralvite: $10.  Coral supplements 

Fuel: $12.  Fuel for the corals, promotes bright colors and healthy corals.

Reef Accelerator: $12.  Promotes healthy purple coraline purple algae 

Reef starter kit: $15.  provides essential minerals and iodine. 

Long tweezers: $8. to pick up and place coral.

Hydrometer: $15 to measure the salinity of the water.

Salt: $45.  Great deal at my local fish store makes 200g. 

Water Test Kit $50.  Test the levels of the water, very important for an aquarium. 

Total For additives: 177

Running Total:$380

Now we Get to the fish!

True Percula Clown fish: $25.  Its the orange Clown fish in the picture above.

Black Ocellaris Clown fish: $30.  Different species of Clown, but black. Pictured above.

FireFish: $10x2=$20.  I have two of these fish, and probably one of my favorite types. Pictured above.

Gobies!

Yellow Clown Goby: $8, pictured above

 Another Goby!

Blue Spotted watchman Goby: $16.  These fish have a cool symbiotic relationship with pistol shrimp, they watch out and protects the shrimp while it digs up food for both of them, hence Watchman Goby. 

Total for fish: $99

Running Total: $479

Inverts!

Peppermint shrimp: $5x2=$10. These shrimp can eat aiptasia which is a "weed" and can really mess up your tank.

Starfish!

Red Starfish: $25. One of the cooler things I have in my tank.

Hermits!

Red Tip Hermit crabs: $1x8=$8.  These hermits keep the tank clean as they eat algae and waste.

Snails!

Mexican Turbo Snail: $2. This guy is a bulldozer, he keeps the glass and rocks clean. 

Total for inverts: $45

Running Total: $524

Corals!!

Trees!

Kenya Trees: $20.  3 trees and another coral which I don't know the name, you can see it pictures in the first picture at the base of the tree, they came bundled together.

Mushrooms!

Spotted Mushroom: $30.  Bought the whole rock you see with the mushroom as a bundle. 

Torch

Torch Coral: $15. One of my favorite corals, they green tips glow under the blue moonlight setting on my lights. 

Trumpets!

Trumpet Corals: $10. These corals are cool, when they multiply they head pinches itself into two.

Anemone 

Mystery Anemone: $8. Not sure what kind of anemone this is but it looks sweet!

Polyps! 

Zoanthus colony: $60. Goal is for they to fill in the spaces and become one huge colony.

Mystery coral: $25. These aren't pictures and I have no idea what they are called, You'll probably see them in a later blog.

Total for corals: $168

Grand Total: $692!

Whoa! was not expecting that much.  This is what it would cost if you didn't have anything and started from scratch and wanted to have one exactly like mine.  I had a lot of the supplies already from my fresh water tanks and big 75g tank so the actual cost was a lot cheaper.  I don't wanna scare anyone off with the price, you can make a saltwater tank for much cheaper, also for a lot more.  The cheaper route would be to start off with only fish, the cost would be around the $200-250 range to get it started with fish; you could then move on to reefs after that as well. 

-Luz

I think I found Nemo?

First 1 gallon Fish tank 

First Goldfish 

If you follow me Instagram or Facebook you'd probably seen some of my pictures I've posted, sometimes i feel as annoying as those mothers that post pics of their babies everyday! It's been almost a year since I got my first fish tank, if I remember correctly it was a 1 gallon gold fish bowl.  The funny thing is that it wasn't even for me, I had originally bought it for my niece for when she came over. I started out with a couple feeder gold fish and a betta.  A couple weeks had passed and I figured it was time for an upgrade, I stopped by the fish store and purchased a 3 gallon circular pillar with multicolored LED light; yeah I thought it was badass!  I filled the tank with tetras, a small but colorful fish, I wanted a small school of them but the tank was too small.  So here again I'm upgrading to a bigger tank, this time it was a 10 gallon tank.

First 10 Gallon Tank

 I was sure this would be my last upgrade.  I filled the tank with fish and sponge bob decor. It looked good, and I was happy with it...for couple weeks.  I soon started looking at planted tanks.  The live pants gave the aquarium a whole new sense of natural beauty.  This lead me to replace all the decor in the tank with real plants and wood, no fake stuff!  

Fist 10 gallon planted 

My niece's Tank

Couple months had passed and I was learning about the right substrates and additives to maintain healthy fish and plants.  It was at this point where purchased another 10 gallon tank to have a more variety of fish.

First version of my 30 Gallon

Fast forward a couple months and I was growing tired of the size of fish my tank could accommodate, I could only go as big as 2 inches in 10 gallon tank.  So I was craiglist browsing one late night and I stumbled upon a super cheap 30 gallon fish tank with stand, so I jumped the gun and purchased it the next day.  Now I have the tank that I wanted and quickly stock it with bigger fish.  This 30 gallon tank was the peak of my fresh water experience, I had the coolest/weirdest/most colorful fresh water fish on the market not to mention around 15 high end plants, it was everything a fresh water tank could be, unless you went into aquascaping, which is on a whole other level.  

Fully Planted 30 Gallon

So there I lay one night bored after a night of gaming, I'm sitting here browsing netflix and I see this show called Tanked.  The jest of the show is basically this company makes outlandish saltwater fish aquariums.  As I'm watching this so I can see that freshwater fish don't even come close to the vibrant, colorful, bizarre, and just plain coolness of saltwater fish; at that point I needed a saltwater tank!

Custom Base and Hood I made, 75g

Custom Sump Tank 

75g Saltwater

I decided to go for a bigger tank so I bought an old acrylic 75 gallon tank.  I didn't know how much work it would be to start one up!  The tank was an older tank and it needed a lot of work. I would say I put easily 100+ hours into getting the tank up and running.  From start to where I could actually put fish in it was around a month. As of right now my saltwater tank has around 12 fish, 20 hermits, 2 snails, 2 shrimp.

10g Saltwater

Now the full circle has come together and I recently started my 10 gallon nano reef/clown tank.  I'm using the 10 gallon tank I had purchased before.  The thing with saltwater tanks is the smaller they are the more difficult they are to sustain the biological ecosystem.

Live Rock with Soft corals 

I don't know what it is about fish tanks, its probably the feeling of having a slice of paradise in my room, also it gives you a Godlike feeling knowing that they are so dependent on you, I almost feel like Xerxes when I'm feeding them, "I am a generous god." Also I like the challenge, especially when it comes down to saltwater, its not easy getting the right conditions for the ecosystem to thrive.