Pinchy Palace Journal

[Hermiesguardian]

You're very creative. Where you put a net to make a shelf on the wheel, I put craft mesh.

[happycrabber1]

I'm loving the build! It's giving me ideas for my next tank setup. My husband recently brought home a 75 gal to upgrade from our 40gal.

[Scarletfire]

Hey Scarlet.... for your pools: How did you get the egg crate to adhere to the tank? The silicone doesn’t do a great job for me.

I’ve been following your thread - so helpful as I go along with constructing mine.

I like your minimalist look, too. Mine looks like a toddler found moms egg crate stash .

The ledge appears to have a center support (centered and leaves a tiny gap between back wall) but in other pics the center support looks flush to the tank wall


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Thanks! The ideas from here is a combination of many of others on HCA, in addition to thoughts at midnight (where a bunch were shot down already like foot pedals to open the lid, lid on a slow closing hinge, lid on a pulley system to make it easier to do any maintenance, light on a L-shaped pvc tube, lights under the lid, submersible pump into a long waterfall / river... it goes on.......)!

As for the egg crate:


I didn't use any silicone to put the egg crate together, just zip ties.
(a) + (b) ziptied at the corner
(c) is flush to pool side, and ziptied perpendicular to (a). That leg in the front is inside the sand, and keeps (c) upright while giving space for crabbies to tunnel under the pools without blocking off access.
(d) is ziptied to (b) and (c).
(e) was added as support after the fact.
Future (f) is to mirror (e) in the front, but have it below (d) as the front support and to prevent bending.

I sort of ignored the back corner egg crate and the crate that comes up on top of the pools but let me know if you want me to draft it out.

And let me know if that diagram helped. If not, let me know where the confusion is, and I'll take some photos of those areas.

Congrats on all your progress, Scarlet! I hope one day my hopefully huge tank could look like yours! All of you have given me great ideas! I love talking to fellow crabbers and seeing their ideas! I'll defineatly look back at this for future reference!

Thanks! Hopefully you can learn from some of my mistakes too and have a faster development time haha.

You're very creative. Where you put a net to make a shelf on the wheel, I put craft mesh.

Thanks. I considered that too, but I wanted something with larger grids, and it felt like a waste to cut bigger holes in the mesh. Egg crate would've been too thick. In the future, I'll add some ivy and such.

I'm loving the build! It's giving me ideas for my next tank setup. My husband recently brought home a 75 gal to upgrade from our 40gal.

I think it was 2 months after I got my current tank up and running that I wanted to upgrade already haha. The extra width from tanks larger than 50 gal makes such a big difference! It's a bit funny. I've been working over the pinchy palace for long... seeing my fiancee's 30 gal made it look small, even though it isn't.

[Crabby7Crabber]

Thanks! The ideas from here is a combination of many of others on HCA, in addition to thoughts at midnight (where a bunch were shot down already like foot pedals to open the lid, lid on a slow closing hinge, lid on a pulley system to make it easier to do any maintenance, light on a L-shaped pvc tube, lights under the lid, submersible pump into a long waterfall / river... it goes on.......)!

As for the egg crate:


I didn't use any silicone to put the egg crate together, just zip ties.
(a) + (b) ziptied at the corner
(c) is flush to pool side, and ziptied perpendicular to (a). That leg in the front is inside the sand, and keeps (c) upright while giving space for crabbies to tunnel under the pools without blocking off access.
(d) is ziptied to (b) and (c).
(e) was added as support after the fact.
Future (f) is to mirror (e) in the front, but have it below (d) as the front support and to prevent bending.

I sort of ignored the back corner egg crate and the crate that comes up on top of the pools but let me know if you want me to draft it out.

And let me know if that diagram helped. If not, let me know where the confusion is, and I'll take some photos of those areas.




Thanks! Hopefully you can learn from some of my mistakes too and have a faster development time haha.



Thanks. I considered that too, but I wanted something with larger grids, and it felt like a waste to cut bigger holes in the mesh. Egg crate would've been too thick. In the future, I'll add some ivy and such.



I think it was 2 months after I got my current tank up and running that I wanted to upgrade already haha. The extra width from tanks larger than 50 gal makes such a big difference! It's a bit funny. I've been working over the pinchy palace for long... seeing my fiancee's 30 gal made it look small, even though it isn't.

The diagram is defineatly helpful! Thanks for taking time to make it!

[KrankyKrab]

Scarlet!!!! How awesome of you!!! Yes diagrams are very helpful - also I was looking at your earlier pics which were an earlier stage.

The egg crate around the main tank - I reread your post and I didn’t see how it’s secured. Just sub holding in place down to bottom or did you silicone the corners in for extra support?

I’m contemplating on adding to my topper but not sure how it will hold weight with just silicone (will be above new pools I’m stealing from you). Hahah.

Thanks so much for your details


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[Scarletfire]

I'm glad the diagrams are helpful =D

The egg crate is secured by usbstrate only. I decided on 9" minimum, so it was more than enough. Also, with (al and (b) secured together, it made it easy to ensure it stays up while the sand is put in.

I highly HIGHLY suggest doing all egg crate before you even a drop of sand in. Last check before you put sand in, make sure the egg crate cannot lean forward by putting in a spacer. My back egg crate is leaning forward 0.25cm at the top and it drove me nuts. I moved all the sand forward, wedged something where (b) meets the top front of the tank, and moved the sand back. It holds up well now, but I didn't think it through in the beginning.

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[Scarletfire]

Please excuse the stuff on top of the lid.

All the terranium mosses were moved to somewhere lower yesterday. I think they were getting fried by being too close to the light. I hope they recover.

Front brace added. Finally finished this after I bought another pack of zip ties. I got to say, using 8" vs 4" zip ties made a huge difference and it was much easier to thread the ties through. After this pack is used, I'll prob see how 6" is.

Until my new usb fab arrives, I propped what I had on top of the tank egg crates to see how well the condensation is dispersed. I found that there were significant differences in temperatures depending on where you put the monitor.. So I'm hoping this will help too. I like the blue light from the fan... I might actually touch it up and keep it.

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[Crabby7Crabber]

Amazing work! I'm jelly!

[KrankyKrab]

Me too - can’t believe how the glass lids came out. So hard to perfect.... love it.


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[Scarletfire]

The fan, I ended up sandwiching between egg crate and craft mesh. I ran out of egg crate, so I put together what pieces I had left,with craft mesh filling the rest. I couldn't put it between the fresh and salt water as it blocks the ladder access. I decided to suspend it above the saltwater, held by twine and duct tape. It's pretty light, but we'll see how well it holds. It gives the saltwater a pretty blue glow.

All the saltwater hardware was also moved to the opposite side and wires were zip tied to the egg crate to be neater.

Thanks for the compliments on the lid! I still need to move the handles off the middle, but I figured I can do that later.

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[Maddamay32]

Just awesome, the whole thread is inspiring and filled with one good idea after the next.

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[Links]

I want pools that size


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[Scarletfire]

My amanos, fostered at my fiancé's for the last 2 years, finally came back to me.
Lily demanded to inspect them first. They went into the freshwater pool.


Aside from this, courtesy photo of my crabs high on the pecking order discussing who's going to move to the new house first.



Aside from that, my first post has been edited again to add the list of all equipment used. I'll slowly add hyperlinks to where they are from, but it will be heavily catered to Toronto, Ontario, Canada as that's where I'm from. There may be cheaper/different alternatives depending on where you are located. Progress date markers to be updated


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[Crabby7Crabber]

My amanos, fostered at my fiancé's for the last 2 years, finally came back to me.
Lily demanded to inspect them first. They went into the freshwater pool.


Aside from this, courtesy photo of my crabs high on the pecking order discussing who's going to move to the new house first.



Aside from that, my first post has been edited again to add the list of all equipment used. I'll slowly add hyperlinks to where they are from, but it will be heavily catered to Toronto, Ontario, Canada as that's where I'm from. There may be cheaper/different alternatives depending on where you are located. Progress date markers to be updated


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What is the species of the crabby in the bronze patterned shell on top of the other one? He has full red legs it looks like, but a dark purple body? Ruggie? Viola? I'm not that good at species... Amazing color! He has those tiny eyes that just makes me want to squeal at how cute he is! He's probably like, "Let me go first!"

[Scarletfire]

They're all purple pinchers! Or at least they should be. I haven't touched them since they were adopted. I'll take some up front photos when I move them over to the big tank. I was tempted to do the move... But opted to silicone down the handles to the proper place first.

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