I have a love/hate relationship with reef tank mesh lid / screen top. at this point, I have tried the three most popular DIY jump guards out there (Red Sea Customizable DIY Aquarium Net Cover Kit, BulkReefSupply DIY Aquarium Screen Top Kits, D-D Jumpguard Pro DIY Aquarium Cover); while I like the Red Sea one the most, I replaced it's standard netting with this much finer black mesh as recommended by a few folks ($8 on Amazon - amzn.to/37Ff66T). I have not done a PAR test but I do not believe it would impact the measurement much, and black mesh blends into the tank much better versus the standard transparent netting. I also installed the Neat Aquatics feeding port that I bought from BRS, pleasantly surprised by the thoughtfulness and construction of the unit. Would recommend it to anyone with a mesh top without hesitation. Timestamp: 0:00 Overview of how mesh lid killed my fish in the past 1:35 Use this mesh instead for your mesh top 3:44 Unboxing Red Sea DIY Aquarium Net Cover 6:25 #ScrubOfDIY strikes... 7:48 Installing the mesh, fun... (not) 13:07 Two things I would change in this DIY mesh lid build 14:30 Euphyllia trouble 16:28 Dino? Diatom? Cyano? Gawd 2020. 17:18 Neat Aquatics Feeding Port review 17:50 Red Sea aquarium screen top review
split the lid in half and create a double lid, much easier to handle for your big aquarium and you won't have to add guitar picks to it. You will have to purchase another center piece however managing your lid will be much easier. Just a thought. Good job regardless. Maybe someone can donate 2 clear center pieces to attach the net for non lighting interference. center pieces acrylic 3d printed vs. the aluminum?
Hey, I actually designed a 3D printed extended red sea clip for people with this problem. If you need the 3D print file and know someone with a printer, I'd be happy to send you the file.
Absolutely cover that gap near the feeder, I had a new Clownfish jump through a smaller gap then you have there and now you have said it you know what will happen it you don't! Love the videos.
I thought it was sketchy using that blade to cut the metal, then the exact thing I was worried about happened. Hacksaw would cut that in 5 seconds and you keep your fingers :D
I was gonna go w a Red Sea cover for my Red Sea xl 300. But went with TopLids. These guys were great the price was good was on sale for holidays in summer. Only draw back was the time. But spot on. Great guys too. Always responded to questions and mail. Good luck
Thank you for sharing your videos soon in the next couple of months I'm going to be setting up my first feet tank and your videos have helped me a lot on what to do and not to do thank you again!!!
Always great content, and from another Marylander! We run our own Daddy-Daughter pet channel, and your content has inspired us to set up a reef! I kept reefs back in the 90s, and your content has been a great help getting back up to speed. Keep it up!
I bought my RSR tank used and the previous owner had trouble cutting the lid as well. I've been waiting to upgrade it but might move it up on my list of things to do! I've always wanted to get that acrylic lid but its a pretty pricey object. Something I'd save for when I buy my final tank for my home! Thanks for the great info! Hope your finger heals quickly! See you next week!
Had the exact same issue with the mesh pulling the frame out of place when pulling tight, I found that by adding a second support bar either side of the cutout for the overflow helped keep it in place and allow the mesh to be nice and tight!
split the lid in half and create a double lid, much easier to handle for your big aquarium and you won't have to add guitar picks to it. You will have to purchase another center piece however managing your lid will be much easier. Just a thought. Good job regardless.
I used the Red Reef lid but without feeding hole as I need wider access for feeding. I really like your idea though to make it more manageable. I don’t have the materials but will keep it in mind. Personally had some issues putting together the lid. Insertion of the spline resulted in some tearing of the mesh. We have had some fish that have made it out including a tilefish who was way bigger than the mesh size. It’s possible he ended up getting on top of the mesh from the back by the reservoir, though he actually ended up 2m in front if the tank. ☹️
Use your dremel to cut the small side you need for the mesh lid ;) i did it on mine and it was a lot easier for smaller parts. I like the little secret hole and also the tutu mesh is a great idea!
Hey @inappropriatereefer I manufacture and install screens as my job. To help with the frame bowing in there’s a couple techniques we use. 1. Pre bend the frame that way while your screening, the frame won’t bow in. 2. Make a jig on a table that won’t allow the frame to move or bow in as your screening. 3. Use the spline and spline tool to control how much screen your pulling. If you roll on the inside edge it will pull the screen more because the spline will rotate while you’re rolling.
Hi,please use a mini mitre box and junior hacksaw or you will lose your fingers cutting pieces that small!! Get a small g clamp then clamp the mitre box and work piece to bench, its so easy. On a positive note I love that mesh you used i think its much better than the stock netting...I have used the D-D mesh kits and mine pulled in around the cutouts just like yours did. If those brown patches are Amphidinium they will move off the gravel/glass overnight and when the lights switch on in the morning it will look like there is less of them on the gravel etc until evening time when it will look worse again! I defeated Amphidinium dino twice just by using an internal filter cannister with inbuilt UV (9 Watts of UV on 250l tank and only run at night)..I found cleaning the glass at night helped to get them into the water column.
They make a roller that can push that rubber down in the groove, its typically used for screened doors and porches but would work for your purpose also.
rustoleum makes a silicone strip/roll that you can use to fill in the gap between the cover and tank walls. It has glue on one side as well. it will prevent cover to fall in if the guitar picks give way.
Octospawn hate most flow in my opinion- if you check out my tank I barely make them pulse some. Try getting all flow off of it so it recovers pretty sure that’s it as your parameters are in line👍🏼
After using different DIY mesh lids, I have to honestly say the D-D pro kits are the way to go. They also offer precut brackets as well as feed doors. Seems to have a lot more versatility IMO
Hi , i try it with another screen top. It fell into the reef every now and then and indicated a lot of aluminum in the reef.The coating also flaked off after a while.I hope that you will be spared such negative experiences. Nice Vlogs ✌ Greetings Pat
I'm not huge on DIY either but as time has gone on I'm trying to learn when I can, and as you mentioned you managed to get it done so it gives me hope 😅 I remember you getting some of those euphilyas from TSA, maybe ask them and see what they say, good luck
Nice One Piece ship above your tank. My daughter and I have built 5 different models. I have the larger mesh clear and love it. But it does seem to reflect a little.
I have the BRS screen top and the first one I did was to tight but the other two turned out, they include so much extra material I can redo them if needed.
Going by the underside of the other Euphylllia's having completely freshly exposed skeleton like that would make me suspect something is annoying them in the water column looking around your reef assuming parameters are In range iI would consider Allelopathy at the top of the list of potential smoking guns... Gorgonians for example are well known to be very strongly active on the Allelopathic scale, stony corals in particular being affective by it Definitely a system that would benefit from weekly use and change out of Activated Carbon I would say
Had a dino outbreak a few months ago (2020!!) and it almost completely wiped out my frogspawn and hammers....my RBTAs actually didn't make it although the aggressive blackouts Dr Tim's and other treatments may have finished them off. In the end, everything helped with the dinos, but blackouts and letting my phosphates and nitrates rise is what finally got rid of them completely. Dealing with some hair algae now, but I'll take that any day..... using Vibrant tanked both parameters, but I also think something within it encourages dinos as well. Many have noted the same, do you may want to cut that out. Good Luck.
I ended up going with clear view acrylics . I have the radions mounted on the back so had to make a cut out. The gaps are tiny probably a quarter of an inch. My blue spot jumped through the gap and wiggles his way out. My very small helfrichi fire fish jumped through the mesh and landed on top of it. I managed to save him though.
I just recently won a fight against dinos myself. 4 day blackout, increased phosphates, some sand shifters, mechanical removal, and I stopped scraping the algae off of the glass. It took about a month but it is all but gone at this point.
A wierd thing I did with my mp10s is to turn them over so they are not right side up but turned over. So the flow is set up to hit the rocks more so than a straight current.
If that feeding port aperture diameter could fit the auto feeder in it, then you could potentially get another feeding port and instead of having a square frame go around the auto feeder, it could just go through that round feeding port. On the video it looks like it could fit. Maybe no need for the cover? Just suggesting that because it seems like a much easier solution than having to cut the small pieces of the frame, to have it go around the feeder. Maybe if the feeding port doesn't fit, you could send the measurement to Deven and ask him to print one that does, for you? Depending on the distance of the gap between the inside of the feeder tube and the bracing on the tank, one side of the feeding port might have to be flat?
I just battled that same Dino. I stopped water changes, increased feeding, and changed filter socks every day. It was gone in about two weeks. BRS recommended using microbacter7 and vibrant, but I didn’t have as much luck with that.
When you are cutting aluminum on a miter saw you should use wood. Cut 2 pieces of wood and make them a 90 degree angle. Lay the aluminum on the wood now you have a wood fence and platform to cut on. Now cut the wood and aluminum at the same time making sure you don't cut thru the wood but slightly cutting it
Great ideal I tried it years ago with plastic it failed due to the plastic being to thin but that was years ago. What's the measures on the support your net are sitting on and can you put a link 🔗 where you got the net support. Hey I wanna see xmas tree videos your on my top 5 watch list you guys are funny 😄
I never used the red sea tops but can you turn the clips the other way? Looking at the video the clips seem longer on one side than the other. If you turn them 180 degree will it still work?
Hi , u should of gone straight over on the overflow , and got a piece of black plastic with a hole in it to cover the overflow box and over hang the gap in the tank , that would look much better and reduce noise from the overflow
For large tanks, I would prefer to have a couple of lids rather than one large, even with "bracing". Rare I need to take more than half of the tank top off and smaller "lids" are more manageable. Not everyone would agree but something to consider.
I thought D-D looks much cleaner than the Red Sea. D-D has a quality gloss finish, sits on top the edge of the glass, so it’s a complete seal, doesn’t have the visual messiness of the ridges in the Red Sea frame, and doesn’t have those unsightly tabs.
I used the smaller mesh but it started catching salt creep. You have to allow a extra cm for cutting the frame and tightening the mesh. I've found that out after a couple of mesh tops. You got a boo boo🤣
Thanks for the heads up on the salt creep! While mine has not caught any water and stayed clean for the 2.5 weeks I have it up, as soon as I started micro bubble scrubbing this morning, I saw water catching between the grids. I'm thinking to spray it down with RODI water every few days and flick / spray the net and see if that resolves the issue, will report back and keep everyone posted, thank you for the awareness Dee!
I'm no expert but I would guess flow and sand may take some part with the Octospawn.. My octo was doing the same thing.. I moved it out of the way of the flow.. However my situation was also a serious cause of low alk and calcium.. More to follow lol..
I also have the red sea net, but i don’t like it. If you want to change something later, you can’t without destroying the net. The red sea standard net gets damaged extremely easily. And why doesn’t red sea deliver the metal frame pieces delivered cut to the correct lengths fitting to their own tanks? I really think, red sea hasn’t fully thought through their product. Sorry to say, but i really think they could have done a lot better.
I have a 90 fowlr and a 29 biocube reef. My biocube is running out of space because the corals are growing so big. Thankfully I have a 75 gallon in my garage that I'm going to set up. I have hanging LED's and I'm gonna need a mesh top like this. Does anyone know the best way to setup the lights above the tank without hanging them from my ceiling, which is too high and without a canopy? Thanks
Too mcu flow on your euphyllia in my humble opinion. Did I recognise the music of "two gay reeefers" around 20:20? They crack me up. Congratulations on the diy. You did it perfectly and the mesh is amazing, hard to see on the screen. Keep on with the great content. All the best for year's end celebrations!
Why don’t you flip the red sea plastic tab around? It looks like one side is longer than the other. This might give you a little extra length for the tab to rest on the brace
Use epoxy on the guitar picks....super glue will get fragile and break....you need a JB weld two part epoxy sold at home depot, lowes, ace hardware type place
You really want to get some plastic and super glue it to top of lid to cover that gap by the auto feeder. I had an inch x inch gap where my lights attached to the tank and my Grade A Mocha Vinci managed to jump through it. If there is a gap a fish will find it :(
If it is Dino I killed mine literally overnight with uv. It has to go in the water column for that though so if it disappears overnight and comes back try UV
for that specific strain of Dino uv works. I had prorocentrum which don't move to the water column when the lights are out so uv has almost no effect on them. this is why you ID first before buying expensive countermeasures.
