Tikki Aquarium by thechoozen

The Base (continued)

With the mainboard tray in place, the computer portion of the aquarium was largely complete. But an open stand was neither very Tikki nor even attractive in general - it needed wrapped.

But before we move on, many people were curious as to what type of system was going to be used in the aquarium to begin with.

The system is comprised of largely spare parts - an old Shuttle XPC mainboard, a socket 939 Athlon 64 3400+ processor, 1GB of GSkill RAM, and an old ATI X700. For storage, we used a 750GB hard drive, and threw in a DVD-RW drive for our optical needs.

Anyhow, back to the build...


The aquarium base was wrapped with a very thin, bendable plywood, which was stapled on. This wrapping had a hole cut into it for the door, which would allow us access to the components.


With the door hole in place, the motherboard tray was re-attached to its sliders. After a couple tests, we were comfortable with the measurements and were assured proper clearance if we needed to access something.


Details to the base couldn't be done out of paper as they were in the top - but more bendable wood proved to be our friend. Pieces were nailed on to create the general shape, then bondo was applied and sanded to create the detail.