TANSU AQUARIUM STAND
This is my first "big" project, summer of 2000. My wife keeps aquariums as a hobby and when she purchased her first large tank we went shopping for stands. Neither of us liked the styles and quality of stands out there so, in my normal fashion, I opened my big mouth and said, "I can make something better than that."  She is serious about her hobby and wanted to set up the tank as a biotope, meaning everything in the tank is uniform in environment where it is naturally located geographically. This is a Southeast Asian tank so I started looking at Asian designs. I came across many tansu chests and we both approved of the look right away. So I set out to draw up plans and figure out how to build the chest.  As with all projects it was a big learning experience. At the time I only owned a small Delta bench top saw, a belt sander, a random-orbit sander, a DeWalt 2-HP router and various hand tools. Looking back at it, I'm surprised I ended up with what I have using only those tools.
	The majority of the chest is cypress. Since it's a light hardwood that naturally resists rot, it was a natural choice for use with an aquarium. The case is joined with mortise-and-tenon joinery, and the cherry stain and finish are Bartley's gel products.
	Holly (my wife) originally started keeping aquariums to provide entertainment for our cat. This is one of the RARE times she bothered to look at it.  This aquarium is a 58 gallon Oceanic.
	I secured the side panels in place with glass retainer clips so that if I wanted to change the panels I can easily pop out the old ones and pop in the new ones.
	The interior is bare as it is only used to house the large canister filter and various cleaning and feeding products.  I installed a night light to provide additional illumination and a power strip to plug everything into at one location. That's a Fluval 304 for all of you fish folks out there.
	The front panels slide back and forth in a mortise lined with nylon tape I picked up at Woodcraft.
	The panels and shoji-style doors are red-oak-faced 1/4" and 1/8" plywood.
	The top of the stand is simply a piece of 3/4" MDF set 1/4" below the top of the rail and stiles.  In order to cover its simply surface I used small and large aquarium gravel to fill up the shallow space.  It really adds to the distinct look for the entire unit.