RipSlider
Fish Crazy
- Joined
- Feb 24, 2006
- Messages
- 210
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No pictures at the moment, initially this is just a place for my thoughts and planning. Will be adding pictures as I go along though.
Situation at the moment:
moved house recently, and Sp00ky was kind enough to take my fish, keeping most of them and looking after, until I rebuild, a couple of "keepers".
At the moment, I'm planning the set up of the new tank. I have one to put in the front room, and one to put in the dining room, this is the front room thread, and I will get around to the living room later.
First job is to decide which tank to use. It was going to be my 1,100l, but I've just lifted then ends of a couple of floorboards, and I'm not sure they have the strength to bare the big tank, so I'll either reinforce the floor, which is a pain as I had to do that last time, or use the 600 l tank.
Both base units are very heavily re-inforced 1 1/8" pine units. These look deep, but actually have shallow drawers, allowing me to stash filtration etc behind them. The other option is, like at my last house, to drill a series of 1 inch holes out of the lounge wall and run the filtration in the garage. This is a really convinient way of handling filtration, but drilling 4x 1 inch holes in a structural wall means it's a whole load of extra paperwork when you come to sell your house.
Both hoods are also built in thick pine, but I varnished them, and they ended up looking horrible, so today I've stripped and sanded them, and then added 3 coats of danish oil. When this is polished, and then waxed, it will look like natural wood, but be completely water proof, and look a lot better.
Equipment list at the moment i.e what was running on the old tank big tank:
1x fluval fx5 in a fairly battered condition ( held together with G clamps )
1x deltec fluid bed filer, filled with sand
1x 25W UV tube
2x 250W heaters
4x 48" t5 lights ( 3x dayGlo, 1x Atanic White )
Things to think about: I really dislike the FX5 ( only brought it as an emergency replacement for my ProIII which had a hammer dropped on it rather explosively by my dear lady wife ) so will probably go back to a pro III
I want to add ozone to this tank, in order to have healthier fish and reduce the maintaince. This will be an own design, basically a 6 foot long Perspex tube with either a few limewood diffusers or possibly a special type of bubble plate fron the USA, which will give very tiny bubbles. This will vent directly to atmosphere. There will be a very large bag of carbon sitting on the top to convert 03 -> 02. This will be build just like a simple skimmer, but still working on how to plumb it in.
I want to try to reduce the amount of electro-magnetic flux that teh fish are exposed to, as there are a lot of electical items in the lounge. I read a fascinating article about a chap who had virtually eliminated all disease from his discus tanks by making a series of titanium rings connected to earth that were placed in the tank. Will borrow a flux meter to see what sort of issue I'm dealing with, and then try to see if these are commercially available. If not, I'll get one made for me.
Not too happy with the lights. Think I might change to 4 of the same tube, something between a White atanic and DayGlo, possibly the PowerGlo tubes.
Depeding on the fish species I select, I might run in a bottled CO2 system. More for controlling pH levels than for plants, but lots of plant growth is an added benefit.
Inside the tank:
Some form of large New World cichlid ( 6-10 ) thinkin Sev's, Festivals, Acara's or Urau's.
20-30 dither fish - either red line torpedo barbs or odessa barbs
10-15 Brochis ( essentially Jumbo cory's)
Possibly - shoal of oto's or some form of bristlenose. I have a friend who has 100+ oto's breeding in his main 1,000l comminuty tank, and they look fantastic. Bristlenoses bigger, so safer, and also cheaper.
Aqua scaping: Currently thinking a mixture of Soil/gravel for the substrate. Lots of bog wood, some thin, tall growing vallis or similar, and leaves on the bottom as well. If I go with the 1,100 l tank, I will try to get a single huge piece of bog wood - the base of a tree. Otherwise I'll replicate a roots system nd make lots of caves in the wood.
I want the water to be tinged with brown, so won't be washing the bog wood. Can also do some short term filtering with carbon if too much. Will also probably add a few liters of peat granuales into the filtration.
SO much to think about... have set myself a target to get the tank filled with water and filtration plumed in for start of january, so need to move fairly quickly.
Any comments/thoughts greatfully recieved.
Steve
Fish
Situation at the moment:
moved house recently, and Sp00ky was kind enough to take my fish, keeping most of them and looking after, until I rebuild, a couple of "keepers".
At the moment, I'm planning the set up of the new tank. I have one to put in the front room, and one to put in the dining room, this is the front room thread, and I will get around to the living room later.
First job is to decide which tank to use. It was going to be my 1,100l, but I've just lifted then ends of a couple of floorboards, and I'm not sure they have the strength to bare the big tank, so I'll either reinforce the floor, which is a pain as I had to do that last time, or use the 600 l tank.
Both base units are very heavily re-inforced 1 1/8" pine units. These look deep, but actually have shallow drawers, allowing me to stash filtration etc behind them. The other option is, like at my last house, to drill a series of 1 inch holes out of the lounge wall and run the filtration in the garage. This is a really convinient way of handling filtration, but drilling 4x 1 inch holes in a structural wall means it's a whole load of extra paperwork when you come to sell your house.
Both hoods are also built in thick pine, but I varnished them, and they ended up looking horrible, so today I've stripped and sanded them, and then added 3 coats of danish oil. When this is polished, and then waxed, it will look like natural wood, but be completely water proof, and look a lot better.
Equipment list at the moment i.e what was running on the old tank big tank:
1x fluval fx5 in a fairly battered condition ( held together with G clamps )
1x deltec fluid bed filer, filled with sand
1x 25W UV tube
2x 250W heaters
4x 48" t5 lights ( 3x dayGlo, 1x Atanic White )
Things to think about: I really dislike the FX5 ( only brought it as an emergency replacement for my ProIII which had a hammer dropped on it rather explosively by my dear lady wife ) so will probably go back to a pro III
I want to add ozone to this tank, in order to have healthier fish and reduce the maintaince. This will be an own design, basically a 6 foot long Perspex tube with either a few limewood diffusers or possibly a special type of bubble plate fron the USA, which will give very tiny bubbles. This will vent directly to atmosphere. There will be a very large bag of carbon sitting on the top to convert 03 -> 02. This will be build just like a simple skimmer, but still working on how to plumb it in.
I want to try to reduce the amount of electro-magnetic flux that teh fish are exposed to, as there are a lot of electical items in the lounge. I read a fascinating article about a chap who had virtually eliminated all disease from his discus tanks by making a series of titanium rings connected to earth that were placed in the tank. Will borrow a flux meter to see what sort of issue I'm dealing with, and then try to see if these are commercially available. If not, I'll get one made for me.
Not too happy with the lights. Think I might change to 4 of the same tube, something between a White atanic and DayGlo, possibly the PowerGlo tubes.
Depeding on the fish species I select, I might run in a bottled CO2 system. More for controlling pH levels than for plants, but lots of plant growth is an added benefit.
Inside the tank:
Some form of large New World cichlid ( 6-10 ) thinkin Sev's, Festivals, Acara's or Urau's.
20-30 dither fish - either red line torpedo barbs or odessa barbs
10-15 Brochis ( essentially Jumbo cory's)
Possibly - shoal of oto's or some form of bristlenose. I have a friend who has 100+ oto's breeding in his main 1,000l comminuty tank, and they look fantastic. Bristlenoses bigger, so safer, and also cheaper.
Aqua scaping: Currently thinking a mixture of Soil/gravel for the substrate. Lots of bog wood, some thin, tall growing vallis or similar, and leaves on the bottom as well. If I go with the 1,100 l tank, I will try to get a single huge piece of bog wood - the base of a tree. Otherwise I'll replicate a roots system nd make lots of caves in the wood.
I want the water to be tinged with brown, so won't be washing the bog wood. Can also do some short term filtering with carbon if too much. Will also probably add a few liters of peat granuales into the filtration.
SO much to think about... have set myself a target to get the tank filled with water and filtration plumed in for start of january, so need to move fairly quickly.
Any comments/thoughts greatfully recieved.
Steve
Fish
