Ch4Rlies New 2.5 Feet Tank Journal

[goldfinger]

Looking good Charlie!
Liking the natural looking sand!

 

[Ch4rlie]

 
Nearly completed.
 
Cloudy water due to water just added.
 
Need to add co2 system, get the new Eheim filter up and running when I get the filter media that I ordered, poret foam

 
And one last plant will go in there tomorrow, Crinum Calamistratum, possibly behind the dragon stone rock in corner....

 

[daizeUK]

Looks good!
Crinum is a plant I would love to try.  Where did you buy yours from Charlie?

 

[Ch4rlie]

Looks good!
Crinum is a plant I would love to try.  Where did you buy yours from Charlie?

 
Bought the crinum from Maidenhead Aquatics surpringly enough, near Hickstead in Surrey.
 
Not cheap though, £15 each though I got him down to 11 quid each since I bought 2 and also 4 lovely fire red RCS  (2 of these RCS already berried )
 
Beautiful plants though, lovely long green crinkled leaves, apparently good for cichlid tanks since they don't like the taste or something of these leaves.

 

[Ch4rlie]

Update time

 
Just received delivery of my poret foam which i ordered a while ago.
 
10PPI poret foam, quality seems decent

 
 

20 PPI poret, in green
 

 
You can see from the pictures, the difference in density and feels firm, much better than the usual coarse sponges i see at LFS.
 
These foam sheets are 2 inches thick and 12 inches square. Plan is to cut these into circles thats makes a snug fit into my eheim cannsiter filter, and fill thie cannister full of these poret foam, think 1 layer of 10PPi and 2 or 3 layers of 20PPI.
 
Plan is to try for a filter that will end up as dentrification filter.

 

[Ch4rlie]

After a while of faffing about and getting these cut to size and shape to my satisfaction, finally ready to add to the filter....
 

 
for some reason my iphone decided these green foams is light blue
 
Have cut one circle in half thickness, so that it fills the cannister entirely and fitted the tops of filter housing cap.

 
  
 
Hard to see due to green colour of eheim housing, but there is one layer of 10PPI and 2 and half layers of 20PPi poret foam.
 
That should do the trick....now need to test this out to see what flow is like.......

 

[Ch4rlie]

Have not set up the filter as per previous posts yet as the tank is full of sand floating about, so I put in my internal Fluval U2 and filled that with filter floss, that has helped greatly in clearing the debris.
 
An unforseen problem that I have had since not had this kind of fine sand before, a lesson learned there, do not disturb the sand if possible.....

 
Anyway, have been getting on with other things that has been on "the to do" list....
 
First, inside my cabinet, the shelf had been taken out to accomodate the Co2 cannister and had planned to refit the shelf for ages but never got around to doing that.... until now

 
First, got a piece of MDF cutoff for free from a local hardware store, I then cut the shelf to size and cut out these semi circles as you can see in pic.
 

 
I then put up the new switched extension into the cabinet, great thing is, it show via  led's which plug is switched on / off so much easier rather than having to remove plugs every time you do maintenance on the tank

 

 
Added the shelf to see if fits nicely, and indeed starting to look good...
 

 
Added black slate trim to the edge to define the look of shelf and matches the cabinet, am pleased how this has turned out

 
Also did 4 coats of varnish to help waterproof the wood

 

 
Callum, my 11 month old boy, keep coming to these plugs as he has just recently started to crawl everywhere and is interested in anything that has lights on them

 
Time to move these plug now methinks...
 

 
Put up plastic trunking on the wall and hidden the wiring cables inside that.


 
Put up the extension plugs onto the wall which is hidden behind cabinet so Callum cannot see the lights and try to get to it (thats the theory anyway

)


 
Cabinet doors fitted back on....


 
Job's a good 'un

 
A sneak peak at my tank, can just see the fluval u2 thats filled with filter floss in corner thats taking care of all the debris, tank clearing up nicely, glass needs another clean though

 

[TallTree01]

Good work n that cabinet charlie, wish I had the inclination to tidy up my cords. I'm quite ashamed of my little fire hazard to be honesty but they're so tangled at this point!
Hopefully the mist will clear away fast.

 

[gmc1]

I like the tube storage for scissors and Baster etc.ideal

 

[Akasha72]

I was gong to comment about the storage for the baster too gmc! Great idea... I too need to tidy up my cables. I've been wanting the extention lead hung on the cabinate for ages but my diy skills are limited and if I ask my Dad he'll just say 'nothing wrong with it as it is' .... in other words 'if you want it tidying do it yourself!'
 
I also like the idea of a switched extention ... nothing worse than fiddling with plugs on maintenance day.
 
The tanks looks very nice Ch4rlie. I've just had to add my sponge filter to my tank making it now look untidy but the heatwave is now affecting the fish and they're all sluggish. I'm hoping the extra air will perk em up and also that the tank temps come down soon. 27 degrees is too hot for a lot of my fish

 

[Ch4rlie]

Thanks you guys

 
The tube storage for the scissors, tweezers and baster is very simply a 40mm sink drainage pipe, brand new of course, cut to size and fitted with a pipe holder with one single screw, could not be simpler, pretty cheap too
 
Am actually planning to add another one of these, one tube holder is simply not enough to store all these bits properly, so thats gonna be another pic on this journal soon when thats done

 
And yep Akasha, this heat wave is causing my tanks to rise in temperature as well, but not as high as 27C thankfully, touching 25.5C so far, which does not effect my stocking too much luckily. I live on ground floor block of flats stays pretty cool inside compared to outside.
 
But today, much cooler outside at a nice balmy 30C for a change

 

[Akasha72]

my flat is top floor so I get the heat. The living room also faces more or less South and it's got huge 7ft window so I get the full sun, at the hottest part of the day beating down on my tank. I've had the blinds closed 24 hours a day and the windows open  and I'm running a tower cooling fan aswell but nothing is working! It's been a bit cooler here today though and it rained a bit ago and so it's really quite cool in the flat now. I'm hoping by morning that the tank temp is back into the normal range (which is 25 degrees)

 

[daizeUK]

I hit 27 deg on my 64L tank during yesterday's heatwave but it's back down to normal today.
 
Nice work on the cabinet, very neat and tidy!  I bought one of those magnetic tool strips for scissors & tweezers, works a treat, until I found out that my nice shiny sand scraper is non-magnetic so it won't stick!
 
Where will the Eheim go?

 

[Ch4rlie]

Where will the Eheim go?

 

 
Must admit I did not think of the eheim filter

 
A great question and just in time too before I put everything back into the cabinet.
 

 
As you can see from the picture above, the filter just about fits under the shelf of the cabinet, but only without the filter stand (next to the eheim in pic).
 
Darn, looks like I need to raise the shelf up by 10 - 15mm to make it fit with the stand, easy enough job to do, just a little annoyed with myself for not thinking of that

 
Thanks Daize for raising that question up before I put everything away and sorted everything before the filter.
 
Good timing

 

[NickAu]

Memo to self, Must sort out the power cables like charlie did. Mine are so tangled that calling it a fire hazard would be putting it mildly.