General Aquarium Talk

[Vassili]

Lighting: All depends on what you want to grow. Anubias you can remove lights, HC and you wont have anywhere near enough, it all depends on your goals.

Id leave the fans in there no matter what, extra airflow and oxygen exchange is always a winrar.

[Lojikool]

Most people use polystyrene sheets under the tank. But any sort of foam would probably be suitable.

Fill it as high as you wish. If you have a hood, fill it so you cant see the waterline.

[mike-s]

Cool, i figure I'll see what i can dig up foam wise, I was aiming to get some dense foam around 8-10mm thick, i might even go and buy a high density camping mattress to sacrifice if needs be. My biggest concern is taking up the variances between the surface of the bench and the tank.

If i remember correctly there has been at least one or two tanks mentioned in this sub-forum that had cracked as they assumed that the table was a sufficiently smooth surface. I do not want to find i have this problem and am happy for things to look a little less slick for that insurance.

I have a hood as well as edging for the tank. The edging has about 3cm of overhang around the tank, and the hood slots in nicely on top of that. I will look into it all a little more once i get around to cleaning the tank out and it gets closer to setup day.

[Lojikool]

Just hit up a local fish store for some poly, or a Sydney fish forum for some cheap. Someone one here might even have some.

[Guts]

Finally pissed of my diy c02 kit and have gone pressurised, giddiup some good growth now!

[Oblong Cheese]

Originally Posted by Guts

Finally pissed of my diy c02 kit and have gone pressurised, giddiup some good growth now!

Nice!

On that note, can anyone tell me, aside from doing a lot of hard and difficult research to identify plants by myself, are there any retailers who can reliably sell me exactly what I am after? I am finding that many online stores/pet stores name plants by their common name, which it turns out isn't so common. What one store calls a plant another store calls another plant, and online is called something else again.

[mike-s]

Well i decided to replace some of the crappy particle board parts with some far more solid peices of 15mm ply and some solid square cut wood. Spent a good hour in bunnings selecting all the bits i needed, then a good 20 minutes getting the cuts done to 90% of the wood as i unfortunately don't have a circular /table saw. I finished work at 7am this morning and went straight to Bunnings from there, and from there to the garage. I got right into it and didn't go upstairs into our unit until about 4pm today. Sometimes you have to harness the enthusiasm when you've got it.

Halfway into the assembly of the new parts this afternoon I looked at the 2 offcuts of plywood (15x1200x600 x 2 of ) and realised it would be a smarter proposition to just scrap the old stand entirely so i don't have to have worries about 140kilo's of water causing structural failure in what shitty particle board is left. Nor will i have to worry about any of the rot from the wood i hadn't cut out propogating to the rest of the stand.

Since coming to this realisation I have already taken off all the bits I've added onto the original stand and have figured out what i am going to do with them on the new one. Tomorrow morning I'm dragging the "offcuts" back down to bunnings and get them cut to size. I also have a solid sized hammer here that will get a workout on the old stand once the new one has been completed.

A huge bonus of all this is that now I get to go from "making it fit what's already there " to "making it mine". I just hope my skill lives up to my ambition . Also importantly i will at least be assured that i have a totally flat surface to put the tank on top of, instead of the slightly flaky surface that is currently there.

I'm aiming to put pics up tomorrow, i just hope that i manage to complete all the drilling, sawing and assembly and have moved onto puttying and final sanding by midday.

[Agg]

Make sure you still use the foam tho. 10mm of polystyrene foam between glass and wood will even out any stress points. Given you're building the stand yourself now, allow a little edging to cover the bottom inch of the tank sides which will hide the poly and some of the gravel.

Also when making the stand make sure the vertical beams themselves are directly supporting the crossbeams. IE, don't have the tank or supporting beams "hanging" on the strength of nails/screws etc. Sounds obvious, but I've seen screwups before, and some with a lot more than 140L of warm swampy water involved..

[mike-s]

Cheers Agg, I was thinking of putting an edging around to hide the bottom rocks/foam now that i'm revamping it after having seen it on many commercial and home built tanks. Another bonus I guess is that it helps hold the tank "in place" in addition to the assistance the weight of the whole thing will give. Using the foam was however always still going to be a given, thanks for the confirmation though.

As to the vertical supports, I've taken care that the entire top is flush & square and that the plywood is level with the wood that I'm using for those vertical supports. The bottom is going to require me to cut various thickness "shims" of wood to equal everything out as unfortunately only half of the beams were exactly the right length, the other ones worked out to be about 3-4mm too short and will need a little something added to level the bottom of the supports with the plywood.

I am also using builders glue and copious quantities of countersunk screws to hold this thing together, so it isn't going to be flimsy, nor is it going to be dependant on some single shitty little screw to hold everything together.

[Guts]

Originally Posted by Oblong Cheese

Nice!

On that note, can anyone tell me, aside from doing a lot of hard and difficult research to identify plants by myself, are there any retailers who can reliably sell me exactly what I am after? I am finding that many online stores/pet stores name plants by their common name, which it turns out isn't so common. What one store calls a plant another store calls another plant, and online is called something else again.

Indeed, no more need to purchase so much damn sugar for the bottles haha.

There is no easy way, few stores use the scientific names, probably to save hassle with people trying to pronounce them!
Research online in forums or in books is your only solid solution, there is plenty of misinformation(online that is) but most of the time you can average out the results and come up with the correct identification.

Aquariums love to name there fish what ever they feel like too(sucking catfish anyone??), its a shame there aren't enough stores that take the whole business seriously.

[0M39A_1337]

Originally Posted by Guts

Aquariums love to name there fish what ever they feel like too(sucking catfish anyone??), its a shame there aren't enough stores that take the whole business seriously.

sucking catfish
suckerfish
algae eaters

ALL. MY. RAGE!!!

[Ken-f]

Hey guys,

Decided to set up a tank after seeing an awesome planted aquarium not long ago. I got a 160L tank and a new canister filter yesterday and have a few questions. Hoping you guys can enlighten me. ha. The problem I had many years ago is that the plants kept dying. I'm waiting some stuff to arrive so i can start my DIY CO2 contraption.

Questions:
1. Do you guys let the filter run 24/7? Or do you turn it off at night?
2. Do I still need to use my air pump and stone? I've never had a canister before.
3. How long do you leave the light on each day?
4. How do I know how much CO2 to put in? I don't want to harm the fish.
5. Fish! - Would there be a problem if i put a few guppies, neon tetras, cichlids (electric yellow/blue) and some of those.....'suckerfish' together?

[MotoJohnno]

Hi Ken, the cannister must always run 24/7. An air pump and stone would help airate the water and provide oxygen for the fish. However, it will also allow whatever CO2 you inject to escape much easier. There are a few ways of checking how much CO2 you should put in the tank. Ideally it should sit at 30ppm (parts per million). I suggest you hit up google for the many ways of checking in a more 'scientific' manner. The way I checked was by adding CO2 until either the PH got too high or the fish started gulping for air.

As for fish, chichlids require different water parameters to fish like guppies etc. Not only that but an electric yellow will eventually grow big enough to call guppies snacks.

Originally Posted by Ken-f

Hey guys,

Decided to set up a tank after seeing an awesome planted aquarium not long ago. I got a 160L tank and a new canister filter yesterday and have a few questions. Hoping you guys can enlighten me. ha. The problem I had many years ago is that the plants kept dying. I'm waiting some stuff to arrive so i can start my DIY CO2 contraption.

Questions:
1. Do you guys let the filter run 24/7? Or do you turn it off at night?
2. Do I still need to use my air pump and stone? I've never had a canister before.
3. How long do you leave the light on each day?
4. How do I know how much CO2 to put in? I don't want to harm the fish.
5. Fish! - Would there be a problem if i put a few guppies, neon tetras, cichlids (electric yellow/blue) and some of those.....'suckerfish' together?

[Ken-f]

Thanks for that really fast reply! Glad I asked here first. Was very tempted to buy the electric yellows I saw on the weekend...they were only about 2 inches long.

Can you recommend any nice and bright fish that would be suitable?
The tank is about 2.5ft long but is fairly high and deep.

[mike-s]

Well here is a pic from this afternoon.

since then i've put in biscuits to make the timber equal with the bottom of the plywood and started to put on the bottom timberwork.