10 Gallon With Malaysia Driftwood

[Chad]

I'm going to break down the 6 gallon and upgrade to a 10 gallon. I have an old piece of Malaysian driftwood I just haven't been able to bring myself to get rid of. It's sat around for the last 5 or 6 years just wanting to be used. Now is it's chance!
 
This picture is just the wood sitting in the tank so I can look at it. The main work done so far was to move the old tank off my desk so I could put this one where it was. This tank used to be the auto top off resivior on my reef tank but since the new sump work I did it was freed up and I thought hey, why not use it instead of the 6 gallon...I had no good answer for myself so I said go for it to myself and I did.
 

 

[FreshwaterAfishianado]

That is an awesome looking piece of driftwood. what do you plan on keeping in this tank?

 

[Ny82]

That is an awesome looking piece of driftwood. 

 
+1 looks great. Can't wait to see this tank come together. 

 

[Chad]

It's a little hard to tell from this photo, which makes me sad...but I painted the back of the tank using paint for stained glass windows. I like my tanks see through but I wanted this one to have some blue in the back. In person, it's actually quite stunning (if I do say so myself) which is why I am sad that it doesn't show up on photos as well.
 

 
In real life the color is nice, it shows light well, and the brush marks (intentional) give it a since of texture.
 
I'm super pleased with the effect. I recommend this technique to anyone looking for something a little different than the standard backgrounds. You can use any color of the stain you like.

 

[Chad]

I took the petrified wood out of my 6 gallon and am using it to prop up the large piece of drift wood and there is one piece I like that I sort of stuck into the substrate so I could see it and to add piece to plant around.
 
The tank is empty in this photo but has water in it now.
 

 

[Ny82]

Can sort of see the colour. I like the brush marks too. I hate when the lighting makes it hard to show what it looks like in person 

 I just cut a bin bag and stuck it on the back of both of mine 

 
Really loving that wood, do you know what you want to keep in it yet or is it a secret 

 

[Chad]

I hooked up the little filter to clear up the water and put the LED light on it. It looks much better now. I put in my anubias in the corner, not sure it will stay there. You can see the blue better in this photo.

 

 

[Meeresstille]

That's very creative, painting it with stained glass paint. Just a couple of weeks ago I have thought about what kind of opaque, plastic sheet-like materials are out there, looked at the school supplies, there are some project covers, but they're not big enough....stained glass paint! Great idea!

 

[Chad]

Thanks. I was looking for paint that would stick to glass at the hobby store and came across this. They had examples of glass planted with it that looked quite nice so I gave it a shot. In person the effect is pretty high end. Meaning it looks like you have a tank made from stained glass. The thing that is sort of annoying me right now is that I have to put a heater, filter, and Co2 unit in and that will really ruin the clean look. I wish I had thought of including a sump like on my reef tank. Then I could have put all that stuff in there and not worried about it. Maybe I still will. I could use a HOB overflow or design one that would be low profile and use the 6 gallon tank I was going to toss as the sump. It would work.

 

[Ny82]

That blue really looks good. It's coming together really well

 

[Chad]

Thanks. I was planning on reusing my plants but the more I look at it I think a different selection is in order. Next week the LFS where I get my plants is having an anniversary sale so I will wait and see what they have then.

 

[Chad]

So I managed to get all the fish out of the old tank, which wasn't easy since they are all fast moving micro fish and the pigmy cory can hide behind a bit of gravel they are so small and then I took out the plants and carefully got the shrimp.
Well...turns out there were LOTS more baby shrimp than I had thought there were. I have been fishing them out one by one over the last week trying to get them all. NO SHRIMP LEFT BEHIND!
This pic shows just how tiny they are which makes it a delicate thing to catch them.

 

[Ny82]

Oh my god-I didn't even see that! Wow they are very small! Very cute! That's good you got them all.

 

[Chad]

I need to clean the outside of the glass and get the filter moved around then I will post a new shot of the tank. I'm not 100% sure about the plant layout but we'll see...should be tomorrow.

 

[Ny82]

Can't wait I'm sure it looks good.