200 Litre Now Complete

[joeskandal]

nice one, cheers.
Well our tank is 4ft, 200 L so will be using pretty much the same as you.

just thought i would share with you a pic of our 200L tank that we just pimped yesterday, the one i'm considering for LEDs.

before

after

also, is that plant in front of the wood real? and if so, what is it?
It looks really nice.

 

[jkilby]

I am glad you changed your substrate, that first one is slightly on the wild side !!!. All the plants are real, can't remember the name off the top of my head, I have all the tags in a drawer somewhere, I will dig them out and find out what it is for you.

 

[joeskandal]

I am glad you changed your substrate, that first one is slightly on the wild side !!!. All the plants are real, can't remember the name off the top of my head, I have all the tags in a drawer somewhere, I will dig them out and find out what it is for you.

wicked, thanks.
Yeah, that red gravel was a bit loud, i don't know what drugs the previous owners of the tank were taking to make that decision.
We just pushed most of it to the back right hand corner, to build up our caved area a bit, there are a few more pics of it HERE

 

[jkilby]

Found it, that was easier than I thought, I have all my bits from the tank in one drawer!!. I have two, both in front of the wood in the picture (the smaller plants), they are Cryptocoryne wendtii brown's. They just caught my eye in my local Maidenhead aquatics when I decided to go down the real plant route, in their 'potted' plant range, about £3 each if I remember right.

 

[joeskandal]

ahh cool.
Which Maidenhead Aquatics was it you went to, as the one near us didn't have much in the last couple of times.

I can't believe i'm about to say this, but p** at **me (cough) near us have a good stock of live plants.
Might have to look out for those plants in the future, they would look great planted on top of our caves.
See that christmas tree moss in our tank, we want that to eventually grow downwards, creating a curtain over the cave entrances.

 

[jkilby]

I got them from the Northampton MA, most of my live stuff has come from them. The below two pictures are my inspiration for my 700L tank, won't do it the same, but definitely the feel I want to go for, I love the tree effect they have going on

 

[joeskandal]

aye, that looks pretty sweet like.
Its like an aqua valley!
700L, wow thats big.
My wife used to have a 6ft tank in her old house, before we got together (wish she had kept it) but they had to take out their living room window to get it into the house!!

What fish do you have in your current set up then, the one in your sig?

 

[jkilby]

I have a carpenter friend that has designed a cabinet for me will basically create an artificial wall in the room in which the tank will be held, so it can been viewed from both sides, so I can sit in my office area and look through the tank into the lounge. Heck of a project and it has been more than just the tank, I have had to alter furniture so that it will fit !!

 

[joeskandal]

haha yeah, i can imagine.,
Thats what she did, like built it as a false wall.
With a tank that big are you not tempted to set up a saltwater tank?
If my wife can get hold of that tank from her ex, the 6 footer, then i think i will do that.
Spend any amounts of money on live rock, and living reefs etc.
IMO i reckon that huge amount of space will be hard to fill with such small fish, you know?
I like the idea of lots of rock, being built right up in parts, and loads and loads of places for the fish to hide, and keep big things like damsels, cardinalfish etc.
Saying that though, we have done pretty well building up the caved area in our tank, so with careful planning, you can probably achieve the same look with frsh waters.
Keep me updated on this project mate, sounds very interesting.

 

[jkilby]

My first thought was to marine, but a tank that size, you would be approaching £700 just on live rock, thats before all the technical gizmos that are required, sump tanks etc. I am going cichlids, as they can get quite big, some of the ones I looked at today get to 10-12" so would decimate shoals of small fish and they would see my Khuli loaches as worms to eat!. Maybe one day, when the 700L is complete I will look at ripping out the cupboard under the stairs and put a marine there, but that makes this project look like a walk in the park and if I get to that point, it would probably be easier to get a different house and that is really taking the hobby too far. Search on Google for the chap in Nottingham that converted his basement into a tank, he swims with them to clean the tank, now that is just going too far, not that I wouldn't be tempted if I had a bottomless wallet, which alas I haven't.