55 Gallon From Old To New

[cowgirluntamed]

Wanted to upgrade to my first big tank. Bought a second hand 55 gallon off of Craigslist. After doing some research....I am taking the tank completely apart to redo the entire silicone seams and sealing. I think this was done before as well from looking at the tank. I am also going to be building my own stand out of mostly 2x4s and a bit of plywood.

It will have a fluval aquasky LED light 48 inch(love this on my 20!). And it will have a SunSun 303b on it with fluval prefilter media, course, medium, fine sponges, polyfil quilt batting, and fluval biomax to complete it. I have 2 aqueon pro200 heaters that will go in it as well(yay for income tax money!!). I will be adding an air stone in it as well because my female bristlenose pleco, Spots, loves hers and she will go in this tank.

I hope to be able to do plants in it though I may not get them all at once so I will be cycling this tank with ammonia. I want different kinds of anubias-nana, nangi, hastofilia, coffeefolia. I am also starting to love crypts as well so will have lots of those. I have wendtii brown in my 5 gallon and it's awesome. I love some of the others too and I think I will do a small variety for a foreground instead of dwarf sag(or do both). I also love the crinum calamisratum so may try one or two of those as well. I also want watersprite and frogbit floating as well. I will be planting in playsand and I can do root tabs if needed and some trace nutrients as well. But mostly it will be fairly low maintenance on the plant side.

My stocking of this tank will be 1 bristlenose female pleco and schools of glowlight tetras(favorites!), black neon tetras, harlequin rasboras, pristella tetras(regular color), and von Rio flame tetras. I also want about 12 Cory cats as well. This sounds like a lot after I typed it out so I may take out one of those schools....lol. Probably either the pristellas or the von Rio flames.

Let me know how this sounds to you guys and if I should think of any kinds of other stocking on plants/fish. It may change between now and when I get it up and going anyway. Oh and all the equipment is already purchased as well.

I will make a new post soon of the first part of taking the tank apart as I finally got the rim off! It was already cracked in a couple of corners and by the brace but I added another crack to one corner. I'm hoping the gorilla super glue gel will work! Will update soon with pics!

 

[Munroco]

Sounds like a lot of work but I'm sure it will be worth it. Nothing quite like a nice planted tank with shoals of fish swimming through the vegetation.

 

[cowgirluntamed]

Picture time!!

Here is a first picture of the tank before it had anything done.


Rim off!! That took forever.... I had to use a multi paint tool that had a hook like thing on it to get a lot of silicone off. Then more force than I thought to rock the rim back and forth to break the rest of the seal on it.


Unfortunately the rim was cracked in four, almost five places. Here are the before glue pictures.












As you can see, not very good. And there is a picture where you can see some adhesive or something on the rim that went all the way across. I took some acetone to clean it...it worked but it started taking the black off...don't know if this is painted plastic or it just wanted to eat it away. It's still fine though which is good! The glue seems to be holding just fine! Gorilla super glue gel was used.

After pictures!!















Well, that's all for now! Next up is removing as much silicone in and around the tank before turning it over to take off the bottom rim! Hopefully that won't be as hard to remove....lol!

 

[cowgirluntamed]

Got most of the old silicone off of the tank today. Took a few pictures of the mess! Lol. And as I turned the tank over to take the bottom rim off, which I thought would be hard to take off since the top rim was hard...well, much to my surprise it was barely on there!! It basically popped right off when I went to move the tank closer to the chair I wanted to sit in to work on it! Talk about a scare...I thought I broke something!! Only had to do a tiny bit of prying to get it off but that was it. Yay! However...I did notice that all four corners are broken on the bottom rim so I will have to glue those like I did the top rim. Someone else most definitely took this whole thing apart before like I'm doing now. Which is what I thought. Anyway, here are a few pictures!

 

[cowgirluntamed]

Got the tank apart!! Yay! Now for final clean up and putting it all back together! The plan for that is to do the tank itself first, then the top trim with that. Then after at least 24 hours, maybe longer....I will turn it over and put the bottom trim on quickly and then turn it over and let dry. 48 hours or longer is what I want to give it before testing!!



And here is the mess I made. Still not quite done yet. I have a bit more silicone on the glass to get off first before I take it to clean it up with bar keepers secret in powder form!

 

[cowgirluntamed]

Hmmm...won't let me edit for some reason. I meant bar keeper's friend.

 

[BeckyCats]

Wow! I am so impressed. I would never have thought to do this or been brave enough to try if I had thought of it. I'll be following your progress with interest.

I'm intrigued by your stock list too. I've been very interested in the glolight tetras but read that they mostly hang at the bottom and I have enough down there already. They are so pretty though. The coppery color is so beautiful.

 

[cowgirluntamed]

Small update...finally got the glass mostly clean. Need to do some touchups though for places that I missed. And there is a bit more silicone I want to try to get off. Then I can get it put together!!

Also, I think my stock list has changes a little! I think I want some bigger groups of some fish so here is the new layout...

7 black neon tetras(these are currently what I have. Not bad fish but a bit active for my glowlights. Lol)
15 glowlight tetras(they sort of do stay closer to the bottom but if I can get some tall plants to grow plus some driftwood I bought in there right, I'm hoping they will enjoy it better. Not to mention the larger group of them.)
15 harlequin rasboras(I kind of like the black version of these after looking at some of akasha's pictures but not sure I can get them. out of stock.
10-15 von Rio flame tetras(I'm not sure how much I can get my tank to be planted...trying to find a good fit! Working on that in my 20. I plan on getting some crypt retrospiralis soon, I know crypt wendtii is growing well in my 5 gallon even with cyanobacteria in there....bleh.)
10 peppered Cory cats.
1 super red calico bristlenose. Unfortunately my other regular bristlenose female passed recently.

Another thing with this tank is when I get it back together, I have to test it outside. My parents tub isn't quite big enough!! So I want to wait till the temperature stabilizes a bit and it quits raining...lol. hopefully that will be soon!!

 

[rodders666]

Interesting, I've always been scared off buying second hand tanks because I was unsure on their stability. I actually never thought to do this, so interested in seeing the progress.

 

[cowgirluntamed]

I'll try to update this soon. I've had other things going on so haven't worked on it much. I've almost got it nice and clean though so once that's finished I'll get it put together and get more updates!