My Project Tank

[Asidhunter]

So i have been toying with the idea of setting up a tropical aquarium for some time and today i came one step closer to my goal. This morning a work collegue rang me up to tell me she had got hold of a "HUGE" tank for free from her brother, but it needed cleaning out ect. I thought she was exagerating on its size so i told her to bring it round and i would take if off her hands

  then it arrived..... this thing is a monster, or at least to me it is. 30 inches high and 24 inches square so 283L if im working it out right, anyone who has seen my few previous posts will know i was looking at a 190L so a fair bit bigger

. All she asked for it was a shift swap which i happy took bargin in my eyes.
 
As you will see in the photos it does need a good clean but it came with most of the essentials:
 
- 200W adjustable juwel heater
- Tetratec 600l/h filter
- 30lb of gravel
- Some Bogwood
- Two arcada tropical lights (18W each) in the hood
- and finally 10 of these stones ( anyone know what they are called)

 
On to the monster as my GF has taken to calling it
 
Front View Light On
 

 
 
Front View light Off
 

 
 
Side View Light Off
 

 
So any views on what could eventually live in this would be great still a long way off gonna take me a week just to gut the thing, and maybe remove the juwel background currently fixed on the inside.

 

[This Old Spouse]

Wow! Lucky you!

 

[JenJ]

Lucky! It may be a bit of an awkward shape - 2ft long would limit your stocking somewhat. But the height may be enough for angels? I have no experience with angels - not sure if 2ft length is anywhere near enough.
 
You could do a massive school of 1 or 2 species of smaller fish though! Cardinals or something would look stunning.
 
You may also want to look into upgrading the filter - the 'ideal' on here is frequently given as 10 x volume, and whilst that is unrealistic in many cases, the one you have acquired is only 2 x volume and you may find it a bit lacking.

 

[Asidhunter]

I was thinking the filter was under powered for the volume of the tank, i see a lot of people talking about external filters and internal filters im guessing that externals are easier to maintain ect or is it just down to the preference of each person?
 
Wet vac will be used tomorrow to get rest of the gravel out but unsure of how to go about cleaning the backgound inserts that are in there may just take them out to disinfect them and stuff of just leave them out all together and get a backing instead.

 

[JenJ]

I was thinking the filter was under powered for the volume of the tank, i see a lot of people talking about external filters and internal filters im guessing that externals are easier to maintain ect or is it just down to the preference of each person?
 
Wet vac will be used tomorrow to get rest of the gravel out but unsure of how to go about cleaning the backgound inserts that are in there

may just take them out to disinfect them and stuff of just leave them out all together and get a backing instead.

Externals are *much* easier to maintain! Plus they're usually more efficient and more powerful. I even have an external on my 60 litre now, (but that wasn't intentional when I bought it!).
 
My personal preference for backing is not to have any - just paint the back of the tank

 

[Asidhunter]

I have found a few externals in my price range that look fairly good, not 10x though only 5x (1400l/h) but then again i have got a few weeks yet and pay day is coming soon so that will boost my wallet so may look again with a higher amount to spend in mind.

 

[eaglesaquarium]

That's actually a fairly small footprint compared to the volume, and the most important thing for stocking is the surface area of the tank with the air.  First, I'd suggest an airstone or two.  With that much height, the amount of time for the bubbles to be in contact with the water will actually help with oxygen transfer.  Definitely will help you here.
 
 
Next, you want to keep species that don't really need a lot of swimming room.   I'm thinking that this tank might be much better set-up more like a "nano" tank, but with layers....  A really tall piece of driftwood that you could attach plants to would really bring out an interesting look, and I'd stick with much smaller species, like those mentioned in the nano-section.  Trigonostigma espei are my favorite of these.

 

[tomtomtom1230]

Completely agree. A really interesting but elongated piece of wood would look pukka in that with various surface clinging plants on it all the way up, some moss. Yeah well nice

Definitely go with a soily/sandy substrate unless that's pushing the boundaries of your budget a bit. Get some nice tall plants and a moss carpet of some description, edged and broken up with some interesting pebbles or rocks at the bottom.
 
5 times per hour isn't bad but it's not ideal. You'll get much better results in terms of mechanical and biological filtration (with the latter being more important for the fishes' welfare) if you aim for 8 times or more an hour. You could run two filters in theory and it's a widely practised technique as far as I'm aware but it might be more budget conscious to head toward a single filter setup which is more like Fluval FX5 territory. If it was me and I had the money, I'd probably use 2 Fluval 406's; easy maintenance and enough filtration and luckily (for me anyway), spare parts are everywhere! You could attach a spray bar to one outlet pipe, aiming it down the back of the tank and use the other in it's default 'swan neck' set up, allowing for some extra surface movement. I dunno, just running through ideas off the top of my head!

 

[Asidhunter]

Im liking the drift wood idea, one thought ive had is to have the tank split almost diagonally with the rear corner banked and quite heavily planted sloping down to a gravel or sand area at the front corner. Then maybe place the air stones within the plants to hide the ugly tubes
 
Definatly looking at using some smaller schooling species, would anyone think it possible to have a "feature" pair of larger colourful fish such as angels as Jenj suggested.
 
When it comes to filters im leaning towards an external as i have seen a few 2000 l/h one for around £100 with some fairly good reviews.
 
Would you believe that today i found it easier to get hold of ammonia than a bucket and hose

 

[Asidhunter]

I decided to remove the inserts from the tank, didn't take much the silicon pads holding them on were pretty poor.
 

 
 
Time to scrub the sucker into submission so i can play around with a mock layout using this lot
 
 

 

[eaglesaquarium]

24" by 24" footprint is fairly short for angels.  The 30" height works, but I don't think it would work for a full grown angel.

 

[Asidhunter]

just done a quick mock up for a hardscape layout, will no doubt change a million times just tonight. Silicone is a pain to clean most of it still looks brown and discoloured no matter how much scrubbing i do
 
View from above, top right inside the stones will be planted heavily while the area bottom left outside the stones will be sand or gravel
 

 
 
Front view, going to try and have the wood lean over a little less so it doesn't touch the stones. Will be higher once its embeded in the substrate so shouldn't be too hard to do
 

 
 
 
And last but not least, the side view. This is the angle the tank will be seen from the most as i sit on the sofa next to it to do my university coursework (like i should be doing right now

) you will also see the tank from this side when you enter the room so i think this side really does have to look just right.
 

 
Why do i have the feeling this is going to be a picture heavy thread lol
 
Asidhunter

 

[eaglesaquarium]

Looks really good like that.

 

[tomtomtom1230]

Some Sumatra wood would look cool instead of bogwood. The sumatra wood would make it look mangrove-y and cast some cool shadows as well as providing cover for the fish. It'd have to be  a big piece, mind. You could put the Sumatra wood in so the base or join of the wood is at the top and having it resting on the ends of the branches. Just a thought

that'd be ideal for tetras and rams in the tank. What's the tap water like in sunny Bolton?

 

[Asidhunter]

Thanks

 
Just tried running the filter in a smaller tank my gf has and apart from making a lot of noise nothing happened, so i left it running for a while incase it needed time to prime still nothing

oh well will just get an external with higher flow

oh how i  love spending money
 
Not got a test kit yet gonna get a master kit off internet, i do know we have soft water up here but thats as far as my knowledge goes at this point in time