What Makes An Ideal Fishtank Ornament (sponge Filter? Help)

[kat and james]

an ornament that houses your filter and heater, that is such a good idea.. i would never have thought of it!!

kat

 

[Torrean]

Yeah, I like natural too, but I'd like something natural looking that allows me to see the khulis.... Perhaps something like a coconut shell with a bit cut off so it lays flat against the glass, covered in java moss with a small hole for the loaches to go in?

Awesome Idea thanks a TON. I can cut any piece I make in half very easily. This will DOUBLE my profits easily. AWESOME. Will the fish use the piece the same or will this make it less attractive to them because it will be brighter inside?

an ornament that houses your filter and heater, that is such a good idea.. i would never have thought of it!!

kat

The filter I could do but I'd be reluctant to do anything with a heater. The water needes to flow freely around the heater and an ornament might prevent that. Also it might make the heater to attractive to other fish. Can fish get burned by heaters?


Keep them coming guys. I'm going to get my first batch of clay saturday hopefully. Anybody got any requests? The pieces will be very expensive at first until i can get my own kiln. like the one up top would have to be more than $50 for me to make a reasonable profit (approx. 10"X7"X11"). $25 to fire it and somewhere between $3-$6 dollars for the clay. Then add in the three hours of assembly not to mention all of the sanding and smoothing that i did as it dried. $50 sounds reasonable to me, what about you guys? the more pieces I can fire at once the cheaper the pieces will be. Once I get my own kiln the price should go down significantly. However, shipping is not counted in this $50 and would have to be covered by you or added to the price.

My math may be wrong on this. One piece costs $.025 per sq inch to fire. The piece measures 10" accross, 7" wide and 11" tall. What would the total cost to fire be?


EDIT: Any opinions about one large piece fused together with sealant versus many pieces held together by friction?

 

[soritan]

There's a DIY at petfish.net that shows how to make a sponge filter, nested inside a conch shell. I thought it looked rather nice, except that it'd be way too big for my tiny tanks.

 

[Torrean]

very interesting. Thank you.

I had thought about making one with a flexible air stone coiled around the bottom and maybe spiraling up the inside. This would increase the bacteria colonization that will naturally occur. My pot is unvitrified which means that water can pass through it. If that water is well oxygenated then the bacteria should colonize the ENTIRE pot. Now you've got me thinking about how to incorporate this sponge filter thing. TBH not really clear on how it works. My thought is that I could coil a flexible air stone around on the bottom of the piece then cover it with 2-3" of gravel. The air would bubble through the gravel causing aerobic bacteria to colonize the gravel thus making a filter and pretty bubbles. I know something is wrong with this idea, just don't know what.

http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=85297 (this is a more cut and dry version)


edit: ok apparently these things work by pulling water through the gravel, not by pumping air through. So if I fill a piece with gravel and top it with sponge and run a lift tube down to the bottom with airline running to the bottom, it should pull water from the top of the pot to the bottom and then pump it up through the tube and up out of the water, then it would spill back in clean?