3-Tank Setup

Good morning all!
I've started with two new setups. The first one is the 3-tank setup.
The tanks overflow into each other, and get's pumped back to the top tank....
As you can see these tanks get ALLOT of sun light, which can be a good & a bad thing. :-(

These photos were taken about 3 weeks ago. Since then I had some very frustrating times....





1. The Big tank (+-350l of water) decided to start to leak....(that was about two weeks ago.) I've realized that the stand was not 100% level, and that the tank was not 100% supported in the middle section. The pressure was just way to much for it. Since then I've re-siliconed the tank, add extra braces on the top of the tank. Added support at the bottom of the tank, and made some adjustments with regarding the stand. I've filled this tank with water yesterday again.

2. I'm using a 50mm PVC pipe as an over flow between the tanks. The two smaller top level tanks have 50mm holes drilled into them. When I've tried to move the bigger tank last week to start to fix it, I've bumped against the middle tank's overflow pipe, causing a nice big crack on this tank. (From the overflow hole to the bottom of the tank.)... Damn..More fixes to be made.
After I've calmed myself down, I've ordered more glass... And fixed this tank.

Ok - enough of the BAD stuff....

I've connected all the pipes, filled the tanks & now it's all up and running!
The TOP most level tank was up and running for the last week already, with a bunch of plants in it already.

I have a couple small issues that I still need to figure out....
* Firstly - algae. The amount of sun-light that these tanks get is causing some algae blooms. The hairy type... :-( (This is on my top level tank, which was running solo for the last week or so). Not sure how I will effectively deal with this, but the algae will hopefully start to disappear as soon as I add more plants to the setup...

* Overflow between the tanks - I'm not sure on how to cover it so that the fish won't get from top level to bottom level tanks.... I don't simple want to cover it with shade cloth or something similar, as I'm afraid that it will get blocked by dead fish/plant leaves, etc... Which can cause a nice overflow problem.


Stocking plans:
I'm going to move all my fish that's in my current setup to these tanks over a period of time..(after these tanks have cycled).
Will get some extra guppies, & other small fish. BUT I want to keep at least one of tanks open for something like Paradise fish, or something similar.
All my plants will be moved to these tanks as well... I want to get some pond plants OR plants that I can put in the bottom tank that will grow out of the water as well...
I'm hoping that the plants will all do very well, as they have enough light, proper soil (I've used a mixture of potting soil, bone meal, aqua pond soil, pottery clay and capped with river sand), and oxygen...The fountain effect between the 3 tanks will help with that...

I'll upload more recent pictures tonight again.


My second setup will be a ropefish tank. The tank is already up and running. Just need to add a filter, and then get a source for the fish - but will create a new thread on this setup soon.

 

last i was at petstop they had a good few ropefish.
looks good i like the idea!

 

Damn... Having some issues loading photos again...
I'm trying to load JPG images - +-70KB per image... The picture load box only shows a red exclamation mark - no error message or reason why it doesn't want to load... :-(
@Rory - dude can you please have a look again for me?
I'm using firefox as browser. Yesterday I've managed to load without issues....

thx

 

@Wandrag try uploading images via Picasa and then linking them here? I have found that the easiest.

 

Looks like a really interesting system!
Did you build those tanks yourself? Because they look quite a bit higher than standard tanks.
And for covering the overflow you should be able to get a standard 50mm piece of plastic mesh, like a pipe fitting. I can't remember where I saw them though.

 

cool - will try that again...

 

Nope - I've had it custom build for me 2-3 years ago for my marine setup. (used to be filters )
How big is this mesh? or the rather how big is the holes? Will it keep - lets say a neon from passing?

 

Usually the holes are like 3 to 5mm in diameter? So they should keep neons put

 

Cool - Images loaded....


I'm going to try to hide the pipes with plants... Will use rocks and driftwood to conceal the pump...

 

I Hope that I can get rid of this algae soon.... Any ideas?
My plan is to add a crap load more plants into the system, so that it will "Starve" the tanks from nutrients - thus - no algae...(Not sure if this will even work )