A 5ft tank in the making.......

Righteo!.... the eagle has landed and I have moved to Kimberley..... This is my 5ft tank.... which I've had for many moons, but never done anything with it.....

Now!!... here by the big gat..... I have access to stocks and what it takes to set up a decent planted..... should actually start a journal on this one, but..... today I added the rocks..... heavy stuff... (& makes me worry if the bottom glass will carry the load)??.....

Obviously.... some vacuming of the gravel will be in order and I am planning to put 3 more rocks in here before I start adding the plants....

The current rocks must be in excess of 100kg...... is this fine, or do I need to reconsider..... I would appreciate some suggestions..... I think an Amazon sword will make a nice centre piece in the gap between the high rock on the left and the long rock to the right of it.... suggestions please.... this tank is going to be TOTM winner in April 2013..... with your help....

 

Get something named egg crate. Put it under the gravel. Ut spreads the load of the rock. Also take out that background. A plain grey/blue background would work great. For a planted tank that background of yours makes it look to busy. Nice rocks. With nice lights somw blyxie japonica would look awesome infront of them

 

100% what ryno said, a picture background is just horrible !! I know one is usually to polite to say it in normal threads, but reallym it is just awfull !! Anyway, now that that is out of the waym get some roof paint and paint the back of the tank blue/black/grey or whatever suits your fancy, just get it monotone.

(Ps ry, kry vir jaques dat obs bietjie wyn by sy huis suip more ? En sy edge tankkyk)

 

@Ryno

 

@Cheetah, firstly, i think its a nice big tank to make a planted, and i'll be following this thread with interest.

i have to agree with the guys about the background, iether make it a color or even maybe go with no background and make the background a wall of nice thick vallis.

the thing with the rocks might not be so bad, as i think you are saying that the total weight of all the rocks are roughly 100kg, that means you can sort of spread the weight out a bit so the whole 100kg is not concentrated at one place.

i think you will be ok unless one of those rocks actually falls over.

 

I am running this thread on a small international forum as well and it is amazing how many of the suggestions here correspond with the advice from our friends across the big dam ......

In loosing the background poster, it was suggested that I paint the background black...... I've had painted tanks before, but never black..... what do you guys think.... should I?.... (thanks also for the other suggestions)

 

the thing with painting the tank is that once you've done it, you cant go back if you decide to change what the tank looks like later.. how about getting a piece of polystyrene, painting that black and sticking it to the back of the tank?

 

I like to use project board that you buy from art shops, it's A0 size and stiff but light. I spraypaint the 2 sides different colours for variation. Because it's so light you can fix it with a bit of tape.
I was lucky to pick up a few of these from an Architect for free. They used it for a project presentation and tossed afterwards. The drawings comes off very easy leaving me with nice clean backgrounds.

 

If you use normal roof paint, you can peal it of in large pieces easily

 

I have done this before and it works pretty well.

 

OK... I have removed the poster background and this is what it looks like with no background.....

Right to left:



From the front:



From left to right:

 

Already looks a lot better once the plants start to fill up the tank its gonna look like a masterpiece