Bought a few tanks after a long departure...

I'm not going to say that it took an eternity to weld this up and paint it but it certainly felt that way

But the frame is finally done and in its spot. I can hopefully finish the 2 pieces that the tanks are going to stand on this weekend(The enamel paint I'm using takes very long to dry though and I don't want drying paint in the bedroom.)

Once they are in place sometime next week I can put the tanks in and finish the rest of the work while the tanks are cycling. So slow going from my side but some progress at least

 

I also went to a pet store to look at some cichlid. All looked pretty good and I liked the Demasonii, african prince, electric blue, strawberry peacock. All were listed as easy/non aggressive though seeing 2 Demasonii with their fins bitten off floating around in their tank told me otherwise. I'm still going to look around at what is available and will have to do more research to see what is compatible out of what I can find.

The blue eye forktails may also be hard to track down but I still have plenty of places to go.

 

Nice looking stand ...

are you using angle iron ?

 

Thanks,
the 4 vertical corner sections are 50x5mm angle iron.
The rest is mostly 50x25mm rectangular tube with a few 25x25mm tube sections in the middle an a brace for the top center section which is hard to see at this angle.

 

cool are you planing on fitting the tanks snug inside the angle iron corners ? Best to leave a few mm all round

Later Ferdie

 

There is about 6mm on each side and 100mm front to back for the tubing/power etc to go at the back.
Hopefully everything fits.

 

Meant 12mm on each side so should be plenty.

 

I made a little progress during the week but had a pretty long week at work so could not get too many photos. These are just of the tanks on the stand and some rocks I placed in the tanks(still need to place them in their final spots)
I'll get some photos tomorrow of the sand, Filters, heaters, Rock placement I managed to do this weekend.

 

I've also ordered some COB LED's/power supplies from China to build the lighting. Ordered a bunch of 10 and 9 watt ones in cool and warm white to play around with the colors. I think I will get some rectangular 3mm aluminium cut and then mount one warm and one cool led to each with a glass cover on the front and seal them with some silicone.
I still need to plan that all but they will still take quite a while to get through SAPO snail mail so I have the time.

 

The dark backround is making it hard to take pictures without having tank lighting but here are some more pics.

Finally have some water going:




Cichlid tank:




Rainbowfish Tank:

 

looking good

 

Thanks, still a lot to do.

I am, its taking way longer than I hoped. But I'll get there eventually. I might sneak some goldfish from the pond into the tanks to keep me entertained for a while.

 

Haven't switched on the heaters yet, the temp is around 20deg so they should be fine. I'll turn on the heater a week or two before I plan on getting the fish. Planning on 25deg initially for the cichlids and rainbow fish.

 

I checked out another pet store today but sadly they did not have anything on my list(Probably a good thing as I found out later my NO's are very high) so I'll have to keep searching. I did however pick up a test strip kit to get an idea of where I am water wise and got the following results:

3ft tank:
NO3: 180ish
NO2: 10+
GH:7
KH:10
PH:+-7.6

4ft tank:
NO3: 100ish
NO2: 5
GH:7
KH:10
PH:+-7.6

That surprised me a bit as I did a 30ish percent water change on Wednesday evening but I guess that means I have bacteria at work. The water is also not as hard as I measured a long time ago and a test of straight tap water gave the same results.(I'm not sure if that is because we are at the end of the rainy season or if it will stay this way)

I did another 30ish percent water change today and will do the same for the next few days to get the NO3 back down.

 

The pet store did have quite a nice selection of plants. They were however all unlabeled so I had no Idea what I was buying. I would appreciate some help with Identifying what I bought:

Plant1:


Plant2:


Plant3:


Plant4:

 

What have you dosed into the tank? 10 Nitrite is crazy!?

Plant 1 looks like bacopa carolina, 3 like a sword plant and 4 ludwigia

 

I originally put in some amonia I got from a friend who had no idea how strong it was. I only used it once and then swopped to fish flakes. I guess it was a bit too strong or the test strip was not accurate (from what I've heard they are not great)
I just bought them to get an idea of what's happening and get a handle on how frequently I need to do water changes at the moment.

Thanks for the plant ID's the ludwigia was probably a bad idea, hopefully the last one will work better with my setup.

 

Ludwigia should be fine

Ammonia like that is pretty hectic