Ferryman's 3ft construction

lots of hard work paying off

 

i'm still busy, have now replanted everything, added 1/3 fresh water, and 1/3 old tank water, left 1cm layer of old substrate and added 3-4cm of new substrate, mixed the two up, put some circulating in the tub with the fish, and removed the HOB, added that back to the main tank, with its lovely unwashed dirty filter media, just getting the main tank heated up now, then i'll add more old water and add the fish back, maybe add some rock-salt to help them against the shock,

I know its horrible on the fish to pull their whole world upside down like this, but i must say, the tank atm is looking damn good, yay. the dark substrate is giving it a great new look...

will post up some pics while i wait for the heating...

 

okay, woke up and checked fish to find their all still alive, the neons have their colour back, glowlights could look more vibrant, but looking well, eating well, fed them a little bit, dont want too much waste till all is settled. water is clearing up but looks a little bit murky..

when i cleaned out the tank, a found two ramshorns in the tank, and one small, pointy snail that looks like a pond snail from my snail id thread. dunno where i got that, first one i've seen.

checked the tank again just now and saw a small snotty brown spot with eggs in it in my difformis leaf. dunno if its one of the fish who laid eggs, (can only be the leopards, zebs or tetra, i doubt all... or its snai eggs, should i remove the leaf?

 

Reconstruction

It took me all night and most of the morning, but its done, and lookingh good so far. hoping there's enough bacteria to not need a cycle, dont wanna lose any fishies

so here are the pics
the substrate, crushed black sand, used originally for bonsai scaping, washing 40 kg's with a hose, oodles of fun,... backbreaker


the grit size


nice and clean start...


finally done.


fish all caught, its official, tetra are THE hardest to catch, was bloody frustrating i can tell you that, didn't know there were so many fish...



so it starts

tank cleared

new substrate

adding water,
then siphoning off the cloudyness


taken back most of the old tank water i could spare, fish had aeration and circulation


using snails as my crashtest dummies...
shameless





added some fish,

more went in,

done, and added purigen to filter, and nitrivec remains to the water to boost bacteria cycle


looking better now


alreadu got eggs

too suspect, think its the snails, so i removed it

 

tank is starting to settle now, so i, being a fotohead, took more pics of it. i love piccies
just so show the difference between using white balance setting and not, under fluorescent lighting:
without

with

a bottom up pic


my favourite cory, his dorsal fin is very long in relation to the others, reason why i bought him, but few weeks ago that fin was still very much a nipped shard


caught em offguard, stupid flash was on


vegetation settling in,,, again

 

Looking real good ... see if you can leave it alone for 2 months and allow plants and fish to grow.

 

im very happy with it now. And the plants were well spaced this time so theres space to grow. The filter system gets alot of gunk now, so itll need more regular cleaning than when i had 2 filters it seems. But now i can actually leave it as is and enjoy. So 2 months is doable now. thanks

 

lol yes let the plants grow.

 

There isn't really much height at the back of the tank, so i might go scouting for some giant vallis to add a row at the back unless someone can recomment something to use for height at the back that will grow in a row space?

I read the Jager instructions, it should optimally be placed vertically, not totally submersed, so the space behind the rock in the back is completely open now, as the jager is placed next to a powerhead, vertically in the corner, i also calibrated it yesterday, so the readout on the dial is exactly the digital readout temp

i'll be house sitting for a week from the 10th, and i've worked a few days this vacation but havent recieved pay yet, but anyway, i'll be getting a bit of money, yay, so i might get a cory or 2 cories for the small octagon, so they can eat the leftover food the danios don't get to that sinks to the bottom.

Maybe i'll add some cories to the 2ft as well. When those guppies have grown out, i'm gonna move some of the adults back to the 2ft, the population in the main tank is too woelig, i'd rather get another 10 neons, the blue red really stands out and they school, there's more of a peaceful pattern than just a buncha horny guppies going all abouts, randomly

somewhere around the 10th i think Gareth's coming to Pta, so i might get the sailfin mollies then, looking forward to that. some well sized fish (when they grow up) will be a welcome addition to the tank

i think i'm gonna move a majority of the guppies to the 2ft in time, make it a GUPPY tank, and then the main tank will have the neons, glowlights, platies, sailfins, danios and cories in the end. i might aquire a pair of peppered cories eventually as well.

but as for the plants, they should settle and grow now, when the painting in the house finally resumes i'll have the wood for the canopy, then i can build it and add the 4 fluorescent tubes, (maybe more if i have the money by then) and then i'll thing of starting ferts, (it'll probably be useless now with the light being a, um, whatsits? a clamping factor or however you phrase it) so the plants will need to cope under the light i have at present till then

yeah, thats the future plans for now

 

tank is settling in nicely now
i think i should add a bit of ferts atsome stage, growth has slowed down a bit, but the lots of plant moving deff had an effect too, will compare again in a week or so, then decide on ferts...

 

Ferryman

What is the thickness of the glsass on your 3ft tank

 

6 mm all panes. I doubt the bottom is thicker. the two braces on top is made of 6mm safety glass (all the shopkeep could cut that day)
why do you ask?

 

Thinking of building a 180 litre tank.
60l * 60b * 50h

 

Slayer why not make it a straight cube being 60h as well? That extra 10cms makes quite a bit of difference.

 

yep, i agree, that 10 cm adds an extra 36 liters. i'm contemplating a cube build as well, 90x90x90 or so, but first i need to save up for all the needed equipment, the stand, plants and fish etc, as well as the glass itself of course

my main tank is a 90x50x45 and also comes to 180 filled

 

I am busy with a tank build at the moment 120 x 45 x 45, its not as easy as I thought...lol so good luck to you guys

 

And goodluck to you with the tank repairs and stands, interested to see how the stax come along
Reminds me that i might have some steel racks i can put up as well... if funds become available, and lord of house and flat, my dad gives the okay, , i might put up some steel racks as well then i can house two 3ft tanks above n below... i am thinking of another 3ft, or alternatively a cube of 60x60x60 or 90x90x90...

for now though, updates on the tank
i bought a big net today, and moved some guppy adults back to the growout tank, the fry are getting quite big now so they wont be threatened bu the adults, and probably more will survive if born in the growout 2ft, i think the danios or some other culprits are the baby snatchers, i dunno if it was the guppies who ate their young

anyway, i left a few guppies in the main tank
also did a 30% WC today

then Gareth arrived in PTA and we met up at Slojo's (his oscar tank is now fully stocked, lol) there i got the sailfin mollies, who turned out quite nicely, very cool colours presenting, pics to follow

i also went past AK and picked up a sponge filter when i got the bigger net, and i added the filter to the octagon in stead of the corner filter, it seems more efficient already, i sommer sprung for another, bigger one for the main tank, which i hid at the back, to help with bacteria colonization, so that i can focus more on mechanical filtration in the HOB (though i will be leaving a big biosponge in there as well, i want to have more removable throwaway media in there to dispose of muck and grime

anyway
so the main tank now has less guppies, plus 9 sailfin mollies, and then retail therapy hit me a little and i searched for peppered cories, found a shop that had one for 14 rand, so i bought it, yay, been looking for quite a time, everyone always wants a ridiculous 30-40 rand for one, and then i moved on to find this one a friend group, but instead found a shop that sold me panda cories for 14 rands, another wonder as they always go for 40-50 or somesuch madness, so now my cory collection is 4 bronze, 2 bronze albino, 2 panda and 1 peppered... now to find good priced sterbai, and that other one, uhhhh, cant remember the name now, barbatus maybe?... will see what i can find....

they're still bein acclimatised in the photos, and after released they were hard to pic at first with all the guppies
so l
i'll post better piccies later on, when i have time, and the hp camera instead of my cell



i have some silver with black marbled spots, some orange and silver with black spots, some silver with orange flecks, some black orange and silver all mixed in, very nice additions, cant wait till they grown up and sail fin showing

 

i have recieved unconfirmed report from home that one of my cories died yesterday/this morning... hoping its not true, i'll see when i get home tonight

dad saying its one of the "white ones" so its either a new baby panda cory, or one of my bronze albinos, i'm hoping their just doing that -lying very still doing almost nothing- thing that they sometimes do for a minute or two...
he only saw the fish when he switched on the lights this morning, so it might have been sleeping -i'm hoping-

edit - my brother just confirmed, one baby panda died... damn
my second casualty since starting, but still,

 

Sad to report, both the tiny pandas are dead

I bought them from an LFS i've not bought from before, they were really tiny,
i also bought a peppered cory yesterday, and introduced 9 sail-fin mollies, all of these doing fine.

So i don't think it was something about my water per se that killed them, they were drip-acclimatised etc, plus i removed quite a few guppies from the tank before the new arrivals came, so its not like the bio load increased, it actually decreased...

i guess i'll rather steer clear of that shop next time around. its a shame, the girly who worked there is kinda cute...

Can anyone tell me if pandas are in any way more sensitive that the other cories to parameters or something?

 

Damb that really sucks loosing fish. maybe the pandas were to small and that way being more sensitive to the water parameters.
Once again sorry for your loss.