A New Tank Project

Hey all, its been a while since I was on the forum. I have a new fish tank project, I bought a small tank (24” wide x 18” high x 12” deep) 84.7 litres or 22.4 U.S. gallons. The tank has a wooden lid so that makes it cat proof, important where I live.

I am using Seachem fluorite dark as a substrate and will use an Aqua One nautilus external canister filter 800.

I got given a small LED light fixture (you can see it here) but I wonder whether it will do the job or if I should go out and get something new?



I have never used Seachem substrate and would be interested if anyone had good or bad experience with it.

I got a piece of drift wood in the tank, I am not certain what type of wood it is, it will be interesting to see when I fill the tank how the wood will go.

I haven’t worked out fish or plants yet. This tank has been together less than an hour.


Thoughts, ideas, suggestions or comments. Please

I had another tank which is nearly 2 feet deep and I found too deep to reach the bottom clean properly with a syphon so I plan to get rid of it

 

Very pretty. Are you planning to have any plants in the tank? It’s hard to tell how the light looks with the room lit up but I had a light smaller than that one that worked fine on 20G. I didn’t have plants though. Tank looks nice!

 

Thank you.

I am not sure if I want plants or not at this stage. I have found a problem, with the wooden lid on top I cannot take the glass lid off because the wood chocks holding the top on are blocking the glass lid.

Here is a picture with the house lights off and the wooden lid on, its too dark to me especially with the black background. Pardon the blurry photo.

 

My other concern at this point is the width of the tank and it being top heavy. The whole tank moves easily when you touch it, I fear it could tip over if someone accidentally hit it.

 

Well after a lot of tweaking and mucking around I got the tank all together and cycling. I have added some fish food to the water for the meanwhile for that. I installed my canister filter and it took ages to get it prime, silly little push button pump (grr). I also bought a new light today since I was happy with the old one, it’s a 24-watt led (1944 lumen) and it has green, blue, red and white led’s on it. Good if the fish want to have a disco I suppose.

The tank is level, the angle of the photographer when the photo was taken, wasn't.




I might need to buy a new heater, the one I am using it like 1000 years old and I don't know if its heating the water, I am getting condensation on the glass but that might be from the light?.

I am worried too about the gap at the back of the tank, for one the heat loss and two fish might have decided to jump out. I haven’t yet worked out how to fix that yet. You can see the gap in the photo.




I don’t know what fish I want yet, something I haven’t had in the past, currently it’s a blank canvas.

 

cool tank