Jenoli42
- #1
You beautiful people helped our family create a marine-themed freshwater tank that is a whimsical fantasy land! I figured the least I could do is share it with you all - those of you struggling through your cycle and fish compatibility will have something to look forward to if you stick with it! Without this forum, we would have given up. Here's a glimpse of what our tank looks like now and more pics showing the transformation below
Some of you know we bought a used 72g bowfront in early January that was disgusting. It hadn't been cleaned in at least 6 months and once we tested the parameters we were amazed the 5 rummy noses were even alive (eg, Nitrates off the charts).
We spent 7 hours cleaning the tank and getting the water parameters right (with the help of sfsamm , CanadianJoeh , Nataku & others) , and then started planning our stocking options (relying heavily on TexasDomer ). My partner and I are both SCUBA divers and watch too much "Tanked" with our daughter, so we decided to do a marine theme but not add the difficulty of marine parameters.
So for the past 2 months, we've gradually bought fake coral/marine decorations, reef glue, fish safe epoxy and a new Sunsun HW 304B 2000 LPH filter.
We got a moisture rated LED multi-colour light strip, too.
This weekend (we're in NZ so today is Monday for us), my partner and I spent Friday evening, from midday Saturday until 7am Sunday (all-nighter!) and then Sunday mid-afternoon until 10pm doing the following:
1. Epoxy and glue the main real rock (schist) cave, coral base and fake rock pinnacle onto a sheet of 8 mil fish safe clear acrylic. Silicone around the edges (silicone needs 24 hours to cure). Leave overnight.
2. Next day, drain our tank into as many containers as we could find to keep the water (we ended up storing 125L).
3. Once the tank was half drained, we caught and moved the fish into our QT. To do this, we filled the QT with water from the Bowfront so the parameters were identical (our QT is cycled...we had to delay this project because despite using cycled media it decided to start cycling all over again and we had to wait until the parameters were back to safe).
4. We moved the Eheim filter that was on the Bowfront to the QT so the fish had 2 filters running while they were in the QT overnight (about 30 hours) and so the BB in the Eheim filter had food and airflow. (Thanks CanadianJoeh for the tips on this!)
5. We finished draining the entire tank and scooped out all of the very ugly gravel. I was stoked to find that because of the initial clean and weekly maintenance, there was hardly any muck in the gravel at all.
6. We got some white vinegar and scrubbed out the inside of the tank to get rid of the dead fish smell it's had since we got it. Then we dried it with a towel.
7. We (carefully and with much stress) inserted the acrylic with the foundation pieces. This was very hard because of the structural plastic bar across the middle of the tank (which meant we had to insert diagonally and couldn't build the whole thing outside the tank). We put towels down in the tank just in case we lost our grip so we didn't shatter the tank or the insert.
8. Then we stayed up all night Saturday night using glue and epoxy to put every single piece of decoration exactly where we wanted it. Because the epoxy starts to set and dry quickly, we had to do this in 15 minute blocks. We would plan which pieces would go in next and exactly where, heat up the epoxy, work the epoxy for 5 minutes after the microwave so it was mixed, and we then had 15 minutes to cover various openings in the decorations (so the fish don't get stuck) and place onto the structure in the tank. We used dots of reef glue on the bottom of the decorations and again on top of the epoxy so we only needed to hold in place for 30 seconds - 1 minute in the tank. Music helped this stage. We were able to hide the air tubes for 2/3 airstones behind the decorations as we were building. As a treat, in the wee hours of the morning we put the LED light strip up to see how it looked...
9. We slept for about 5 hours so the epoxy could set and dry.
10. After we woke up, we added sand around the outside of the insert and gravel in the back and middle.
11. We swapped ALL the media from the Eheim 2222/2224 to our new Sunsun (adding more new media to fill it up) and put it on the Bowfront. This left just the built in filter on the QT with the fish. We will seed the Eheim with BB in one of our established tanks so we have an extra filter available in case of emergency.
12. We used the siphon pump to fill the tank back up with the 125L we saved, then topped it up with the remaining 110L of treated tap (rain) water. We then pumped the Sunsun for what seemed like years until we got it running.
13. We got the airpumps running and left it for a few hours. Then I tested the parameters to make sure it was close to the QT the fish were in.
14. Around 10pm last night, we put the fish back into their new renovated home. They love it! Here are two youtube video links:
We can't wait to fully stock this tank! We have sterbais in a different QT who have been in quarantine for over 2 weeks, so they'll join the others soon.
Can't thank all of you enough for your support, advice, patience and encouragement!
Some of you know we bought a used 72g bowfront in early January that was disgusting. It hadn't been cleaned in at least 6 months and once we tested the parameters we were amazed the 5 rummy noses were even alive (eg, Nitrates off the charts).
We spent 7 hours cleaning the tank and getting the water parameters right (with the help of sfsamm , CanadianJoeh , Nataku & others) , and then started planning our stocking options (relying heavily on TexasDomer ). My partner and I are both SCUBA divers and watch too much "Tanked" with our daughter, so we decided to do a marine theme but not add the difficulty of marine parameters.
So for the past 2 months, we've gradually bought fake coral/marine decorations, reef glue, fish safe epoxy and a new Sunsun HW 304B 2000 LPH filter.
We got a moisture rated LED multi-colour light strip, too.
This weekend (we're in NZ so today is Monday for us), my partner and I spent Friday evening, from midday Saturday until 7am Sunday (all-nighter!) and then Sunday mid-afternoon until 10pm doing the following:
1. Epoxy and glue the main real rock (schist) cave, coral base and fake rock pinnacle onto a sheet of 8 mil fish safe clear acrylic. Silicone around the edges (silicone needs 24 hours to cure). Leave overnight.
2. Next day, drain our tank into as many containers as we could find to keep the water (we ended up storing 125L).
3. Once the tank was half drained, we caught and moved the fish into our QT. To do this, we filled the QT with water from the Bowfront so the parameters were identical (our QT is cycled...we had to delay this project because despite using cycled media it decided to start cycling all over again and we had to wait until the parameters were back to safe).
4. We moved the Eheim filter that was on the Bowfront to the QT so the fish had 2 filters running while they were in the QT overnight (about 30 hours) and so the BB in the Eheim filter had food and airflow. (Thanks CanadianJoeh for the tips on this!)
5. We finished draining the entire tank and scooped out all of the very ugly gravel. I was stoked to find that because of the initial clean and weekly maintenance, there was hardly any muck in the gravel at all.
6. We got some white vinegar and scrubbed out the inside of the tank to get rid of the dead fish smell it's had since we got it. Then we dried it with a towel.
7. We (carefully and with much stress) inserted the acrylic with the foundation pieces. This was very hard because of the structural plastic bar across the middle of the tank (which meant we had to insert diagonally and couldn't build the whole thing outside the tank). We put towels down in the tank just in case we lost our grip so we didn't shatter the tank or the insert.
8. Then we stayed up all night Saturday night using glue and epoxy to put every single piece of decoration exactly where we wanted it. Because the epoxy starts to set and dry quickly, we had to do this in 15 minute blocks. We would plan which pieces would go in next and exactly where, heat up the epoxy, work the epoxy for 5 minutes after the microwave so it was mixed, and we then had 15 minutes to cover various openings in the decorations (so the fish don't get stuck) and place onto the structure in the tank. We used dots of reef glue on the bottom of the decorations and again on top of the epoxy so we only needed to hold in place for 30 seconds - 1 minute in the tank. Music helped this stage. We were able to hide the air tubes for 2/3 airstones behind the decorations as we were building. As a treat, in the wee hours of the morning we put the LED light strip up to see how it looked...
9. We slept for about 5 hours so the epoxy could set and dry.
10. After we woke up, we added sand around the outside of the insert and gravel in the back and middle.
11. We swapped ALL the media from the Eheim 2222/2224 to our new Sunsun (adding more new media to fill it up) and put it on the Bowfront. This left just the built in filter on the QT with the fish. We will seed the Eheim with BB in one of our established tanks so we have an extra filter available in case of emergency.
12. We used the siphon pump to fill the tank back up with the 125L we saved, then topped it up with the remaining 110L of treated tap (rain) water. We then pumped the Sunsun for what seemed like years until we got it running.
13. We got the airpumps running and left it for a few hours. Then I tested the parameters to make sure it was close to the QT the fish were in.
14. Around 10pm last night, we put the fish back into their new renovated home. They love it! Here are two youtube video links:
We can't wait to fully stock this tank! We have sterbais in a different QT who have been in quarantine for over 2 weeks, so they'll join the others soon.
Can't thank all of you enough for your support, advice, patience and encouragement!
