An Aquatic Obsession

Quite the office!

2009-11-09T23:04:00.000-06:00

Blue Discus fry at 5.5 months

2009-10-07T20:45:00.002-05:00

The extent of our obsession...

2009-09-18T20:58:00.000-05:00

This doesn't include a 30g and a 12g tank not pictured... :-)

Blue Discus Fry at 4.5 months

2009-09-07T00:22:00.000-05:00

The fry (just about time for new homes):

The parents:

San Francisco Fish Stores

2009-06-12T23:21:00.004-05:00

A couple of weeks ago, we went to San Francisco for the Maker Faire. I you've never been to one, and get the chance to go, I can't recommend it enough. It's an absolute blast, and you can't help but come away inspired.

Anyway, being the fish geeks we are, we had to check out the local fish stores while we were there. In general, we were really impressed. The stores were really nice, and the people were phenomenal. Three particular standouts:

Ocean Aquarium - a freshwater only fishstore, despite the name.

This was a little tiny store in an alley over in the tenderloin run by a husband and wife. I wouldn't want to be in the neighborhood after dark, but as fish stores go, I can't recommend it enough. Every tank had a profusion of live plants in it, and they had some great home brew CO2 injectors. They appeared to specialize in F1's, and they had a nice collection of F1 killies ( luxopthalmus ( lampeyes ), epiplatys annulatus ( clown killie ), some gardneri and spotless australes. He also provided us with some really nice DIY drip acclimators that are remarkably accurate and consistent for free.

They also had a profusion of fancy guppies, rasboras, microras, apistos and some f1 brown discus that were just too beautiful to risk trying to bring them home. Best of all, all of fish were all healthy and in beautiful color.

Aqua Forest

This one was also in San Francisco proper but in a much nicer neighborhood. This is a store for plant geeks. They have a remarkable selection of aquatic plants that you can usually only find on aquabid, or get from someone like TxGal in the Dallas plant club. It's also the 'official' ADA store here in the US. As you would expect, their tanks were all meticulously maintained, well groomed and gorgeous.

The staff was friendly, and extremely knowledgeable, and best of all, more than willing to admit when they didn't have an answer. We're not exactly new to the hobby, so we ask a lot of obscure or complicated questions, and we know that. We don't expect employees to know everything - there is just too much to know, and when you get to the advanced stuff, too many questions about taxonomy and behavior that are in flux. We'd far rather people tell us that they don't know, or aren't sure , than pretend like they know the answer if they don't. In this respect, and a lot of others, they were just amazing. We came home with a LOT of plants.

Fish selection was not as eclectic or unusual as Ocean, but it was certainly nothing to scoff at, and we picked up two pairs of scarlet baddis there. Being a plant focused store, they focused on community and plant friendly fish, so there was no african cichlid section, which we thought was pretty cool. YMMV :o)

Albany Aquarium

This one was WAAAAAAAAAAAY up near Berkley, and was another wonderful store. These guys actually had a nice salt water section, but we liked them alot anyway. :o) We made the mistake of heading up around 4pm, and traffic was a beast. We got there about 30m before close, and ended up hanging around and talking until well after close. They were just really nice, knowledgeable people. They also had a very impressive selection of plants, and we came home with more than a few from there too. They also had a cool pair of goodieds that I really wanted to bring home, but we couldn't make it back up there before we flew out on Monday.

Somehow, I don't have any pictures from Albany. We spend so much time talking, that we just plain forgot!

Anyway, if you're in the area, go check these guys out and support them if you can. We were impressed to find three really standout stores while we were there. By the way, just as a note, do not try to check a fish box on American Airlines. If you're flying American, you'll need to ship them home air freight.

Blue Discus Fry

2009-06-12T22:48:00.002-05:00

Discus fry at about 3.5 weeks.

Several months ago, we bought a beautiful pair of blue snakeskin discus from a local guy who was moving out of state. Some time after we moved them into the big tank, they started doing what pairs do, and trying to spawn. The dominant orange pair in the tank weren't terribly impressed, and the new comers always ended up eating the spawn because there was just too much competition, but the blues continued trying anyway.

About two months ago, we decided to move them to a spawner, and give them a real chance. We had some trouble deciding which pair to spawn, since we dont have a huge amount of space for growout, and both pairs try to spawn regularly. We ultimately decided to spawn the blues on the idea that it might be neat to see what happened if we got one of our orange fry, and a blue to pair up.

Previously, when setting up the spawner, we used a siphon and return pump to set up a shared water supply between the big tank and the spawner. This was a great arrangement since it made for super stable water conditions and a really consistent temperature. Since there had been some competition for dominance between our new pair and the old, and those usually involve the competitors releasing suppressive hormones into the water, we decided to put them on a separate water supply this time. We knew that feeding fry can make maintaing good water quality an issue, so we also decided to set up a continuous water change system.

Essentially, we hung a small box on the outside of the tank with a small drain line leading to our drainage sump. On the other end of the tank, we put a tee in the line we use to fill our storage tank, and set up a slow fill line with an inline heater to keep the temperature consistent. The process turns the water over 3 or 4 times per day and we vacuum the bottom once or twice a week. Like any continuous water change system, it doesn't clear out pollutants as efficiently as regular a drain/fill water change because of diffusion, but it still does a great job of maintaining consistent water parameters.

It took about a month, and 2 or 3 eaten batches of eggs, but on the last batch, we put a screen up that let them fan the eggs but not eat them until they became wigglers. This worked remarkably well, and we ended up with a free swimming batch of well over 100 fry. Based on some feedback from breeders we have spoken to, we decided to switch the fry from RO to tap water to provide additional hardness. The water needed to be very soft to get the parents to spawn, but the fry apparently benefit a great deal from the increased availability of calcium and other minerals found in harder water.

Unfortunately, we either did it too early, too late, or there is something very not right about our tap water. When we set up the change over, we slowed the water change process way down, and allowed ~ 36 hours to transition from RO to Tap. Within that 36 hours, we lost half the fry, and the others appeared listless and confused. We confirmed that our inline filters on the tap were working, and that chlorine and chloramine readings going into the tank were 0. Still, it was obviously a bad deal.

We switched back to RO immediately, and in the 24 hours following that, we lost about half of the fry that remained, but things seemed to stabilize. We now have somewhere between 15 and 25 fry left. When we got back from the maker faire, most of them had learned to turn away from the parents and were hanging out near the auto feeder around feeding times. On Thursday of this week, we returned the parents to the big tank. If you've never seen our layout, the breeder we were using sits on a cart that we generally keep right at the end of the 240. The parents can see the fry through part of the glass, and continue to patrol that end of the tank, and run off any of the other discus that spend too much time down there. Luckily, the tank is large enough, and well planted enough that this does not create any real aggression issues.

We would still like to figure out how to raise the hardness for the fry, but have not arrived at a good way to keep the hardness stable with the continuous water change. Unless or until we move to another building, I don't think we'll be moving anybody off of the RO system any time soon.

Okay, Someone Crazier than Us!

2009-05-10T02:11:00.005-05:00

Found this over at Cute Overload. His goldfish looked bored, so he figured out how to take him out for a walk. I have nothing to compete with that.

Bolivian Ram fry!

2008-11-22T14:10:00.003-06:00

We got this pair of Bolivian Rams a year ago from an individual. They are really nice specimens and we assumed they were a pair. After our successful Discus breeding, we moved them into the breeding tank hoping for similar success. But what we saw was fighting, and when researching how to sex them we found it is nearly impossible to reliably determine it from appearance alone. We did also discover that it's not uncommon for a pair to fight, even after they have free swimming fry to protect!

To increase the odds of having a female we bought two more at a local store after spending a significant amount of time trying to find ones in the tank that looked different from the rest. Since temperature and breeding conditions can affect the percentage of male and females in a brood, it's possible a fish store could have all males. But we gave it a try and kept this pair in a quarantine tank for a while before adding them to the big tank. It turns out that apparently we ended up with a pair as several weeks later we have fry!

Rescaping the 72g and 150g tanks

2008-11-21T09:28:00.003-06:00

The 150g tank is my oldest tank. It has gone through periods of looking pretty good and other times where it was not so good. It was time for a change and I had recently discovered a source of the sand blasting substrate Black Beauty which is really nice looking and dirt cheap. I have used it in some smaller tanks with success so decided it was time to try it in bigger tanks. Over the last weekend, I scooped out all the old substrate and replaced it with 200lbs of #3 (medium) Black Beauty for about $30.

The 72g tank has always been an afterthought. It was going to be wht the 240g became, but partway through the build I determined it was too small to do what I wanted. I was then going to make it a cichlid tank but it's kind of small for African ciclids and I never really got it to a point I liked for South American cichlids. So with inspiration from some Amano articles in recent issues of Tropical Fish Keeping magazine, I replaced the gravel with 100lbs of Black Beauty #4 (fine) for $15 and redid the hardscape.

For both of these tanks, I treated all the wood and rocks with hydrogen peroxide or bleach to kill off a growing infestation of black beard algae (bba). Hopefully with good fertilization and high CO2 I can keep it at bay. For my other tanks, I'm trying to get rid of it without wholesale change in the tank. The 60g I'm just using high CO2 and the 240g I treated with Flourish Excel and following with high CO2.

How it's Made

2008-11-21T00:45:00.006-06:00

It's been a long time coming, but I've finally begun to document in detail the planning and work that went into the construction of these tanks. I started with the 240g tank since that's the most interesting and complicated. I will expand it in time to cover all the things that I learned and developed as part of this hobby.

Check it out: How it's Made.

What a difference fertilization can make

2008-10-15T23:39:00.003-05:00

I've switched to using the Estimative Index form of fertilization for our larger tanks. So far it has made a tremendous difference in this tank as you can see by these plants. Granted, it's the tank with our Discus fry so it sees near-daily water changes as well. But the deep red in the plants is likely a sign of an increase in available iron for the plants.

8 weeks and counting

2008-10-15T23:37:00.001-05:00

Discus fry update - 6 weeks old

2008-09-27T00:24:00.003-05:00

All fry are in the 60g tank now. The parents defending the fry in the 240g tank were stressing out the other fish in the tank so we moved the fry over as well. We switched from decapsulated brine shrimp eggs to cichlid growth meal today. They're on an automatic feeder and they eat energetically at every feeding.

Bristlenose Pleco Fry - 3 weeks old

2008-09-27T00:17:00.002-05:00

On the 2" diameter suction cup from a feeding clip:

On the glass

Just last night we noticed some additional fry from some new eggs! I don't know if more eggs were laid or if they are like some fish eggs that hatch at different times to increase their odds of survival in the wild (due to flooding/drought/predators/etc.)

Discus fry update - 1 month old

2008-09-14T02:22:00.002-05:00

We moved most of the fry into our 60g tank after the unfortunate passing of our angel fish. It is a big tank for them to grow in. A few remained behind and when we moved the parents back into the 240g tank some of them went along for the ride. They seemed ok so we removed the few remaining ones into that tank as well. The parents continue to be very protective of the fry, chasing off other fish who come near. You can see the fry in the pictures below.

Bristlenose Pleco Eggs

2008-09-03T00:18:00.002-05:00

Some surprisingly large Bristlenose Pleco eggs in our 12g Nano cube tank. The pleco "cave" is 3/4" PVC that was capped on one end, coated in silicone and rolled in gravel.

A bit of re-scaping on the 240

2008-09-03T00:16:00.000-05:00

Discus fry update - 2 weeks old

2008-08-28T00:22:00.000-05:00

Proud parents

The fry have taken on the Discus shape

Updated pictures of the big tanks

2008-08-22T23:35:00.006-05:00

The 240g Discus tank

Close ups:

The 150g Rainbow tank after replanting this past weekend

Esquire House Aquarium Build

2008-08-21T22:59:00.003-05:00

I wrote about this aquarium some time ago. It's a really amazing installation on the scale of a tank I dream of owning some day. I found a thread on another forum that discusses the building of it including pictures of the process and wanted to share it. Here are some photos that a local club member took of the tank during the build.

6ft long anacharis plants!

2008-08-21T22:53:00.001-05:00

6ft long anacharis plants!
Originally uploaded by mcr25823

These have been growing mostly floating in our 20g cherry shrimp tank for months. I didn't realize how long they had grown!

Discus Fry

2008-08-14T22:46:00.004-05:00

Some time ago, a pair of our Discus paired up and started spawning in the 240. They kept eating the eggs once they reached wiggler stage ( not unexpected ), but they were persistent so finally, we decided to set up a spawning tank for them. In order to make transferring them back and forth as simple as possible, and minimize stress on the fish, we set up a 20 gallon tank next to the 240 with a siphon to fill the 20, and a small pump running back into the main tank so the tank turned over 3-4 times an hour. This gave them identical water conditions, and almost identical lighting conditions, as well as making maintenance simpler, and giving us a huge buffer against unexpected changes in water conditions ( 260 gallons instead of 20 ).

For those of you who aren't familiar with them, Discus are great parents who have evolved a very unique means of rearing their young. They are usually found in stretches of water that have little in the way of infusorians and the other micro foods fry need to survive their first several weeks of life. In order to assure that their spawn don't starve in those early weeks, they have evolved to produce an unusually thick slime coat on their sides that the fry can feed on instead.

This works very well in the wild, and it makes for a great experience to witness as an aquarist, but in the close confines of a tank it can lead to undue stress. In an aquarium, survival rates are much higher and the parents can not easily escape the fry when they get too old and too big. As a result, the fry can begin to strip away the slime coat faster than the parents can produce it, leading to fin and scale damage seriously high stress levels. In order to avoid this, it is often necessary to separate the parents and the fry after 2-3 weeks.

Transferring the parents was difficult. You can see the layout of the 240 in an earlier post - it is not conducive to catching fish that do not want to be caught. After the move, they didn't seem inclined to spawn for the first couple of weeks. Then, about 3 weeks ago they had a small spawn, but apparently still felt nervous enough to eat the eggs.

However, last week, there was another spawn that went to wigglers, and now we have a small school of fry following the parents around. Many 'serious' breeders will probably laugh at the fact that the spawning tank has a substrate and is heavily planted. However, since we aren't commercial breeders, and maximum yield from each spawn was not really a major priority for us, and we have entirely too many plants anyway, we saw no reason to needlessly subject them to the stress of a bare tank.

Clown loach!

2008-08-04T23:38:00.000-05:00

Near perfect Clown loach shot from the 150g tank.

Why not saltwater?

2008-08-04T21:52:00.005-05:00

People regularly ask why we don't have any saltwater tanks. For as complicated as we make our freshwater tanks, saltwater is many times beyond that. If it were merely that, I would be up for the challenge, but it comes at tremendous cost as well. One mistake and you might kill everything in your tank. While such mistakes can be made in freshwater, it is generally more forgiving and even if it does happen, your losses are a fraction of what they would be in a marine tank. Saltwater fish generally start at the high end of what we pay for freshwater fish, and corals average twice that and up up steeply from there. Different fish and corals require different minerals and chemical parameters to be dosed/monitored. As with anything, you can make it as complicated as you want, and allot depends on the specific fish and corals you wish to keep, but the photos below are an example of what it takes to do it right:

(photo source)

Here is another one, it's clearly a high-end tank, but it has great pictures of its equipment room.

Saltwater is cool, and someday I will probably have a marine tank, but not until I can afford to do it right, and possibly hire someone to do the maintenance.

60g tank photos

2008-06-24T23:35:00.001-05:00

Second only to the 240g tank, the plant growth in this tank is doing great!

Angel parents standing guard to their eggs:

240g tank

2008-06-01T23:22:00.003-05:00

I'm still working on a high-dynamic-range photo, so for now...

Tank properly exposed:

Bog properly exposed:

Bog up close

Discus in the tank:

Found objects

2008-04-07T22:11:00.004-05:00

It's always neat to see what found objects people turn into aquariums. Not all are practical, but that's isn't necessarily a requirement to be interesting.

Fête des Lumières 2007: Urban Escapism

Macro lens

2008-03-21T23:30:00.001-05:00

We rented a 105mm f/2.8 macro lens for the weekend and shot a lot of closeup pictures. In no particular order...

This little guy was in our first batch of discus. He's stunted, but we like him anyway.

Bosemani Rainbow.

Anonymous cichlid. Either an apisto, or a simlarly tempered small african - we failed to label him when we brought them home so again, information would be appreciated.

Juvenile Firemouth Cichlid. We have a pair of these that are looking for a new home. They are absolutely gorgeous specimens, and one is just beginning to show some red in the throat.

These guys were identified as Blue Barbs when we got them, but no scientific name was provided. Maximum size was listed as 4-6" and they bear a strong resemblance to cherry barbs, but with only a band of red, and a striking blue metallic coloration from the rest

Blue Tetras

Hemianthus Callitrichoides ( sometimes sold as 'Dwarf Baby Tears' )
This particular batch is growing emmersed in the bog area behind the 240.

Espei Rasbora ( Trigonostigma espei )

Congo Tetra ( Phenacogrammus Interruptus )

Bolivian Rams ( Mikrogeophagus Altispinosus )

Blue Ram ( Mikrogeophagus Ramierezi )

Discus with a spelunking fetish

School o' Clown Loaches ( Chromobotia Macracanthus )

Gold Ram ( Ramirezi varietal )

Apistogramma Cacatuoides - he was labelled a double red. Is there an orange Cactuoides varietal now? These guys have given us a small batch of fry in a split 15 gallon. Cant wait to get them into a normal sized tank by them selves.

Amano Shrimp - Caradinia Japonica ( have now been reclassified, but I dont have the new name handy. )

Caridina Serrata varietal.

A bright orange varietal of the freshwater bee shrimp. These were one of the early shrimp available to the hobby, though this is the first time I have ever seen them in person.

Endler's Livebearer Fry ( Poecilia Wingei )

Garden variety nuisance snail on glass... gotta love macro lenses

Pearling Ricca Fluitans

Three weeks of growth

2008-03-12T23:14:00.002-05:00

Three weeks growth on the bog plants

The potted plants placed around the driftwood centerpiece got the blue-green algae to back off a little. We resorted to planting as much as possible in the tank, regardless of arrangement in order to get ahead of the algae growth.

A short of the 150g tank. It's slow going, but it looks good so far.

Angels in the 60g tank. We have a nice pile of Riccia growing in the top-left. This is the only tank we've successfully grown ground-cover plants in so far.

These are a new addition to our 72g South American Cichlid tank... they're a blue rosy barb or something like that. There is a firemouth cichlid on the right. Better pictures to come..

Pictures pictures pictures!

2008-02-16T23:02:00.005-06:00

The bog after planting some new plants we got from a terrarium/vivarium supply place online.

We added potted Valisneria in an effort to out-compete the algae.

Espei Rasboras as dither fish

Our Discus are much more sociable since we added a few more. The ones with vertical stripes are supposedly wild-caught, but are the most sociable of the bunch.

Clown Loaches are fun to watch. They like to lounge around... some people worry when they see them laying on a leaf or the bottom of the tank, but that's normal behavior!

One of our Discus has taken up residence under the rock pile, he will actually turn his whole body to slide in and out!

Interesting aquarium display

2008-02-02T00:18:00.001-06:00

Octopus Studios has created the Silverfish Aquarium, an interesting, though probably inefficient arrangement. They do provide a good filtration setup, but access to the lower bowls appears to be only possible via separation of the top bowls so you better hope you don't want to modify your layout once it is setup! It is also "priceless" despite a page explaining how you can order it and noting that the stand is optional. It's usually never a good sign when products are marketed without any mention of price.

Breeding

2008-01-25T10:04:00.000-06:00

In what is perhaps an excuse to have more tanks, but was justified as a way to recoup some of the costs by breeding and propagating plants, we setup some tanks for the purpose. In the past we have had great success breeding Butterfly Goodeids, and hope to repeat the success with other fish.

Cherry shrimp are relatively new to the hobby or at least newly popular. We got some from a fellow hobbyist and put them in one of our plant grow tanks. They were excellent at cleaning up algae on the plants, and before long, we noticed tiny shrimp swimming around. You can see here if you click to view the image larger, shrimp of various sizes. In a neighboring tank, we hope to breed Amano Shrimp, but that is more complicated as the hatch-lings need saltwater to survive, but then they return to freshwater.

This tank was meant to be a hospital tank, to be used for treating any fish that got sick without exposing our other fish to the chemicals or spending a fortune treating large volumes of water. To keep the tank cycled, we picked up a few White cloud minnows to live in the tank, and were surprised to find fry in it not long after adding them. Here you can see an adult and a similarly colored sliver that is a baby.

Bog 4.0

2008-01-20T10:31:00.000-06:00

With the newly waterproofed bog area in place, I began to experiment with ideas to create channels for the desired visible water flows and pools. I used a metal dog dish I got from Wal*Mart and some flexible PVC that I cut lengthwise on the bandsaw.

As substrate, I used swimming pool filter media, not sand, but what I'm told is "pea gravel" though it's much smaller than any pea gravel I've ever seen. It's 100% silica so it's fully inert. It's the same as what I used in my Fluidized Bed Filter, and as substrate in one of my breeding tanks. It's about $15 for 50lbs, so it's a much better price than typical gravel offerings.

Here the key elements are in place and I've unloaded 150lbs of gravel onto it. I put some plants from the old bog and various houseplants on there to get an idea of what it might look like.

Liking the mostly open area for planting, I experimented with using the slate simply to accent the areas. It also served as somewhat of a retaining wall to keep the gravel in the bog and not the tank and to hide things like the metal pan. I divert some of the water coming from the filter onto a rock that pours into the pan, and onto the wood on the right that enters the other channel I created. Quite a bit of the water also enters the substrate and will provide water to the future plants.

Here is the full bog at the moment. I have ordered some tropical plants from a terrarium/vivarium supplier to plant there.

A few other tanks

2008-01-17T09:42:00.000-06:00

A common affliction of the aquariast is multiple-tank syndrome (MTS). Once you master one tank, you begin to find other fish and/or plants you would like to keep that are incompatible with the ones you have. Or maybe you decide that a spot in the house or your desk at work could use a tank. Here are some, but not all of our current tanks...

This 150g is actually the first serious plant tank we built. It has been moved from Fort Worth to Dallas and rearranged several times since then. It is slated for replacement someday when we've paid off all the other aquarium stuff we've acquired lately. It is home to our oldest clown loaches, a favorite of ours both for its utility as a snail eater as well as its personality.

A closeup of one of our clown loaches:

This is a 60g 24x24x24" cube, perhaps my favorite form factor for a tank. It replaced a 30g hex tank which the Angel fish outgrew. The grid in the back will eventually be covered with Christmas moss, a dense moss that hangs off surfaces in triangular Christmas tree-like patterns. I got some online and spread it out behind the grid so it will grow through in time.

This 20g was our original hospital/quarantine tank, but became a Goodeid breeding tank for a while, and here primarily houses a pair of Gold Rams (middle, right) that we are hoping will spawn.

This is a 12g Nano cube tank that I bought and had on my desk at my previous job. It had fake plants in it at the time. I thought it would make it easier to care for, but it wasn't worth it. I eventually brought it home and put real plants in it. On the glass on the right is a CO2 reactor. The tank has two (not sure if it's a pair or not) gold rams with stripes, sold as gold rams, but distinctly different from the gold rams in the other tank. Perhaps they were cross bread with the blue rams as the stripes match those. Apparently the fully gold ones were actually bred from the blue rams, so maybe these were an interim stage. This tank is in my bedroom and gets neglected compared to the tanks out where I spend most of my time.

This 72g bowfront was originally purchased with the intention of becoming what the 215/240g tank became. The stand is decorated with slate, as is the back glass of the tank. It was going to have the bog area, etc. But it was determined that it wasn't really big enough for what we wanted to do. So it sat empty for more than a year. Here we finally set it up with the intention of making it a lightly planted South American Cichlid tank.

The bog saga

2008-01-15T10:17:00.000-06:00

If you have been following along, you will recall that the bog has already undergone three iterations. One with the ill fated 215g tank, then two fiberglassed versions for the 240g. While the fiberglassed one looked good, every time we turned on the water it leaked. This, despite having fully sealed just the wood frame with fiberglass resin, then adding foam and supports, covering it in fiberglass cloth and sealing that. Every time I found a leak, I sealed it with silicone, let it cure, then tried again and it would find somewhere else to leak. Finally, I gave in and we tore it apart. It turns out that the water that had gotten between the layers of fiberglass was quite nasty as you can see here, and was apparently the source of a gnat infestation in the loft.

After much effort pulling/prying, some Clorox to kill the nasties, then a thorough pass with a wet/dry vac, we reduced it to its original frame once again. I had added expanding foam between it and the tank and between it and the wall in an effort to stop leaks, so we weren't able to remove it easily with the tank in place and we weren't about to take that apart!

A key in the new version was that the water should have no choice but to run back to the tank. This was accomplished by filling the inset portion with play sand, sloping it toward the tank. The idea was that we could carve into it to form channels, but we didn't end up doing that.

Next we covered the wall and the bog with pond liner

Folding and trimming it until it formed leak-proof sides and would funnel all water back into the tank.

Fish settling in, plants still slow going

2008-01-12T09:30:00.000-06:00

The fish in the top half of the picture here are Congo Tetras, particularly cool because of the tendency of the edges of their fins to catch the light and make it look like they're glowing. The fish below them are mostly German Blue Rams, with a clown loach at the bottom right corner.

Our two orange Discus have become more outgoing and are willing to spend time at the front of the tank now.

As you can see, the plants haven't exactly taken off, but they were inadvertently nutrient deprived and have only been on the new fertilizer a short time by this point.

Though the brown algae has diminished, the so-called Blue-Green Algae (BGA) has made an appearance. Interestingly, BGA isn't actually algae, but a cyano-bacteria. It can be killed by adding antibiotics to the tank, however it would also kill the beneficial bacteria in the filter system and that is more important. Instead, we will just remove the BGA as much as possible and try to get the plants going. Once the plants are growing well, they will out compete the BGA for nutrients and it will go away on its own... at least that's the hope!

Learning the hard way

2008-01-02T00:24:00.000-06:00

Since we were struggling with algae at the start, I started treating the tank heavily with Flourish Excel because of its off-label use as an algaecide. Not thinking, I assumed that it was also a fertilizer and dosed all my tanks with it for close to two months. Not only didn't things grow as expected, serious signs of nutrient deficiencies resulted as you can see on leaves from my 150g tank above. I have since switched to dosing PMDD which contains 1 part each of Potassium Nitrate, Potassium Sulfate, Magnesium Sulfate, Plantex CSM+B. This provides all required nutrients except for Phosphates, but those typically exist in plentiful amounts in the aquarium as a byproduct of waste, excess food, plant matter, etc. I mixed the components myself from a hobbyist-run site AquariumFertilizer.com. The powdered mix is dissolved into solution and one to four drops are added per gallon on a daily basis. Once a week, a 50% water change is performed to ensure no under-utilized nutrient builds up to toxic levels.

Bit off more than he can chew

2007-11-27T09:15:00.000-06:00

Our 150g tank is heavily stocked with an assortment of Rainbows, Clown Loaches and others. It is always a feeding frenzy when putting food in the tank. It is common for fish to grab whatever is thrown in, regardless of its suitability for them or whether they were the intended recipient.

Here we have an Australian Rainbow that has grabbed a carnivore pellet meant for the bottom feeding fish. It's so big, he can't bite it and it distends his jaw to hold it in his mouth.

We can see the pellet here:

In order to break it down, he would spit it out, then grab it again:

But this wasn't without risk, as another Rainbow was following him around waiting for a chance to steal it:

So better to keep it jammed in his mouth!

A similar show is performed when feeding algae wafers to the Clown Loaches. They are much too big for their mouths, but they will pick them up and take them off somewhere private. Who ever said fish couldn't be entertaining?

After one month...

2007-11-25T22:00:00.000-06:00

After approximately one month, this is where the tank stands. There is lots of new growth showing on the plants, but it is a challenge to hold off the brown algae that is common to newly established tanks. The bog area is still unfinished. Despite all our efforts during construction, it has leaked each time we have tested it. Little by little, each leak has been eliminated, so we hope to have it going soon.

Launching the new tank

2007-10-25T22:21:00.000-05:00

We wanted to have the tank up for the 8th floor loft party, an event my apartment building has on each floor once per year where residents can open their lofts to share with their neighbors. So the last few weeks were stressful, but it came together. As of these pictures, the tank had water in it for only 24hrs, but it looks good and the fish are doing well. After some time, the water will clear up.

The plants are from several stores in Austin, TX where we were the weekend before for the Maker Faire. I took the opportunity to check out the local fish stores in the area and found a bunch of plants I haven't seen at my local stores. With any luck, I can grow them out and sell them to my LFS so they will be available here in Dallas.

(Left)

(Middle)

(Right)

Differing perspectives

2007-08-28T23:29:00.000-05:00

An exploration of fishbowls by artist Roger Arquer

A new stand...

2007-08-16T01:13:00.000-05:00

My old stand was somewhat improvised. I was determined to make this one super sturdy so there would be no question that it could support the weight of almost 2,000lbs of water. I hardly ever create more than a pencil sketch of something before I start building, but I had discovered this great new program called Google SketchUp. It is basically a 3D drawing program with a very unique interface. It takes some getting used to, and watching of the tutorial videos, but it's amazingly powerful. Oh, and it's free!

Design goals this time around were:

Leveling feet
Removable rock panels
Removable trim for easy aquarium placement
Over-built design
Use notched wood posts that directly support the top frame without relying solely on the hardware
Keep the use of cedar and rock. I discovered later that Cedar is an ideal material for use around aquariums because it will never rot.

After a few major revisions, I arrived at the following plan:

Although I calculated the weight per foot to be only 250lbs, I opted to use grade 5 - 2.5"x3/4" hex head bolts with a matching nut and washer. The combination was about $7.50/set, but the high grade means that it should be possible to turn the nut to level the stand, even under full load. I found some plastic caps to put over the head to keep from scratching the floor when I move the stand around during the build.

The panels were designed to be a piece of plywood with two layers of 2x4. The rock facing would be glued to the plywood, then the panel could be inserted between the legs. This would allow filter components to be placed under the stand if desired, plus it makes the stand easier to handle. As an added bonus, when adjusting the leveling feet, the panels can slide up and down so they are always resting on the floor regardless how much leveling adjustment was necessary.

What to do...

2007-08-11T00:21:00.000-05:00

After shoveling out 250lbs of gravel, I was able to pull the aquarium away from the wall for a closer look. Sure enough, the cracks were bad:

I couldn't understand what would have caused such a failure. I hoped that it was a manufacturing defect. I pried off the plastic trim along the top hoping to find a chipped edge or an unclean break, as that would be my evidence to complain to Oceanic. Unfortunately, as you can see, it's a perfectly clean edge. A single crack leaves the top edge and splits out to multiple cracks.

I had three theories for the failure. (1) Manufacturing defect. (2) Overheating of the glass by the heater when the water level in the overflow box dropped and I hadn't remembered to turn off the heater. (3) Uneven support by the stand.

I did have some instances where the 500 watt heating element was not fully submerged and was on. But it sat on the bottom and the crack started at the top. I had some concerns about the stand design, but I reasoned that if it wasn't fully supported across the span, it should have created inward pressure at the failure point. It seemed like it would have had to be supported in the middle and not the ends, thus pulling at that point, in order to crack at the top. Neither seemed to have occurred. Once I saw where the crack was and found no apparent manufacturing flaw, a fourth option came to mind. I had drilled several holes in the wood supporting the bog in order to create a large notch along the front edge. The plan was to use the notch to route hoses and wires into the tank, but it ended up not working out. While drilling, I think the bit may have broken through the wood and allowed the bit to hit the edge of the tank. If it did happen, it left no apparent damage on the trim, and if it caused a flaw in the glass, it didn't manifest itself for over two months of water testing and startup. So I don't know.

The warranty on the tank said it covered only "glass-to-glass seals" and "only if the tank is used on an Oceanic stand." The crack therefore didn't qualify, which seems unfair. But such is life. I started to consider replacement options. I had a good relationship with my local fish store, so hoped they would let me order a replacement at-cost. When I stopped in to inquire, I discovered that they had had a fire in the store a few days earlier. While they were loading most of their stock onto a truck to take it to their other store in Houston, they were looking to sell some of their display tanks. None fit what I was looking for though, so I passed.

We ended up ordering a tank from GlassCages.com. Since we were reconsidering things, and I was going to build a new stand, we picked a 240g 72x30x24. The 215g was 72x24x29 which made it too tall to comfortably work in. This would give us more depth to the tank for visuals and it wouldn't be as tall so it's easier to work in. GlassCages builds their tanks on demand, so they would build to spec. I opted to have the holes drilled in the back glass rather than the bottom as I felt it would make access easier. I also liked how a friend who recently opened a fish store did his tanks with home made skimmers. (More on that later.) I opted for a 5th hole to be used as a dedicated drain for water changes. I thought the tank would have cross bracing as the previous tank had, but because GlassCages uses euro-bracing, this tank didn't require cross bracing. This was exciting as it made the top almost fully open. We also upgraded the front glass to StarFire glass which is low in iron content and lacks the blueish tint most thick glass has. GlassCages is in Tennessee, and for only $80 would meet in the Dallas area and transfer the tank to your truck.

It turned out that by Dallas, they really meant Denton which is almost an hour North. So after a long day with a rental van, much sweat and frustrations, we got it home. Here it is.The euro-bracing is the rim of glass around the top and there is one at the bottom inside the tank too.

Catastrophic failure

2007-07-27T22:37:00.001-05:00

I went out of town for a week and while I was gone, Shane received a late-night knock on the door from maintenance. Apparently, the apartment below us reported water leaking through the ceiling (keep in mind the ceiling is 12" of concrete). Shane shut off the pumps and the auto-refill system and the leak appeared to stop. The next day, he discovered a crack in the back glass that was located inside the overflow box. Over the next day or two, the crack grew so he drained the tank fully. Fortunately, there were no fish in the tank yet and the plants were easily moved to another tank. The wood trim supporting the tank held a lot of water, so damage was minimal.

The poor empty tank:

The crack viewed from the top:

The crack viewed from the back, under the bog . You can see the long curving cracks:

There isn't really much that can be done at that point, so after months of work, we were faced with starting over.

Planting the Top

2007-07-08T00:37:00.000-05:00

Well, we planted the backdrop today. There is a great little shop near here called Sunshine Miniature Trees that has an incredible selection of Bonsais and other neat plants. They have been here for 17 years, and the owner and staff are incredibly helpful and knowledgable. I still do not understand how we could have lived here this long, and not been in there before. With their help, and an assortment of ( less wonderful but still serviceable ) plants we got from the $.99 store, we were ready to plant the back.

Most of the back is always at least damp from the fountain overflow, but it's not necessarily soggy all the time. I expect some of the plants wont be able to handle the damp and will melt, but we've done our best to give them a good chance. For most of the plants, we removed them from the container and rinsed as much of the soil off as we could manage. I then repacked them into peat pots using a potting medium recommended by the owner of Sunshine called 'Cornell Mix'. It's a light weight potting medium made up mostly of peat, with some perlite and other ingredients mixed in. According to him, we should not have to worry about it leaching or monkeying with our water chemistry to any great degree.

The peat pots were then set into a bed of 'Aquatic Soil' which is basically a mixture of perlite and vermiculite, two largely inert forms of fired and unfired clay. The peat pots are set above the water level in the aquarium soil, so we are hoping that the net result will be plants that stay wet, but not soggy. Since they are in the peat pots, we also retain the ability pull them out and let them dry out if need be.

There were a few exceptions to this rule. The climbing fig vine behind the central piece of driftwood remains in it's own pot, and will have to be watered by hand, since it remains well clear of the water. The small jade plant planted in the piece of driftwood is planted directly in a bed of the aquatic soil. We're less concered about moisture there, but I'm a little concerned about keeping it fertilized without leaching into the water. Still, we have high hopes for it.

The Bonsai Juniper, the Fukien Tea and the climbing ivy behind the left water fall are also still in their own pots, since there was not really any planting space behind the fountain. The plant on the far right is called 'irish moss' ( though it is a rooted plant ). I'm a little concerened that the peat pot will occsionally be sitting it water, instead of just wet aquatic soil. If this proves to be the case, I may try to move it into an unglazed terracotta pot. It should be easy enough to conceal, and should protect the soil roots from sitting in mud.

We also purchased some Kyoto moss spores to try to dress out the naked stone on the fountains, but upon further investigation, it may require more care and feeding than we will be able to give it - however, for $5, we figured it was worth a try. We've started a small test batch of it in a sheltered area on the right, but the conditions may be too hostile for it to get established. If so, we will probably start looking for some friendly lichens or other, less picky mosses to get established to try to minimize alage growth and soften some of the lines. If you have any suggestions, please let us know.

Lastly, we are waiting for Sunshine to get in some small epiphytes that we can distribute around the rock, driftwood and stand to complete the external decorations. We are also toying with trying to introduce some java moss into the always wet areas around the right hand fountain.

Great LFS!

2007-07-05T01:39:00.000-05:00

I had the good fortune to run across a great new pet store in Dallas called 'Odyssey Pets'. They specialize in fish, and dog grooming - Yes, I know that seems odd at first glance, but it also reflects one of their best qualities.

We met Mike - the owner - a couple of years ago while he was working for another LFS. We were just getting back into the hobby, and were just getting our feet wet with seriously planted aquariums. Mike was a consistently good resource, and helped us avoid a number of beginner mistakes, and was in general a font of great information. He has since struck out on his own, and we are very, very happy to have such a knowledgeable, and upstanding guy running a shop in our area.

They also happen to own and show award winning havanese ( small dogs - for those like me that had to ask ). Thus, their focus is not so strange after all. They chose two arenas about which they are both knowledgeable and passionate.

At the moment his fish room is a little small, but they are expanding the shop by another 1500 square feet, and much of that will be given over to fish. Further, what stock he does currently have is healthy, and well cared for. His plants, however, are perhaps his best feature at the moment. They are easily the healthiest and best maintained selection I have been able to find locally.

http://www.odysseypets.biz/

Check them out.

Name that Fish

2007-07-05T00:40:00.000-05:00

Can anyone help me identify this fish? I bought a few of them from our LFS last year when he had them in. I can't figure out what species they are, and the fish store doesn't remember carrying them.

They are personable little fish, though they do startle rather easily, and are extremely peaceful. They briefly shared a tank with some full grown and juvenile Butterfly Goodieds, and while the goodieds didn't exactly bully them, they were much more present and had better appeteites after we removed the goodieds.

They tend to keep mostly towards the bottom. they have alternating red and blue vertical stripes, with an anal fin that runs along the entire rear third of the body, and both have a black spot surrounded by a white/yellow area right at the base of the tail ( this is not a sore or lesion, it is healthy, scales are intact , and was present on all six of the ones we had ) . Body shape is generally round, with no flattening or barbels typical of an exclusive bottom dweller, though they still pick food off the bottom willingly enough. When they are in good color, there is occasionally some yellow fringing on the fins.

I have only 2 left now, but there is a significant size difference between the sexes. Since I cannot identify the family, I cannot say what gender they are, but I have two of the larger variety, which come in at about two inches, while the smaller were 1-1.25 inches. The larger also seem significantly more full bodied, and the smaller were the more active and visible, leading me to guess that I have two females.

I've had them for ~ 18 mos in a sparsely populated 20 gallon, so I believe these sizes are full grown.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

A coffee table too...

2007-06-26T19:57:00.000-05:00

This one isn't so bad. In fact, it's the first one I've seen to actually acknowledge the need for lighting, filtration, etc. It has the potential to be a neat idea, but the form factor does make it more difficult to maintain.

Truly an obsession

2007-06-24T12:18:00.000-05:00

It is possible to take this interest too far...

Crazier than mine!

2007-06-20T23:13:00.000-05:00

I came across this tank on YouTube and while I understand how the water would stay in the upper tank normally, I don't understand how it stays in the tank with the airstone in use. I can't think of any physics process by which that air would be removed, and the lack of air is all that keeps the water up there. It's a neat idea...

Speaking of crazy, yet cool aquarium ideas... how's this one? I can't find it at the moment, but I found the site of the guy who made it. Apparently they have the filter inlet on one tank and outlet on the other, and because of a system like this's tendency to retain an even level on both ends, this creates a current through the tube - genius! But it also must have cost a fortune in materials, and required a world of patience... and a lot of guts.

Automatic top-off

2007-06-17T23:18:00.000-05:00

Since the tank will have no top and there will be various streams in the bog area, evaporation will be rampant. There are auto top-off systems in the catalogs I frequent, but they seem overly complicated, monitoring sump level, tank level, reservoir, etc. I found a system on Ebay that looked promising. It comes with one or two float valves that can be configured in a variety of ways depending on your needs. It activates a relay to a standard 3-prong outlet. As a safety measure, you can set a timer for between 6-24 minutes. This is how long it will run the pump before shutting off, whether or not the float said to stop. This protects against floating plant matter interfering with the float valve and overfilling the tank. If it times-out in this way, it won't run again until it is reset.

I opted for the two float system. This gives you a float for on/off and a "oh sh#t" backup. If all else fails, there is the timer.

You may have noticed a blue plastic 55 gallon drum next to the 150g tank. This is my tank water queue. Although I upgraded my reverse osmosis system to better support my new tank needs, it still doesn't produce water at a fast rate. So I have it setup to fill the tank to a mechanical float valve. Then I have an electric pump that I use with a garden hose and spray wand to fill my other tanks. For the 215 I added a two-way splitter, routing one to the hose, and the other to a lawn sprinkler valve with a hose barb. I run hose from there to the tank. I leave the hose above water level so the water can't flow backwards into the drum when the water level in it is low. The transformer to power the valve simply plugs into the controller for the float switches. The switches came with plastic brackets and suction cups, but I plan to build a more permanent mount for them.

Butterfly Goodieds

2007-06-17T12:51:00.000-05:00

Male: Right side of photo, with iridescent blue scales, and white band on the tail
Female: Center left above clown loach resting on plants in the driftwood.

Okay, I needed a break from building the new aquarium, so I'm going to profile a cool little fish we found a couple of years ago. They are called Butterfly Goodieds ( Ameca Splendens ). They are a hardy little live bearer that some sources indicate are extinct, or nearly so in the wild. Currently, there are no known wild sources, and none of the major breeding houses are interested in them. The species is kept in the hobby solely by dedicated regional breeders who often specialize in goodieds.

Depending on what you read, they can be kept and thrive from 65-80 degrees, though they will seldom breed at the low end of the range. They are very tolerant of hard and soft water, and one breeder even keeps them in a greenwater tank. We keep ours between 76 and 78 in a heavily planted tank, and they are doing very, very well.

They are a very personable and active fish. They most definitely know who feeds them, and will beg shamelessly even when well fed. They like a good deal of current in the tank, and we often see them playing in the return stream when we run the big diatom filter. They are active and precocious enough that they might worry delicate of skittish species, though the only problem we've ever had with fin nipping was with them in our angel tank when it started getting a little bit crowded, and we lost one of the goodied pair.

They do very well with Bosemani and Australian rainbows in our 150, with the males occasionally even chasing the much larger rainbows across the tank. We have two pairs in our 150, and two more breeding pairs in a 20 gallon which we are slowly converting to a species tank. So far, we've had three drops, and we just sold the first batch of 10 to our LFS and gave a pair to a friend, with 8 more currently growing out with their parents.

However, the very, very best thing of all about the neat little fish is that they LOVE hair algae. A pair of full grown ones can strip a 20g tank of an infestation in a matter of days. 4 of them took care of all the hair algae in our 150 in less than two weeks. The picture below shows two juvenile and several fry going after a ball of hair algae - note that they will not disturb the 'japanese algae ball' sitting next to it.

Breeding them, as with most livebearers, is just a matter of providing them with good water quality, and plenty of good food. They are easily sexed, with females being much larger than males, and males having a bright white band on their tails. The banding emerges, I believe at about 3-4 months, but I have to confess that I did not really watch the calendar for them.

We haven't been breeding them enough to have determined exactly what works well, but we feed them a mixture of flake, veggies, tetramin bottom feeder pellets ( these are actually for our ancistris and clown loaches, but the goodieds seem to love them as well ) and the occasional batch of brine shrimp - as well as any hair algae we can lay hands on.

Fry are larger than most live bearers - and large enough to take flake from the get go, so there is no need to contend with infusoria or other involved methods of feeding. They are typically very shy for the first week or two, but they grow quickly and become quite bold as long as you provide some dense plant cover for them to retreat to. Parents do not seem to be a threat to the fry, as we had 3 generations living in the tank at one point, and no observed loss or damage to the fry.

So do they have a down side? Sort of, as I mentioned above, they can be fin nippers if the tank is crowded, or they get bored. However, in our experience, if you keep a pair, or better a small school, they won't generally bother anyone else in the tank.

Second, they really like hair algae - so much so that it is difficult, if not impossible to keep plants with fine foliage, like foxtail, cabomba, hair grass or glossostigma. We tried repeatedly to get baby tears and hair grass established in our VERY heavily planted 150, and they unfailingly found them, and pulled them up. We even went so far as to box off one corner of the tank for a month to allow baby tears to get a foot hold, and they were still all pulled up in less than two weeks.

Still, on the whole, I think they are 100% worth it. If you can find them in your LFS, they are typically pretty inexpensive, easy to keep, and a whole lot of fun to add to your tank. They are peaceful enough in pairs or schools to keep with most other species, and you get the added benefit of knowing that you are helping to protect and propogate a threatened species.

The Bog Structure

2007-06-13T23:15:00.000-05:00

The bog area is finally beginning to come together. We used cut stone to seal up the sides, and a bead of silicone along where the underlay and the aquarium come together.

Working with natural broken stone has proven to be a challenge, and we've been through several iterations. What you see in the photos should be the final configuration, with the exception of whatever shunts we need to correct to guide the water flow.

We had originally planned to use one of the return pumps as the water source, but we needed both returns to keep up water flow in the tank, so we've gotten two smaller pumps, and split the flow on both to control volume.

The right hand side has a small lake at the top, with an overflow into a small stream that empties into a larger lake that in turn drains into the tank.

The left side is meant to be more of a natural cliff fall. Water will come from the topmost opening, as well as the 'cavern' to the left, and will hopefully follow the water course out onto the center glass support, and then into the tank. Once we have established the water flow, the final flow will be routed so that it keeps the marginals wet, and flows back into the tank. We'll place a terrestrial Ivy on both the left and right side of the lattice and allow it to fill in, as well as attaching mosses and epiphytes to the bog area and the base.

Since the marginals will be planted in a mixture of vermiculite and perlite, there should be little danger of fertilzer or chemical leaching from the plant soil wreaking havoc in the tank, and the terrestrial plants will be watered from, and drain on a separate channel.

We are waiting to build out the center until we pick out plants and containers.

Lattice

2007-06-12T23:46:00.000-05:00

Earlier I showed a mockup of a lattice structure for behind the bog area. Something to grow vines on and bring the whole thing together. Unfortunately, I didn't get pictures in progress, but I bought a bunch more cedar fence pickets and ripped them to 3/4" sticks. I kept some in the 2.5" size I cut before. I decided a criss-cross pattern was kind of boring, so I went with a different idea. Below is the back side in nearly complete state.

In the bottom right of the above picture is the jig I used to get even spacing. It's just two scrap pieces nailed at 90 degrees to one another. I used it as shown below. It would sit neatly between two sticks while I nail the next one in place.

Here is the final result, viewed from the front

And here it is in place:

CO2 Reactor

2007-06-12T22:49:00.000-05:00

The 150g tank was the first time I did CO2 injection. I selected the Aqua Medic 1000 CO2 reactor shown below:

It has worked well, but it's expensive. Anywhere from $80-120 depending where you shop. It's a simple design, a tube filled with bio balls with hose barbs on either end, a straw tube to pump in the gas and a vent at the top to purge air.

I was looking through catalogs and came across this which looked surprisingly similar. And only $35.

I purchased one along with a box of bioballs...

A couple dollars at my local Petco got me a hard tube that air hose tubing fits over.

I opened it up, poured in the bio balls and drilled a hole in the top for the tube:

I carefully threaded the tube through the dividing disc and down the side, stopping an inch or so from the bottom.

Finally, a few drops of super glue finishes it off and (hopefully) welds and seals the tube in. I haven't water tested it yet, but if it leaks, I will add silicone. In this model, both the water tubes are on top. The one entering the middle of the reactor chamber connects to a tube that extends down to the bottom. In traditional use, this would be the inlet, water would be pumped to the bottom, flow up through the media and out the top. In my case, I want the water to flow against the CO2's natural tendency to float upward. So I will pump the water in the top and force it to travel down through the bio balls before flowing up the pipe to get out.

The only thing missing from this is the air vent. I have some small valves from an indoor watering system that I thought about using. They have barbs on them so installing them directly would be challenging. I could mount a small piece of the straw tube the same as the one there already and use a small piece of hose to bridge between the two. Or I can play it by ear and see if I need to be able to vent air regularly.

Lighting Canopy - Build Part II

2007-06-10T02:05:00.001-05:00

The reflectors seemed to keep the light in the area of the tank, so I decided to go with 10" sides, mainly to hide the fixtures inside. I didn't put gaps between these planks so the light won't leak out, particularly on the ends where the reflector doesn't reflect the light downward. The addition of the sides made the canopy much more rigid which was good.

I wasn't sure where I would put the ballasts. They are heavy, but not too bad. I test fit one along the center brace and the mounting holes aligned with the planks that have the metal supports and eye-bolts. I decided it would support the ballasts and allow plenty of space for cooling.

The ballasts came with jacketed, heat resistant cable going to spade plugs for the light fixtures. With the ballasts mounted so close, I didn't need that much cable but didn't want to try to shorten it in case I needed to move the ballasts later. Due to the special jacket on the cable, it wouldn't coil neatly, so I just routed it neatly around the fixture. It looks like I planned it all from the start!

One last touch was the addition of some more 2x3 along the bottom edge of the side supports. I cut grooves lengthwise on the inside and fit some glass in them. I think it would work, but the glass I bought was simple 3/32" glass which was difficult to cut cleanly, much less install without breaking it. Since the canopy will be so high above the tank I think I'll go without glass for now. It was mainly to protect the bulbs, so I'll keep an eye on it.

It looks good! I added some trim pieces to the ends to cover up the cut corners that were on the fence pickets. I found that the 2x3 I put along the back edge cast shadows on the bog area, in part because I ran out of planks for the back. For now I took off the 2x3 along that edge and I'll wait and see how it goes.

The tank is filled here for water testing purposes. I also wanted to soak out any contaminants that may have been introduced during the build process (the silicone said it was 100% silicone but also said it wasn't for tank use, plus the cut rock panels were glued together with liquid nails.) To help in that process, I'm running the filters packed full of charcoal. In the bog area you can see the beginnings of the slate build. A friend suggested some lattice for the wall with some climbing plants. I used some cedar scrap to mock some up to see how it looked. I think it's worth pursuing.

Bog Setup - Redux

2007-06-10T01:48:00.000-05:00

Epoxy is a pain in the $!@. I knew this, we've used it before, but somehow, we forgot just how annoying. To be fair, West makes a gread product, just not for this application.

If you haven't figured it out yet, coating the pink stuff didn't quite work out. It didn't melt, or spontaneously combust... it just, well, um, yeah, you get the idea. So, time for plan B. Bright and early this morning, Michael and I set out for a trip to the hardware store, and our friendly neighborhood stone yard.

The plan? Use the real thing. But, obviously, the lightweight little support structure we had put in before wasn't going to be enough to hold 200-300 lbs of stone, so first we had to build a new platform, when we ( in typical fashion ) over-engineered just a tad.

At the stone yard, we bought a couple of hundred pounds of what they described as 'Multi Slate Flag. Beautiful stuff. Did I mention we loaded it, and a 50 lb bag of beach pebbles, and another 150 lbs of Rainbow Schist into the back of Michael's Mini Cooper?!

Next, we took these beautiful big pieces of slate, and beat on them with a hammer and chisel to make them into smaller pieces which we tried to pile artfully on the bog shelf. Here are a couple of initial planning shots

Lighting Canopy - Initial test

2007-06-09T02:00:00.000-05:00

We're not really supposed to be drilling into concrete structures here, so we were lucky that some mysterious ferries stopped by when we weren't looking and magically installed some expanding concrete anchors in the ceiling for us in just the right spot! The addition of some aircraft cable made hanging relatively straightforward.

It was time to give it a test run. It wasn't as overwhelmingly bright as I feared so that was good. I decided to pitch the reflector towards the back so I made use of my adjustment mechanism, which you can see up close in the photo below.

(Note, these photos are black and white because the camera white balance was off so they came out very blue and couldn't be easily corrected.)

Lighting Canopy - Build Part I

2007-06-07T01:13:00.000-05:00

I set out on this part of the project with a few ideas. I liked the idea of making the lighting canopy out of cedar to complement the rest of the aquarium, and thought something that looked a bit like a grape arbor might look good. I also wanted the light fixtures to have some means to be adjusted to fine tune the pitch of the reflectors to control the direction of the light.

We bought a bunch of cedar fence pickets that were on sale, and some 2x3's to fasten them to.
The pickets were about 6" wide, 1" thick and 6 feet long. I put them on the table saw and ripped them into uniform 2.5" strips which seemed more to scale with what we were building. I cut three 2x3 pieces to 24" in length figuring the canopy should be roughly the dimensions of the aquarium itself. Then I just nailed the pickets on top, using one as a spacer to leave gaps for air flow.

Once that was complete, I turned it over and test fit the reflectors, marking where the mounting holes for those would be. From this I decided where the eye-bolts should go. I realized that the boards were likely not strong enough to support the stress of the eye bolts alone, so I dug through our stock of assorted materials and found some pieces of metal left over from some shelving. I drilled holes in those and mounted the eye-bolts through them. This would cause the stress to be spread out through most of the exposed board on that side of the canopy. I would add some liquid nails later to keep the metal supports in place.

My idea for making the reflectors with adjustable pitch was to use these threaded fasteners shown on the right in the above photo. I would drill larger holes in the reflectors and insert these, then use the ring on the left to secure it to the reflector.

I would then insert these bolts through the wood in the canopy and thread them into the connectors on the reflectors. By turning the bolts from the top, I could draw each of the four connectors up or down and turn the reflector slightly in any direction. I also sketched out a similar system to bend the reflector sides inward to narrow the beam, but opted to wait and see if that is necessary.

To fasten the connectors to the reflectors I found these neat washer-like things that essentially slide on one-way. I found the best way to put them on is to set them over a hole drilled in a piece of wood as shown.

Then set the reflector over it, lining up the hole we drilled and setting the threaded connector in place. Then I used a scrap piece of wood to hold it in place while I delivered a couple blows to the wood piece to drive the connector into the washer below. The scrap wood prevented me from accidently hitting the reflector with the hammer. The connector on the left has been installed, the one on the right is ready to be installed.

Here you can see the connectors from the back side, ready to accept the bolts.

I drilled the holes and installed the bolts through the top. You can also see the eye bolts in place. Then I held the reflector in place and used an allen wrench to get all the bolts in place.

And here it is finally mounted. One bonus of this mounting method is that the reflector is set off from the wood which will promote cooling.

Building the Bog

2007-06-03T01:21:00.000-05:00

We've decided to make the bog by building up sheets of pink styrofoam insulation ( see picture below ). It's light weight, chemically stable, cheap and very easy to work with. We began by cutting a piece to the size of the bog platform to use as a base. We built up the land forms by layering several pieces together, cutting holes in the layers of foam to hold various marginals and epiphytes. We also cut channels into the base layer to provide water courses, and shaped the stacked layers aling the edges with a looped hacksaw blade to get an eroded, somewhat natural looking texture ( this is not shown in these pictures. )

One of our goals was a tall, dramatic looking water fall on one end. Rather than trying to stack and bond together the dozens of small pieces it would take to get the desired height, we decided to a smaller number of larger ones, bond them, and stack them perpendicular to the base ( second photo ). The next step is to blend the pieces together and create a rocky, irregular surface for the falls.

The final step is to blend, color and apply a gray-brown epoxy coat to the entire board to make it water tight, and prevent anything unpleasant from leaching into the water. We're using West epoxy resins, and using colloid silica to thicken the mixture. We've got a couple of test batches poured and are waiting for them to set to see which mixture is most effective.

The garden platform

2007-06-02T00:21:00.000-05:00

A key part of this aquarium from the start was the inclusion of a bog type garden area above and behind the tank. This is a first attempt at building a support for a shelf. Actually, it wasn't the first attempt, the first attempt was a 2x4 frame that used lumber that was far from straight, thus the resulting frame was not flat. This was an attempt to make due with the wood despite its deformities.

Feeling a bit impatient, I made use of some particle board furniture pieces I had laying around and put something together. It is supported by the wall itself though and that is something I wanted to avoid. Depending on what the structure on top is built with, it may need to be rebuilt.

The plastic shown is 40mil plastic sheeting that is sold for lining shower floors before laying tile I think. It is pretty thick and therefore very durable looking. It's not cheap however, almost $6 per linear foot. But the goal was to establish a means where no matter what happened up top, the water would always end up back in the tank.

Lighting...

2007-05-29T00:35:00.000-05:00

In a planted tank, lighting is very important. The general rule is 2-3 watts per gallon when using CO2 injection - which we will be. That would be about 500-600watts normally. But the tank is deeper than usual - about 30" - and we also will have the lighting fixtures hanging much higher than normal since we want people to see the plants behind the tank. Some light will also bleed off onto those plants as well. I tried to find some means to calculate the increase in light required to have the lights raised high above the tank. In photography you learn about the inverse-square law, the idea that if you double the distance between you and the subject, they receive half as much light. The problem is, it's half the light we had to begin with, it's relative. Watts don't translate to lumens because distance and other factors play a role. So I asked on forums online and tried to find information via Google but ultimately found that I had two options, a pair of 250watt lamps or a pair of 400watt ones. The 250's were what I would have needed normally, so I got the 400's. Below is the diagram I made to support my question online.

A couple years ago when building out the 150g aquarium, we talked to a great guy at one of local stores who answered all our questions. One of the comments he made was that metal halide lighting had a great lighting quality, that the light rays are distinctly visible in the water. So for this tank, that's what I wanted to go with. This was further supported by recommendations in articles online that you use metal halide for tanks 30" or deeper so the light reaches the bottom with sufficient intensity.

It turns out that pre-made metal halide lights of this size are in the range $1,200 which seemed rather extreme. I looked around online at various do-it-yourself sites and learned that there is quite a bit to know about metal halide systems. Apparently the bulbs are either single or dual end. The dual end ones require a special "ignitor" to get them started, so you can't use just any ballast with them. They also don't have shielding of the ultraviolet light they produce so they require a glass filter over them to perform that task. Single end bulbs use a socket similar to standard screw in light bulbs called a mogul socket. These bulbs are typically dual-envelope which means the bulb that has the gas in it and produces the light is enclosed inside a larger glass tube that provides protection and UV filtering. Some of these bulbs have orientation limitations, meaning they must be mounted vertical or horizontal or their useful life will be shortened. At $60-100 for a bulb, it's important to know these things. The traditional ballasts use wire coils to get the voltage up to what is required. These are very heavy and run very hot. Also, unless they include a special capacitor, they can cause electrical interference. New electric ballasts use solid state electronics to perform the same tasks. They can support any type of bulb and run cooler, but they are more expensive.

We found a great deal on a retro-fit kit from DIYReef.com which included a spider (shaped) reflector and socket, and a 400watt IceCap ballast (which seems to be one of the better electronic ballasts) for only $199. Add in a bulb for $60 and we were able to get a set of two for around $550. The reflector is shown below. I knew it was large, but wasn't prepared for the socket to be the size of my hand!

Esquire House Aquarium

2007-05-22T08:36:00.000-05:00

This is a 1600 gallon tank that was designed and built by Tom Barr for the VP of Esquire magazine. In terms of the overall fish selection, it is similar to what I'd like to see in the 215. However, the Discus shown in this photo are the size of dinner plates (10"), we'll be getting much smaller ones. Check out the Esquire site for video and photos of this aquarium. If you join the BarrReport website, there are behind the scenes photos of the construction.

Plumbing the tank

2007-05-21T00:01:00.000-05:00

We decided to stick with Eheim so all the cannister filters used interchangeable parts. While
Eheim came out with a new 3e model, it didn't seem to offer features I desired for its cost. Instead I ended up purchasing a pair of Eheim Professional II 2026's that were discounted online.

The bulkheads I purchased had 1" slip fit connections on the bottom and threads on the top. They had matching inlet cages that would thread into the intakes, and with a PVC adapter, it was possible to fit adjustable spray nozzles for the returns. Also shown above is the design I arrived at for connecting the bulkheads to the lines for the filters. I briefly considered plumbing it with hard PVC to the filter then using a short bit of tubing to connect the two, but this seemed like it would be more trouble than it was worth.

Here the parts have been glued together and installed. I had to enlarge the opening in the back of the stand to have sufficient access to operate the ball valves. The one has a screw plug installed because I am going to route the output of the filter to the garden area above and behind the aquarium and let it run back into the tank.

I did think later that my choice of the 1" to 1/2" reducing 90 degree elbow was a mistake. I have permanently artificially restricted the flow to 50% what it was. If at some point in the future, I increase the size of the filters or otherwise need more flow, there isn't much I can do about it without replacing the bulkhead since it's all glued together. I should have instead plumbed it to a 1" slip to threaded connection then used a threaded reducer to fit the hose barb. Then I could have easily replaced the reducer as necessary in the future.

Original 150g Plant tank

2007-05-17T00:10:00.000-05:00

This is our original 150g planted tank presently. It has actually been broken down and moved to another city since the first version, but the only real difference is this has a Flourite/gravel substrate and the original had a soil/gravel one. Soil was very effective, but messy and impossible to move.

The aquarium has a Eheim 2026 filter with Aqua Medic 1000 inline CO2 reactor powered by compressed CO2. Lighting is 4 x 96w compact fluorescents from AHSupply connected to two ballasts, both on a 7 hour on-cycle with one pair of lights starting one hour later than the other to imitate sunrise/sunset. Lighting, heat, and CO2 are controlled by a Neptune Systems Aquacontroller II with X-10 interface. (The controller adjusts the CO2 by measuring the pH. CO2 will lower the pH of the water, so we have the controller set to turn the CO2 on when the pH goes above 6.90 and off when it drops below 6.80.)

The fish are primarily Assorted Rainbows, Roseline Sharks, Rocky Mountain Minnows, Clown Loaches, Butterfly Goodieds, Flying Foxes, Standard Plecos, and Amano Shrimp.

A little reinforcement

2007-05-15T23:59:00.000-05:00

I got a little nervous after the amount of effort it required to get the aquarium onto the stand, so I ended up purchasing steel angle iron and using it to fasten the front Cedar rail to the cubes. For good measure, I also reinforced the front cube edges and the back rail. I calculated that each of the cubes, with their four vertical side panels make up approximately 6 square feet of surface area in contact with the floor. So 24"x3/4"=18sqin or 1.5 sqft, multiply x 4 sides and get 6 sqft. Dividing the total 12sqft by 2500lbs of water gets me about 208lbs/sqft which seems reasonable. I checked the stairwell and found the floors in the building to be approximately 12" of concrete which is good since we'll have a total of 500+ gallons of water in the apartment by the time we're done - the benefits of a loft in a converted Sears warehouse building.

I drew up some diagrams of the stand so far:

Note: I'm not a trained Engineer, so use your best judgement when building your own stands.

The sweet smell of Cedar

2007-05-14T23:44:00.000-05:00

At the stone yard I saw pictures of a fireplace installation done in slate that had rough cedar shelving that looked very sharp. I proposed using that as accent and additional support in the way of 4x4" base trim around the aquarium. It could cover the plastic trim already on the aquarium and distribute the weight of the aquarium a little better.

While this idea seemed fairly straightforward at the time, the cuts it required were quite challenging. After two days of table saw, jig saw, chisel, and router, here is the finished result:

Did I mention there will be no visible hardware? That is probably what made it more complicated. Someone later suggested old style iron hardware would have looked good, but it was too late then.

So next I screwed the back piece to the cubes so they stayed in position.

Because the Cedar would fully enclose the plastic trim, the aquarium would need to be placed on the back piece and then the other pieces assembled around it. Yet another idea that seemed good at the time! But first, it was important to make access holes for the drilled filter holes in the aquarium.

Because it's a freshwater tank, I didn't think dual overflows were necessary so removed one to allow for a nice rock background.

And then came wrestling the aquarium up on the stand...

And here it is. I put a couple 2x4's on the front temporarily until I can get some metal brackets to reinforce it. Because of the way it has to be assembled, I couldn't affix the front piece to the stand in any other way.

Gathering the materials

2007-05-13T23:38:00.000-05:00

Building out a proper planted tank is not cheap. Here is the first batch of materials needed. Filters, heater, filter media and rock for the hardscape. At the stone yard we found these cool panels of cut stone that had been glued together in 24"x6" prefab sections. After spending weeks breaking up slate tile to make the stand for the 72g (the original aquarium for this project,) this was a welcome alternative. We also got a bag of dime size river rock to use as accent gravel on top of the much smaller gravel in similar coloring we will buy at the aquarium store.

Where to put this giant thing?

2007-05-06T23:23:00.000-05:00

While the new tank is the same length as the 150g, it is 24" deep rather than 18" and it is taller as well. My first thought was to back it up to the other tank, but that seemed to take up a lot of the living room.

It didn't look quite right next to the other aquarium either.

The wood cubes it's on are actually 24" cubes which were built for a new 24" cube 60g aquarium that is going to replace the 35g hex that the fish have outgrown. I mistakenly thought that standard counter-top height was 49" rather than the actual 39", so I built two cubes with the intent to stack them and put the aquarium on top, perhaps turning them 30 degrees in between each level to create a spiral appearance. But once I realized that would be much too tall, I thought perhaps they would support the 215g. They are 3/4" furniture grade plywood we
recovered from another project. The granite tile in the first picture was our first idea to finish the cubes, but it turned out to be the wrong color and texture.

The open top aquarium

2007-04-15T22:55:00.000-05:00

A little over a year ago, I saw pictures of an open top aquarium setup in a fish store in Houston and found it really interesting. I had also read about people who grew terrestrial plants around their aquarium.

TIP: Often, terrestrial plants are sold for aquarium use, especially plants from bog type areas, but these are not designed to be grown under water. This causes the plants to die after a few months and decompose and contaminate the water. Always research plants you buy before adding them to your aquarium. Google can help you find "blacklists" of plants frequently sold for aquariums that are not appropriate. I've seen even prestigious stores sell them at times (perhaps unintentially).

I envisioned growing plants on a platform slightly above and behind the aquarium and Shane joined me in this vision. We originally bought a 72g bowfront tank to do it. But I wanted a cool background and there were some really neat imitation ones [1], [2] but unfortunately they're made overseas and rarely get imported here. There are some DIY options [3], but they are labor intensive and not as realistic looking. Regardless, backgrounds would take up a lot of depth and the bowfront wasn't very deep to begin with. During the recent yearly blow-out sale at one of our local aquarium stores, we used that line of reasoning to justify the purchase of a 215g tank to take the place of the bowfront for this project. The bowfront remains, but will become a different aquarium at some point in the future.

I was able to find the photo below of an aquarium that is very much like the vision I have for the 215g. Ours will be much larger and I want to avoid having the lights so close to the water so it's easier to view. This site will chronicle the build of the 215g and include other aquarium related things.

Photo Source