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My Tanks
James:
Well I promised pictures so here they are a run down of my current tanks (apologies for picture quality these have all been taken with my phones camera). I did intend on doing this in some kind of order but I'm having trouble moving some pictures over so you'll just have to bear with me. We'll start with the old tank that was given a new lease of life after getting a big tank complete with fish for an anniversary present got me back into the hobby.
Reading up on how to care for my new fish really got me interested again so I went and dug out my old 35l. Gave it a good clean and stocked it with the last of my old flatmates fish that he no longer wanted (a few different types of tetra) but as you can see from the picture the tank was pretty bare as I’d just chucked it together to get it going again.
So I decided to have a shot at a planted tank, didn’t want to shell out for a whole bag of substrate for such a small tank so went the soil route and bought a selection of plants from Pets at Home. Have added and removed a few things since then (Cuba died and was replaced with micro swords and the plant on the left grew like a weed so chopped a load of that out) but this is pretty much what it looks like now.
Currently fighting a rather severe case of hair algae at the moment so the tank doesn’t look as good as it should (getting the DIY C02 set up properly later to see if this helps). But the fish are a lot happier in their new tank with plenty of places to hide and the water quality is great with all the plant life in there.
James:
One thing I kept seeing on the internet that I wanted to try was building my own tank so off I headed to B&Q for materials and new tools and started work on a 40l tank that would be long and thin (original plan was to put it on top of a bookcase but this was changed after I realized how heavy it would all be). There are a few progress shots below of the tank in various stages.
The tank shell all built
Varnishing
Front panel fitted and all seals done
Filled with water and bogwood, the light was far too small but I kind of liked the effect it gave and was only planning on keeping low light plants in there anyway.
The tank is pretty rough around the edges but considering my DIY skills aren’t all that hot it turned out ok and the important thing was that it didn’t leak. It also cost me far more to build the tank then it would have cost to buy one of a similar size but at the end of the day its something I wanted to try and I was quite proud of myself.
Unfortunately after six weeks of being leak free while the tank cycled the day after I finally get around to adding fish I notice a small puddle around the base. Strip the whole thing down and find that the problem was where I had been repositioning the wood in the tank I had scratched off the varnish coat and water had slowly seeped through. The tank is now empty in the corner of the room waiting for the weather to get better so I can head outside and redo the varnishing.
James:
I'll get pictures of the other four tanks up once I sort out my camera problems
ghostsword:
Your home made tank is pretty good.. :)
James:
Thanks, it took a lot of time out in the garden swearing at it to get it built and theres a few things I would do differently if I was doing it again but considering this was my first shot at anything like this I was pretty pleased with the result.
Just got to be more careful with it next time round I guess ::)
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