I have really lagged with putting this up on MFK, but JK47 came over the other night and finally took some really nice pics so I thought it would be a good time to post it.
Two different camera settings:
This is a 72x30x24" CA Cichlid biotope of Lake Izabal in Guatemala. The centerpiece fish is the Vieja maculicauda in my avatar, and a nice wild caught trio of Chuco godmanni.
Build wise, this has a 3D background from Designs By Nature (www.designsbynature.net). This was a great background to install because it is flexible and I was able to fold it up and put it in passed the braces of the acrylic tank and then just silicone the edges.
For filtration, the tank has a single overflow tower that only has a hole for a 1.25" bulkhead in it--nowhere near enough for what I wanted. A friend came over and widened it for a 2" bulkhead... I then decided (with MUCH help from Jcardona) to add a second bulkhead on the back of the tank for an emergency drain so I could run a modified herbie design. There is a small hole cut out of the top of the background to get water to the overflow with plastic mesh over it to keep fish out. Turned out to work very well.
The pump I'm running has 4300gph at 0 head height, there is no noise from the overflow with this system with over 10x turnover. The sump is 60x18x18" with two filter socks and a lot of Seachem Matrix. The return plumbing is 1.5" and has a T off (with ball valve to adjust flow) to a 36 watt UV running back into one of the filter socks. The returns are two Ys of Locline with four nozzles in the tank--able to play with the flow a lot. The heater is a 1000w Jehmco titanium with external controller.
The lights are LED flood lamps from eBay, two 20 watts and one 10 watt. Really like these, lots of light for the watts used and look cool with the shimmer effect.
Typing this all on my phone so I'm going to stop here. If anyone has has any questions I'll try to answer them. I will get some more detailed pictures of the equipment later.
Sent from my iPhone using MonsterAquariaNetwork app
Two different camera settings:
This is a 72x30x24" CA Cichlid biotope of Lake Izabal in Guatemala. The centerpiece fish is the Vieja maculicauda in my avatar, and a nice wild caught trio of Chuco godmanni.
Build wise, this has a 3D background from Designs By Nature (www.designsbynature.net). This was a great background to install because it is flexible and I was able to fold it up and put it in passed the braces of the acrylic tank and then just silicone the edges.
For filtration, the tank has a single overflow tower that only has a hole for a 1.25" bulkhead in it--nowhere near enough for what I wanted. A friend came over and widened it for a 2" bulkhead... I then decided (with MUCH help from Jcardona) to add a second bulkhead on the back of the tank for an emergency drain so I could run a modified herbie design. There is a small hole cut out of the top of the background to get water to the overflow with plastic mesh over it to keep fish out. Turned out to work very well.
The pump I'm running has 4300gph at 0 head height, there is no noise from the overflow with this system with over 10x turnover. The sump is 60x18x18" with two filter socks and a lot of Seachem Matrix. The return plumbing is 1.5" and has a T off (with ball valve to adjust flow) to a 36 watt UV running back into one of the filter socks. The returns are two Ys of Locline with four nozzles in the tank--able to play with the flow a lot. The heater is a 1000w Jehmco titanium with external controller.
The lights are LED flood lamps from eBay, two 20 watts and one 10 watt. Really like these, lots of light for the watts used and look cool with the shimmer effect.
Typing this all on my phone so I'm going to stop here. If anyone has has any questions I'll try to answer them. I will get some more detailed pictures of the equipment later.
Sent from my iPhone using MonsterAquariaNetwork app
