55 Gallon Riparium build

So after seeing some very nice Riparuim builds. Also after aquiring a free 55 gallon tank with a broken plastic center brace it seemed a good option. I've been waiting a few days to post up so I could start out with a nice photo heavy start.


I picked up this tank for free. It had 5 inches of water and about 5 fish sticks floating in it. It had been abandoned for 6 months. Here is the tank after getting it home and taking the gravel out.


It had about 10 pounds of some bright ass gravel in it.


The broken top brace with what seems to be superglue everywhere.


After derimming the tank and a through cleaning, its starting to look better.


Cleaned it a bit more but still needs some love. Set it up near its final resting spot and painted the back with a can of gloss back I had rolling around.


I'm really debating about putting in a top brace. Now before anyone freaks out about not having a top brace in there. If I do this riparium it will not be filled all the way so it won't be under larger pressure. I'm thinking about putting in a 2 inch brace vertically in the center instead of flat so the plants can go by it easily and it would help stabilize it. Thoughts on that.

This is the overall goal is try to hold a candle to Hydrophyte's beautiful riparuims. He is the resident expert on it and actually developed many of the things he uses. They can be gotten from his website http://ripariumsupply.com/

Here is one of his stunning tanks.


So thats the start so far. Adding the planter box probably tomorrow. Will need to wait a few days for the silicone to cure after that. First I need to decide how high I want this tank filled.


Thats my start.

john73738;3772935; said:

Thought I was the only one to work on many projects at once. Starting a dual 75 stand, a 20g kitchen tank build, and of course my 250 ply.

Have fun, be watching this also for I have an extra 55g freeing up soon.

Bear

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I'm a busy guy.

I have a 60 gallon community tank, 2 pairs of breeding kribensis in 20 gallon longs.

Building the 300 gallon setup.

Building the 55 gallon riparium.

and numerous other things non fish related.

hydrophyte;3773218; said:

I have way too many tanks too. I keep the display tanks looking pretty good most of the time, but it's so hard to keep everything up in the fishroom setups and sometimes I get behind.

You should be able to get some nice riparium plants going in there. Now I understand what you mean about mounting the center brace vertically. It seems that should work fine. Wouldn't it have the same or almost the same strength as a piece horizontally?

Nice work getting almost all of that hardwater deposit off. Do you think any more will come off? I have seen that hardwater deposits can actually etch glass over time and it is not possible to remove that last bit of film.

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Having the brace vertical is not as strong as horizontal because you have a slightly long distance from the edge of the brace to the end of the long side of the tank. In my case it will be 24" from the vertical support to the end. If I used a 10" horizontal brace which is common it would only be 19". So I will have a few more inches of glass that could possible deflect a bit. But cutting the length from 48" to 24" of unsupported glass should reduce the deflection significantly. Also keeping in mind this is only getting filled about 1/2-2/3 of the way.

The hard water stains are being stubborn but slowing giving way. Here is a picture after the paint dried and the tank turned around.



Notice any difference?



I used vinegar and about a dozen razor blades to clean this thing. I should mention that good quality steel can scratch and mark the glass. I used cheap made in china razor blades and kept them at a steep angle.

A good portion of whats left on the tank disappears when wet. So I'm gonna have to wait till I get some water in it and work a bit more at the last visible stains.

Tomorrow I'm gonna cut the center brace and get it mounted in there so the silicone can start curing. I've been cleaning my shop and found a 50 pound bag of white silica sand buried in a corner. I think it will look great with the black background. I'm planning on using white sand with a black background in my 300 as well.


Hope that answers all the questions up to this point.