my 150 gallon tank project with pictures!

First of all, thank you sooo much to everybody that commented on my post ( http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=286428 ) about how to clean this nasty thing. Its clean & I have all new photos of my progress! The tank isn't totally finished yet but its a heck of a lot closer than it was a month ago!

This is what I started with:

After scraping everything down with a razor blade it looked a billion times better:




Time for the green scrubby pad! I <3 these things now!:


It really wasn't as bad as I expected. I just scraped everything down & sucked up the ickies in the vacuum ... then got HOT water & started scrubbing with the green scrubbies & dried it all out when I had everything sparkly!

Off to lowe's to buy gravel ... these took longer to clean than the tank!:


Now I have to get the filter box clean ... :


and a billion & a half bio balls ... CLEAN!!!:


I found this outside ... its like 40 years old & doesn't seem to be leaking tannins into my tub so I think its going to wind up in the right end of the tank. Its been soaking up tub water for 3 weeks now probably ... the darn thing is still a little floaty :


I started filling it up ... it only took a few minutes with the garden hose:


The filter decided to be a huge pain in my butt. I bought tubing from the LFS & it started kinking up really bad in the back so I had to buy elbows from lowe's & cut the tubing again ... it really wasn't that big of a deal. I'm just tired of looking at plumbing parts from Lowe's. lol. I've been there every day for the past 4 days. None of the parts I needed came with the tank/filter so I had to piece everything together. The lid to the filter box was mia but luckily my dad had a piece of plexi glass laying around for some random reason & it worked out perfectly! Then I (finally) figured out that a connector was broken off in the water intake ... it saw things my way when I got the drill after it. Its totally fine now & I've siliconed a new connector back in there. filter:

I've got everything running & added 13 goldfish to the tank to speed up the cycling process. (I feel kinda bad for them) Once everything gets nice & perfect my O's are moving in ... and maybe my TX pearl if he can behave ... not holding my breath on that one. ...And here is whats going on now in the tank. :


I'm planning on putting that root/stump thing in the corner (the last pic):

left end

middle

right end where I want the stump.

It is still cloudy ... I think I missed some dirt on the gravel ... but it will clear up:



I got the ratty looking plants at the LFS super cheap. I'm hoping they will start looking better in a few weeks ... if not I'm not really out much. My O's dont bother the plastic plants in the 55 gallon tank so I'm hoping they wont attack these little guys. lol.

I want to get some smaller rocks & stack up in the back of the tank to hide the tubing & I think the stump will look pretty freaking cool in there. I have to cut it b/c some of the arms sticking off it are too long. I figure I will let it soak a few more days b/c I'm going to have to take out idk how much water to get it in there w/out flooding the floor.

The lighting is pretty ghetto. Its a 4' shop light with aquarium bulbs in it hanging from the ceiling. There is a big ugly hood that goes on the tank that I need to paint & hang the light in. I kept referring to it as a mermaid coffin before it got clean & a coat of paint added to it.

Whatever, I'm totally done complaining. I got the tank for free ... so I may have $100 in everything it took to get it going, I really dont think it was more than that.

I can't wait to get the cool fish in there!!!

I will add more photos as I get more done to the tank!

thank you! =)

Already found yours & was reading through it while you were commenting on mine! =)