I'm having a great experience with my planted tank in my room and as such for my mothers birthday I'm upgrading her tank she has at her house from the old 55 gallon tank that's been in the family for over 20 years to my 110 gallon tank from school(48"x18"x30"). Its a work in progress and at the moment it only has 2 lilly pads, a Dwarf Lily (Nymphaea stellata) and Tiger Lotus, Red (Nymphaea zenkeri).
These are all early photos from just after setup. Since then another light fixture has been added and an assortment of small tetras totaling 12 and a golden gourami(who will only be there until I remove him to start the invert population). They are running a pair of dual T-8 bulbs with 6,500K and 8,000K bulbs from Menards total cost 50 dollars.
The stand I built at school 4 or so years ago, its 100% modular meaning the dark wood frame is fixed but all the light wood parts are loose and can be swapped around it can all be encased or all open shelves underneath. The dark wood portions are IPE wood... AKA Iron wood. If you ever feel inclined to work with it... don't! Its got a higher fire rating than steel! It destroys all wood working equipment takes a life time to sand and is generally a PITA. I will admit it has an amazing finished look though with probably my favorite wood grain of all time. The light wood is assorted finished plywoods, some birch, maple, and sadly poorly place red oak(I like RO but it stands out as not blending with any of the veneers or other finishes well). This was my first aquarium stand I ever designed or built and its EXTREMELY OVER BUILT. To put it in perspective if you remove all the ply wood components so only the iron wood frame is left it weighs about 200 lbs! When I went back afterwards and did the math that stand could support more than 10,000 lbs of compression easily probably double that actually.
The tank is decorated with one large piece of driftwood I got for 50 dollars at a local reptile swap, and two smaller pieces from local retail outlets for 30 bucks each a long time ago. The rocks are gathered from farms in Michigan and the large quartz boulder is from my late grand parents garden on their former property in southern Illinois. The substrate is play sand, thoroughly washed to remove the finer particulate and clay content.
The ultimate design for this tank moving forward is low tech, I want filtration to be one AC 110 and one Eheim 2217 Canister Filter. I will heat with two via aqua titanium heaters. I will fertilize it every week to every month and the future plant additions will include Anubis, cryps, java fern, java moss, and perhaps some onion plants since I have so many.
Here is the hood I'm constructing. It isn't finished yet, still needs some edge banding to be applied and some wood filler to cover screw heads. then to get poly'd.
No that isn't me its my brother.
These are all early photos from just after setup. Since then another light fixture has been added and an assortment of small tetras totaling 12 and a golden gourami(who will only be there until I remove him to start the invert population). They are running a pair of dual T-8 bulbs with 6,500K and 8,000K bulbs from Menards total cost 50 dollars.
The stand I built at school 4 or so years ago, its 100% modular meaning the dark wood frame is fixed but all the light wood parts are loose and can be swapped around it can all be encased or all open shelves underneath. The dark wood portions are IPE wood... AKA Iron wood. If you ever feel inclined to work with it... don't! Its got a higher fire rating than steel! It destroys all wood working equipment takes a life time to sand and is generally a PITA. I will admit it has an amazing finished look though with probably my favorite wood grain of all time. The light wood is assorted finished plywoods, some birch, maple, and sadly poorly place red oak(I like RO but it stands out as not blending with any of the veneers or other finishes well). This was my first aquarium stand I ever designed or built and its EXTREMELY OVER BUILT. To put it in perspective if you remove all the ply wood components so only the iron wood frame is left it weighs about 200 lbs! When I went back afterwards and did the math that stand could support more than 10,000 lbs of compression easily probably double that actually.
The tank is decorated with one large piece of driftwood I got for 50 dollars at a local reptile swap, and two smaller pieces from local retail outlets for 30 bucks each a long time ago. The rocks are gathered from farms in Michigan and the large quartz boulder is from my late grand parents garden on their former property in southern Illinois. The substrate is play sand, thoroughly washed to remove the finer particulate and clay content.
The ultimate design for this tank moving forward is low tech, I want filtration to be one AC 110 and one Eheim 2217 Canister Filter. I will heat with two via aqua titanium heaters. I will fertilize it every week to every month and the future plant additions will include Anubis, cryps, java fern, java moss, and perhaps some onion plants since I have so many.
Here is the hood I'm constructing. It isn't finished yet, still needs some edge banding to be applied and some wood filler to cover screw heads. then to get poly'd.
No that isn't me its my brother.
