Hey guys I'm new to this forum.

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
Beautiful job on aquascaping that tank and excellent job on hiding all the equipment! I could not tell where any in-tank equipment was located.

I do not normally enjoy seeing a bubble wall in a tank but you did a wonderful job placing it on the end of the tank and hiding it with the rocks. I truly think it adds a lot of interest to this tank.

What size aquarium is this?

Oh, thanks for sharing the video, it was much better than just pics to get the full flavor of the setup.
 
Thanks a lot! I just now noticed my grammatical error "gius" instead of guys lol. It is a 55 gallon tall tank. I had looked at some backgrounds from aqua terra and i really liked the amazona one, but it was too big and 450 dollars at that! So I decided to base my design off of that. The prefabricated backgrounds you lose a lot of depth in your tank (11 inches in some cases) and with a tall tank I only had 12.5 inches to work with, so that would have been a problem. Some measurements and I easily built the caves around my heater, filter, and water/co2 circulator.

One of my concerns was that keeping those items housed in a cave system would affect performance. Not the case, since I hid a bottom entry and in the filter case multiple top entries. I was esp. sure to have a nice opening at the top for the heater since heat rises. The fish occasionally go in there to hide, more so the heater cave as the filter cave has really strong current. I just wanted to have something natural looking and if it looked completely natural, the heater sitting there in the back just bothered me, I'm a little bit OCD lol.

Bubble wall I had to keep, platys like swimming up and down it too much, and with co2 injection I was probably fine, but wanted to make sure there was an abundance of oxygen in the water even at night. So i custom built a "rock" to hide it. Only a 20 gallon air pump, but the wall is only apprx 9 inches so it works great. I read somewhere that red plants are difficult to grow and need a lot of co2 but my diy co2 seems to be enough, probably slower growth than normal co2 injection I would imagine.

I'm eventually going to do a background on my 20 gallon, right now its plant overflow/driftwood soaker/ utility tank...think I might try to do a sideways hollowed out log or something. I would like to home a couple of semi large somewhat aggressive fish in the 20 gallon, any suggestions? I contemplated bala sharks but they get to 14 inches and even one would probably be crowded in the smaller tank.

Pulled the female xray tetra out of the 55 tonight and put her in a 3 gallon acrylic column since she is pregnant. I have an airstone going for aeration, no filtration. Any tips on egg birth, or what's the best care for pregnant fish? Im new to the baby fish world, its those caves lol they are like little hotel suites for mating. Ha

Thanks for taking the time to check out the video!
 
Thanks so much guys. It was a lot of work but worth it :) I finished my diy nitrate filter tonight, just a airline ran to the aqualifter prefilter to the aqualifter then to the bottom of a gatorade bottle filled with some ammonia removing pellets thru an extra water polishing pad thru fluval uhhh the equivalent of denitrate. The aqualifter moves apprx 3.5 gallons an hour regularly and running thru that canister it only moves about 1.5 gallons an hour. So in theory lol, when the bacteria builds up in the first part of the tube, it will use up all of the oxygen and anaerobic bacteria can grow in the fluval material and absorb nitrates. In theory lol. I have plenty of plants that use up nitrate so its not even necessary, I just like tweakin' things.

I tried one diy websites design with a 4" diameter 2 foot section of pvc with 1/2" ID tubing ran down the inside with some form of artificial ceramic material for bacterial colonization. Really didn't tickle my fancy when I was done. I didn't like having to constantly adjust the gang valve back into the tank, and i didn't like the idea that I couldn't open up the canister if it ever needed it, which Im sure it would. Slow aqualifter seems like the ticket at the moment. Gimme 6 weeks or so and Ill update if anything positive happens.

I do roofing and siding, play in a band at night, and guess now do diy backgrounds lol, guess sometime this week i will start on my spare 20 gallon. Will post when done.
 
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