Hi, Elblingo here, new to MFK, seen some amazing tanks on here that make mine look like a bowl. I am 17 and I started loving fish keeping a about a year ago when I got my first Crowntail fighter fish, now I have a 5 gallon betta tank, 10 gallon betta tank, 55 gallon tropical with 3 Mollies, a Loach, 2 Bolivian Rams, 2 paired angelfish, Southern Purple spotted Gudgeon (Australian Native, Was hard to find!) and now my pride and joy my 180 gallon aquarium build I will be showing now.
I first seen this 6x2x2 tank advertised on a Garage Sale page on Facebook for $300 without a stan but with a hood, I said a few sweet words and I had him down to $250, and he delivered it. I couldn't believe it, 24 hours later I had my dream tank. (For now)
View attachment 897084
I've always been the keenest fisherman and I always get out when I can, and I can truly say once you catch a mangrove jack you never go back. They are an amazing fish and i'd been thinking about being able to keep one in a tank ever since I first laid eyes on it. It's a spectacular fish, really one of the most powerfull and beautiful fish ever to dwell in any river.
I had been ringing around every petshop in a 200km radius of me trying to find out if any pet stores were due to get any in anytime soon, but the hatcherys were having a bad dry spell for a while now, they are almost impossible to get under 20cm anywhere in Australia. I called and called and nowhere, they all said thhey hadn't seen any jacks for over a year and a half. But I was willing to do anything it took, I had my name down on the list at every pet store I could think of, weeks of the tank sitting in my garage and me slowly getting the gear to set it up, I get a call, my favourite LFS, 5 minutes down the road just had a shipment in of 10 jacks, 7 under 10cms and 3 over .
I was ecstatic to say the least, I couldn't believe it was happening, and then it hit me, those Jacks weren't going to last the week, they were going to go like hotcakes, I had to have one but my tank wasn'e even close to setup yet. I racked my brain for days, and then it hit me, I would get one and put it into my 55 gallon tropical, there was a good amount of salt in it anyway because the mollies like it. That day I went and got one, he was the smallest, singled out in the tank and had the best colour of them all, he was only just undere an inch when I got him, about 3 weeks old. I was the happiest man in the world and Now the countdown of time began, I had a very limited amount of time before he would start to beat the crap out of all his tank mates. I had to act quickly
Even when I didn't have him I was researching how to keep him, and there is next to nothing on care for them, the most I found was on here, MFK, it's the reason I joined, it is an awesome website for information. Since there was nothing on then in the way of care I thought i'd watch carefully study him, it was awesome to see how he reacted to fish trying to dominate him, he had none of it. My biggest angelfish had a go, but to no avail, he is the most aggressive fish for his size i've ever seen.
I got a cousin of mine who was a carpenter to come around and help me build a stand, it only took 1.5 hours and $60 of materials and bobs your uncle, I was happy, everything was coming together. At this point I had the jack for a week and was very keen to get my ''monster tank'' set up. I had bough 60 kgs of sand, I make my own driftwood so I was able to get a few large beautiful pieces for my tank, I had my stand, and my filters arrived about a week later. Then the day came, the day I set up my tank. The jack has been attacking the **** out of everything in the tank at this point, picked on my male Ram the most, he was near death.
It was a 12 hour job, I got up at 8am, it took me 3 1/2 hours to wash all the sand, I got 4 of my mates over to help me lift the tank. (It was 100kg+!) we got it onto the stand and then it begun, the scramble to get the filters setup, the sand in, the driftwood and then the water before dark. And it was done, ready to start cycling, I can say, I was beside myself.
She isn't done yet, going to get some backround tiles to hide the pipes, I have acrylic lids once its all cycled and a few other little items.. I put the jack in once I had good readings on the water, all I can say is I LOVE seachem stability, works a treat. This is my build, probably another week or 2 before she's completely done, when moving the jack from the 55 gallon to the 180 he did injure his eye running and came down with popeye in his right eye from the eye trauma. My heart sunk, I went to my LFS and bought Melafix straight away, for the first 2 days of treating with melafix he seemed to be getting better but didn't seem to have any vision out of his injured eye at all, th day into the injury from what i've noticed when feeding he's got almost complete vision with only a very small fluid bubble left over the eye.
Like I said this is nothing compared to whhat some of you have but i'm only 17 and for the moment this is my first ever monster tank.
Everythings come together so smoothly, and I thank everyone involved.
I first seen this 6x2x2 tank advertised on a Garage Sale page on Facebook for $300 without a stan but with a hood, I said a few sweet words and I had him down to $250, and he delivered it. I couldn't believe it, 24 hours later I had my dream tank. (For now)
View attachment 897084
I've always been the keenest fisherman and I always get out when I can, and I can truly say once you catch a mangrove jack you never go back. They are an amazing fish and i'd been thinking about being able to keep one in a tank ever since I first laid eyes on it. It's a spectacular fish, really one of the most powerfull and beautiful fish ever to dwell in any river.
I had been ringing around every petshop in a 200km radius of me trying to find out if any pet stores were due to get any in anytime soon, but the hatcherys were having a bad dry spell for a while now, they are almost impossible to get under 20cm anywhere in Australia. I called and called and nowhere, they all said thhey hadn't seen any jacks for over a year and a half. But I was willing to do anything it took, I had my name down on the list at every pet store I could think of, weeks of the tank sitting in my garage and me slowly getting the gear to set it up, I get a call, my favourite LFS, 5 minutes down the road just had a shipment in of 10 jacks, 7 under 10cms and 3 over .
I was ecstatic to say the least, I couldn't believe it was happening, and then it hit me, those Jacks weren't going to last the week, they were going to go like hotcakes, I had to have one but my tank wasn'e even close to setup yet. I racked my brain for days, and then it hit me, I would get one and put it into my 55 gallon tropical, there was a good amount of salt in it anyway because the mollies like it. That day I went and got one, he was the smallest, singled out in the tank and had the best colour of them all, he was only just undere an inch when I got him, about 3 weeks old. I was the happiest man in the world and Now the countdown of time began, I had a very limited amount of time before he would start to beat the crap out of all his tank mates. I had to act quickly
Even when I didn't have him I was researching how to keep him, and there is next to nothing on care for them, the most I found was on here, MFK, it's the reason I joined, it is an awesome website for information. Since there was nothing on then in the way of care I thought i'd watch carefully study him, it was awesome to see how he reacted to fish trying to dominate him, he had none of it. My biggest angelfish had a go, but to no avail, he is the most aggressive fish for his size i've ever seen.
I got a cousin of mine who was a carpenter to come around and help me build a stand, it only took 1.5 hours and $60 of materials and bobs your uncle, I was happy, everything was coming together. At this point I had the jack for a week and was very keen to get my ''monster tank'' set up. I had bough 60 kgs of sand, I make my own driftwood so I was able to get a few large beautiful pieces for my tank, I had my stand, and my filters arrived about a week later. Then the day came, the day I set up my tank. The jack has been attacking the **** out of everything in the tank at this point, picked on my male Ram the most, he was near death.
It was a 12 hour job, I got up at 8am, it took me 3 1/2 hours to wash all the sand, I got 4 of my mates over to help me lift the tank. (It was 100kg+!) we got it onto the stand and then it begun, the scramble to get the filters setup, the sand in, the driftwood and then the water before dark. And it was done, ready to start cycling, I can say, I was beside myself.
She isn't done yet, going to get some backround tiles to hide the pipes, I have acrylic lids once its all cycled and a few other little items.. I put the jack in once I had good readings on the water, all I can say is I LOVE seachem stability, works a treat. This is my build, probably another week or 2 before she's completely done, when moving the jack from the 55 gallon to the 180 he did injure his eye running and came down with popeye in his right eye from the eye trauma. My heart sunk, I went to my LFS and bought Melafix straight away, for the first 2 days of treating with melafix he seemed to be getting better but didn't seem to have any vision out of his injured eye at all, th day into the injury from what i've noticed when feeding he's got almost complete vision with only a very small fluid bubble left over the eye.
Like I said this is nothing compared to whhat some of you have but i'm only 17 and for the moment this is my first ever monster tank.
Everythings come together so smoothly, and I thank everyone involved.
