Our 300gallon Tang tank

[care4cichlids]

Hello everyone, I have been a Fan Of Lake Tanganyika Cichlids forever. My fist tank was a 100 gallon tank at the ripe age of 16,and well the bug has never left me.
After I met my Wife we started with a little 20 gallon tank, then a 100 gallon Malawi, and now our 300 gallon Tanganyika tank. Not that this is anything new to most of you all but I thought I would toss it out to you and let you take a look. We have had a blast putting it together and reading up on all the issues that we have seen posted on MFK. So with that said I want to say thank you for all the great post on everything from 3d backgrounds to filtration and lighting, and everything in between.

If you have any questions please feel free to reply or email me anytime, I enjoy helping others in anyway I can.
We found a great deal on CL, I picked up the Tank, Stand ( bad shape ) Sump and UV Sterilizer for $560.00 Needed a little TLC but for the price we could not pass up the deal.

 

[care4cichlids]

Loaded the tank and stand up in/on the truck and headed for the house. Once we got it home it was time to get cleaning.....so armed with hose a brush, 400, 800, and 1000 grit sand paper 3 stages of NOVUS and a Polisher I spent the next week finding all the scratches and scuffs and doing away with them....One at a time....and Time...did I mention this took some time...???

 

[ialtalal]

this looks like its going to be an awesome tank. good luck

 

[care4cichlids]

and in the end I got it looking almost new, I put a tape line down the middle to see/show the difference.

 

[care4cichlids]

once I got the tank clean, we started fitting the 3D back ground. We really did our home work on this tank and everything, so this was going to go together with out any issues at all.
( this is where you can start laughing )

 

[care4cichlids]

My wife did her magic and fitted everything just right. We used two acrylic boxes under the 3d back ground with LED lights to shine upwards and show off the 3d back ground a bit better

 

[care4cichlids]

Everything was looking great, as my wife worked on the fitting I turned my attention to the stand. It was a mess. lots of holes cut in it and water damage on the bottom and back. Knowing this tank was going to weigh 3000lbs when full I needed to reinforce the stand with 2x4 and 4x6. I sanded all the sides down and just started with a basic wooden frame. once I got the wood replaced I used some birch paneling on the outside and finished everything off with some matching trim. The doors were my wife's idea. They are just paneling with trim and some 1 inch thick foam insulation on the back. we used strong magnets to hold each door on. This makes cleaning and storage so much easier when you can remove them out of the way.

 

[care4cichlids]

Stand was done and in the house it really turned out much better than we had hoped. We took all the FOAM ( good reason why I pointed out the FOAM to you ) that my wife had cut and used pond FOAM to mold up

 

[care4cichlids]

once the foam had dried we covered the foam with a nice coat of silicon and than tossed on the #3 sand that we are using for the tank.

We had run all the wires and tubing down the back of the 3D background so it would not been seen.

 

[brich999]

Looking great!