Starting a 500 gallon build

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
Another productive day, from the list yesterday I am up to letting the system run through the established filter and water coast in to the correct temperature (currently only a few degrees off). On track to do the transfer tonight and I'll post pictures after the bubbles clear up.
 
jtalley;3468356; said:
Another productive day, from the list yesterday I am up to letting the system run through the established filter and water coast in to the correct temperature (currently only a few degrees off). On track to do the transfer tonight and I'll post pictures after the bubbles clear up.
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GL to ya man! It's the golden hour. Can't wait to see the pics.
 
So finally pictures! Everything is transferred, up and running. There may possibly be one casualty from the move, had a fish jump out of the bucket I was using to transfer and the dog grabbed it. The fish is swimming around, but the fins are a bit frayed.

There are still a lot of bubbles, but these given the idea. I have a plan to get a branching piece of driftwood for the back right corner that will go over the rock pile and give the aquascaping some more height. I am thinking about some fish line system to hold a big branch in place, but not sure how good of an idea this will be. The driftwood that is in there is 27" tall, but not completely sunk, thus the rock pile.

I'm not set on the future aquascaping, but I want to take advantage of some more of the height of the tank, currently the fish go up to about 3' out of the 4'. Love comments! I obviously need a lot more fish now! Enjoy!

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NICE!!!! It looks amazing man. Your africans look like tiny in that tank LOL! I think the branching idea is a great one and would do it for sure. Some big bushy manzinita branches would look killer over that rock pile.
 
Thanks for the complements, I like it, but still a work in progress.

No casualties this morning, even the fish that took a detour to the dog's mouth, and they all have fins up, so it looks all good.

As mentioned from previous posts, I will be monitoring all the water parameters, including salinity for now, since the tank was previously SW, and I could not remove some of the very hard salt deposits which may slowly dissolve. Also going to keep a close eye on pH since the driftwood may not be finished releasing tannins as well.

Items remaining now include:
-finding additional driftwood
-organizing electrical runs and timers
-making lids & arranging lights
-setting up UV filter
-skinning stand & "canopy border" to give finished look to top of tank
-more fish!
 
beatiful setup but dang do you have a maintainance chore there. I guess you can always climb in when you need to move things lol.

can't wait to see it finished. and btw thanks for keeping with the updates, seems so many threads die out before final results that we get our hopes up for nothing round here lately.
 
yogurt_21;3471056; said:
beatiful setup but dang do you have a maintainance chore there. I guess you can always climb in when you need to move things lol.

can't wait to see it finished. and btw thanks for keeping with the updates, seems so many threads die out before final results that we get our hopes up for nothing round here lately.
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To get in the tank I use a 6 ft ladder, put an empty cat litter pail inside the tank, and then shift from the ladder to inside the tank using the pail as a step. That was how I got most of the rock pile and sand arranged. I also have a 3' aqua tongs grabber that actually was greatly useful (i.e. placing bulkheads down 4 foot overflow instead of dropping a string or something, dropped magnet from the power head into the overflow, dropped impellar from the power head when it stopped working for a few minutes). I also used that to place the plastic plants for now, and the stones on top of the driftwood. I really can't say enough about how great a product it is. Other than that, a rope on a bucket to lift the rocks into place too....its been a chore to set it up, but fun at the same time.

For more routine maintenance I have a 4' python to help vacuum up without diving in the tank, UV filter will be on the outlet of one of the FX5's to reduce algae growth, and I plan on modifying a window squeegee with an acrylic algae pad for any algae. The person I bought the tank from has an algae magnet cleaner, but for a 1.5" thick panel its a STRONG magnet and like $300, so I am trying to hold off on that. Finally, I also have purigen in the filters to try and cut down on some water changes and reduce algae growth as well.

So far the thing I know I need to work on is feeding. I have always thrown the food below the water level so the fish actively search to eat, and right now I am just dropping the food in front of a downward facing power head, but looking for something a little better...
 
Seems like I have been in the swing on getting things setup quickly, so tonight I was able to finish:
- moved the power heads and heaters to less visible areas
- set up the electrical routing
- cut eggcrate for lids and covered with fluorescent light lenses
- set up lights and moon lights

Below are a couple of pictures the new day and night views, also the bubbles are all gone so its easier to see now. So far the only negative thing is coming home to the sound of a water fall every night evening and topping the tank off. I am thinking that this is water that the wood is absorbing since it wasn't completely sunk before and its too much for evaporation.

I would love suggestions how to improve the setup. I need to clean up a bunch of boxes in the stand, then I will post pictures of the entire setup.

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