Working on another new aquarium

S

Steve C

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I still have my 75g in wall tank to finish up soon as I get the chance, but in the meantime I ended up picking up another 75g tank recently and have been working on that. Picked this one up because one of my fish is going to need his own tank soon because he gets very large (about a foot long when full grown) plus is very aggressive. So I've been working on setting up this tank and building the 3d background for it over the past couple weeks.

Just finished carving out and painting the background and got the sand and wood in it now. Hope to be able to pick up the new canister filter in the next week or two and have it ready for the bleekeri before the months end.

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looks good...what kind of fish? Obscure guess...Tiger Datanoid(sp?)
 
I keep cichlids, mainly African cichlids but I have a Bleekeri ( cichlid from Madagascar) in my Peacock & Hap cichlid tank right now that is getting too big & mean for his tankmates so he'll be going into this tank all by himself.
 
well...Bleekeri is as good as Datanoid...maybe better!
 
Looks great, used to keep cichlids as well. Hopefully, i'll be able to get back into it at some point. never made a background, yours is really really cool.

I still have dreams about those fish. Mainly dreams where i take them out to a lake so that they can strech their fins. Immediately after release, i realize my mistake.
 
Giant snakehead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_snakehead - They used to sell these in New York as 3-4 inch Babies... I eventually had 2 in separate 150 gallon tanks at a little over 36 inches long! They would let me lift them out of the tank and wrap them in a wet towel being to big for a net... Eventually sold them as display fish to a large pet store during a divorce. I was told some years later they were donated to the Toronto Zoo for an exhibit. They are fascinating but man they ate a LOT!

Grimmy
 
I love the roots at the surface look.

And yours....well...you got great wood!

Sorce
 
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Been working on this one for a customer for the past couple days, it's for a 75g predator cichlid tank he has. Just finished with all the carving this morning and will hopefully be painting and sealing over the next couple days. I'll post a finished pic once it's done. It should be pretty neat, doing this one a bit different and made some open areas between the "rocks" which should give it a real nice illusion of added depth once in the tank.
 
Very nice I like the 2nd one a lot. Don't see too many low profile rimless tanks with a corner overflow like that. Pretty slick looking :cool::cool:
 
Steve C said:
Very nice I like the 2nd one a lot. Don't see too many low profile rimless tanks with a corner overflow like that. Pretty slick looking :cool::cool:
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just.wing.it said:
I've never seen one like that. So cool!
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I built both aquariums from the ground up, ordered the glass, siliconed it and the like
 
Giga said:
I built both aquariums from the ground up, ordered the glass, siliconed it and the like
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Can you explain how one would build an aquarium like this safely? Aka can you share how you made these please?


I thought about making one myself but I dont know If I trust myself enough to risk waking up to 50+ gallons on the floor!
 
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Just finished up this 3d background for a customer. On this one I tried something a little different and do a full background but left a few open areas in it where the black back of his tank will show through. I think that should help add even more "depth" to the look of the BG that way. Also been using a lot more dark browns and slate grey colors on the last few BG's which I think is giving them a more natural look which I really like.
 
JoeR said:
Can you explain how one would build an aquarium like this safely? Aka can you share how you made these please?


I thought about making one myself but I dont know If I trust myself enough to risk waking up to 50+ gallons on the floor!
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I had a 20gl separate at the seam once....

Acrylic or bust.

Sorce
 
Acrylic is nice, mainly for the fact that it is so much easier to repair than glass. Acrylic can leak just like glass does but the good thing with acrylic is that you can "spot repair" it fast and easy with a liquid chemical. With glass you have to redo the entire inner fillet silicone seal, or if the tank is really big then both inner fillet seal and butt joint seals. I had a 265g 7ft x 2ft x2ft tank that leaked on me 3 times and ended up getting rid of it last year because of the issues with resealing it. Only downside to acrylic is that it will scratch easier than glass, and the cost. It's normally about 2-3 times more costly than glass in equal size.
 
Got a bit bored with the white sand in the peacock & hap tank for the past year, so just switched out to a mix of black and white but mostly 80% black. Also blacked out the back of the tank. Fish colors really seem to pop a lot more now, probably keep it like this for a bit.
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Beautiful! So you just put the black sand over your previous (white) one? What will you do if you'll want to switch back to white? :)
Personally I prefer black sand, but in my aquarium was previously mixed some clay or some stuff like that, and this stuff is very bright of color, so it distracts me, when it pops out here and there. Hate it :S To manually remove it would take a lot of time
 
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