The insanity continues... My 345 SA/CA re-build thread

[PDRed302]

Hello fellow Monster Fish Keepers!

It's been a while since I've posted much on the forum, other than lurking a little for the last month or so

My family and I recently moved into a new house and while its been nothing short of a pain in the butt, it has been very rewarding! With the move came the tear down, storage and re-build of my display aquarium; unfortunately that meant severely downsizing my stock. Luckily my parents were cool enough to let me setup a temporary 135 in the spare bedroom of their house until my tank was rebuilt and save a few fish that I just couldn't part with.

Below is how far I've come with the build; its not up to date but I'm working on that. Free time is short and uncommon, so I'll probably end up posting at night like I am now to catch everyone up. I will try to make it quick and if anyone has any input or questions, I very much encourage you to ask or fill me in. I am by no means an expert at this, just giving it my best shot with what knowledge I've gathered over the years of enjoying the hobby!


BEFORE:

To start this off, I wanted to post a picture of the room the fish tank has been built into; the plan is to have an after of the same angle by the time I'm done with this thread.


The area above had a huge closet the previous owners had built in the house; it housed their washer and dryer as well as an entire pantry area for trashcans and mops, etc.

EXPLOSION:

Along with thinking the closet didn't suit me, I also wasn't the hugest fan of the old floor and a few other things in the room, so I saw to that.


Luckily I'm a General contractor by trade, so knowing the right guys to come over and help made this a lot easier!

ROOM BUILD:

Built in a fur down to house my lighting and had a dedicated circuit run to the tank wall to supply power, luckily there was a drain along with hot and cold water lines already run to the area. (don't worry, I ran new ones into the mudroom for the washer and dryer)




Lights in Place!




Boxes in, water moved, plumbing and electrical rough out, brick cut and cleaned up, floor down and covered as well as most of the sheet rock up.




It's getting there: timers are in and the wall and floor finishes are complete, it's time to get the tank in place and rough everything in!


[EDIT] - Forgot to mention: no your eyes don't deceive you, the ceiling in this room was built at a slope, so instead of rebuilding the entire ceiling I built the fur down with a flat and even bottom to house the lights and matched the slope up top

THE TANK:

Sitting in place and in the middle of a deep cleaning. This goes on for a while of course but luckily you will get the fast forwarded version



Still going...



Glass clean and silicone stripped, I figured that since I was doing a rebuild that it was a great time to go ahead and put down a fresh layer of silicone throughout the entirety of the interior of the tank.



Tape in place and silicone on the way...



Luckily one of my buddies came over and gave me an extra set of hands when it came to laying down the silicone. It happened fast, I laid and smoothed the silicone and he followed a few minutes behind removing all the tape.


I figure one pic is enough, I don't want to be monotonous and a FTS just doesn't really show off the silicone, plus they'll be tons of those later.


I'm going to end it here for the night but will cover the plumbing and anything else I can in my next post. As always: thanks for looking as well as any comments, questions, input or concerns!

 

[Alexxxxsv14]

Wow can't wait
Looking good

 

[PDRed302]

I had always wanted to try a drip system, my hope is: that with plants (I'll have as many as I can) and a constant drip that my water changes will be drastically reduced. I'm hoping to get away with only 15% or so weekly or around what I'd pull out doing a substrate vacuum. If I feel like I need more, I can always bump the gph from the drip. Luckily I'm not going to just be flushing the water away, as my home is on an aerobic system, so the more gph: the more water for my lawn!

The design is fairly rudimentary: I have a cold water line coming in that goes through a pressure reducing valve and is taken down to 25psi. From there it goes through 2 house filters (10"x2.5" internal filter) one has a string filter for basic sediment, and the other has a charcoal chloramine filter. The whole thing runs to a hose with a 1gph irrigation valve on the end. The system is completely in tank (no sump for me ) so the cold, freshwater drips in through a plant bed on the right side of the tank and drains from the standpipe on the left hand side of the tank. @ 1gph I'm adding 168 gallons a week, roughly half of my total tank volume, I'm not sure yet if this is enough (sort of a science experiment for me) but so far so good. As I add more stock, I'm sure I'll see some sort of change in my parameters over the coming weeks/months. Luckily changing to a different gph drip emitter if it seems necessary, is a piece of cake.

1 of the 2 filters I'm using:


Shot of the two filters and P.R.V. installed. My buddy Nick came over and helped me put this system together (lucky for me) he's not as picky as I am but he is a better plumber and everything is running great!


Drain line installed, with vent and p-trap


Once we were done with the big stuff it was time to plumb the filters in. I reused everything I could from the previous setup.


A few new parts...


Rough in for intakes and spray bars, with background rocks propped in place. (super tall standpipe to be cut later)


Glued, drilled and ready for paint


At this point I laid out a few pieces of blue tape for where the rocks were going to be permanently but I'm going to save the deco-layout part for my next post, since its getting pretty late here.

Thanks again for looking!

 

[PDRed302]

DECO-

After experimenting for the last few years with aquaponics, I knew that my display tank wasn't going to be the tank that I grew a green house garden with, however I did want to grow a few things in the tank. So the plan was made to utilize two of the three decorative background rocks for planters. They are going to act as a constant flood grow bed and most likely I'll just grow some type of small flowers in them. Accompanied by the rest of the plants I plan on putting in the open top sections of the aquarium lid, they should help with both looks and water quality.

Even though I knew where the rocks were going to fit, I had to do a little bit of persuading to make it happen. This is a quick shot of the rocks that I decided to use after a little bit of tweaking for fitment.


Ready for install


This would have been a lot easier if I was Hercules and was able to set the tank on its back...


Now this is some serious engineering... Although, I can't laugh at myself too hard because it did work!


Background rocks in place


Night lights

 

[PDRed302]

Driftwood-

I knew that since I was re-building the tank that I was going to re-scape it as well; so I decided to pick up 5 new pieces of driftwood (Redmoor). I didn't feel like waiting forever and a day to get it to sink on its own, so I decided to attach it to some slate tiles. I had done this before using silicone and faux rock to make a pleco house but never before with wood; it's not anything new but here's how I did it and how it turned out:

I started out by dropping by Home Depot and picking up a 5 pack of slate tile, some masonry bits and stainless steel screws.


I laid the driftwood out in the tank how I wanted it then slid the tiles in underneath.


After everything was in place, I labeled each piece of wood to its corresponding tile and used a colored pencil to mark the area/s on each piece of tile that needed to be drilled.


I drilled two holes on each piece to get two solid connection points and drilled each hole twice, once all the way through for a pilot hole and a second time about halfway through for a countersink hole.


Honestly, this was way easier than I thought, I figured I'd bust at least half the tiles but surprisingly I didn't even break one.


The wood was fairly easy to attach to the tile with the help of a friend. Getting the holes lined up to the wood is the hardest part but after that, snugging it down is a cinch. With two screws per piece (three on two of the pieces) everything is held nice and tight and sets flush to the floor of the tank when its set down.


Rough layout


I debated using another one of my old pieces of driftwood in the tank...
\

but after washing the wood, I decided against it.


I hate plastic plants


Even though I'm not the biggest fan of plastic plants, I do like the look of plants in an aquarium. I'm hoping to mix what I have with a few real, strong, low light plants that will hopefully give the tank a very natural look while not making me go broke in the process of trying to keep real plants with big cichlids.

Well, that's it for now, as always: thanks for looking

 

[BIG-G]

This is going to be a beautiful tank once it's all set up. Great job so far

 

[Alexxxxsv14]

Man I can't wait for it to be finished, I love the looks of it already. What is your stock list like ?

 

[PDRed302]

This is going to be a beautiful tank once it's all set up. Great job so far

Man I can't wait for it to be finished, I love the looks of it already. What is your stock list like ?

Thank you both

As far as stocking, I'm not 100% sure yet.

For sure I'll have what stock I was able to keep:

Lutino Oscar
5x spotted silver dollars
Senegal Bichir
Flagtail prochilodus
7x Denison barbs

As well as a few new additions:

Bristlenose pleco
Electric blue Acara
Salvini
Rotkeil Severum

I also plan on picking up another True Parrot as well as a group (5-7) of Geos. Beyond that, if I feel like I'll have more room, it will depend on what the surrounding LFS's have in stock.

 

[Alexxxxsv14]

Awesome stock list !! That true parrot gets huge and will be a great center piece for that tank, right on bro

 

[PDRed302]

So this next part is included, not simply to bash a product (although I wont be recommending Flex Seal to anyone, anytime soon) or show you my failure but more for me to share with everyone what not to do and what not to use, lol.

When I first moved my tank, I told myself that not only was I going to re-scape but that I was going to rebuild/replace the top; it was the one thing besides the stand being unfinished (an easy fix) that I never really liked about the old build. However, everyone knows what it's like to want to save a little cash and get something done the "easy" way.

The tank as it sat when I took my final measurements for "making some adjustments" to my old top. The plumbing has been completed, glued down and fitting awesome, I wasn't thrilled about the air lines but they were going to be covered by the shadow of the top anyways, so no biggie.


So after a little debating with myself and the rush to set my tank back up I decided to modify my existing top a bit to allow space for my plumbing as well as strengthen it to keep it from sagging in the future.


Scrub down and clean up with bleach/water then vinegar/water followed by a good hose down with some high quality H2O.


I needed a way to waterproof the new wood I was adding and i wanted to do it the fastest and cheapest way possible. So instead of spending as much as I did the first time and waiting for delivery, I just ran down to the hardware store and picked up two liquid cans and two spray cans of Flex Seal. After a quick test on the old rubber seal with the liquid, I felt it was adhering well and drying correctly, so I got to work...

Completely dry, taped, cleaned and ready for coverage


first coat


second coat


Flipped, trimmed and ready


First coat for the top


Second coat is done and now its ready for a "spray finish".


So here's when I kick back and pour myself a drink, because I'm in the "its all good" zone. The spray finish is complete and like I had hoped, the texture being created by the spray is covering up imperfections and making a seamless finish throughout.


However the problem is that after checking on it the next evening, I realize that it is not by any means "all good".


What started as a few rough areas continued to grow into a jungle of hate.


time to stop


After a few hours of scrubbing and cleaning I had six or seven different areas that looked completely terrible and made me throw in the towel on this top. I ended up wasting quite a bit of time on this; I followed the manufacturers instructions exactly which meant that the drying time between coats, not to mention the prep time, time to carry it in and out from the shop to the house as well as test fitting and clean up time all added up to quite a few days to the total overall tank build out time.

This is time that I can not get back and I have since moved on but I figured I'd share it with you all, to maybe persuade you to stick to your plans and don't chicken out and definitely don't use Flex Seal.

... I mean seriously, who makes a product that on the label says "sticks to almost anything" but it wont even stick to itself?

...ok I'm done

Sneak Peak:

Steel to the rescue!