BryceM

Thanks for the advice Gnaster. The 15W variety is definitely less expensive. And thanks for the comments, houseofcards. I'll probably go ahead and do it, since the benefits seem to be pretty obvious. I figure the Eheim 1260 will probably do around 300 gph give or take, depending on exactly how much resistance is built into the system. It's rated at 630 gph with zero head. With a 15W bulb the chart shows around 60,000 microwatts/cm^2 - just about perfect.

Besides - it's one more toy to play with. The fish will be oblivious to all this planning & effort, which is kind of funny if you think about it.

Something else just ocurred to me...... I've followed lots of these threads about big "dream tanks" and such only to be disapointed with some crazy decision the person made - like using clown puke for substrate, etc. etc. If anyone feels compelled to bring something to my attention, please do so.

gnatster

Don't forget to put unions and valves in the closed loop line so you can pull parts for maint.

BryceM

Yeah, I've been thinking about that recently. It takes a little planning to make it user-friendly for the long haul.

BryceM

It's been a while but we've made a bit of progress over the past two weeks. The original plan was to use some matching tile leftover from the original owners. I wanted a space to allow for a bit of splashing without ruining the carpet. It turns out we needed a little more than we had and it took about a week to get some matching tile shipped in. Being completely clueless about tile-work, it was a bit hard to tear into the nice carpet in the living room.



It was fun and all, but next time I'll let the professionals do it. Still, once the tank and stand covered up about half of it and the carpet guy came by it didn't look too bad.



The only thing harder than convincing a 2 year-old to get into a fish tank is trying to get him back out. He started "swimming" like a fish - it was hilarious.

I'll post some photos of my 3/4" PVC piping jungle later this week. I decided to get the UV unit and it's been a little hard to figure out how to make it work with the rest of the piping. Our utility room is right behind the living room so the water line and drain outlet will go back there through the wall. We're on a private well with 45-50 degree water so I've ordered a 105 gallon water tank which will fit nicely in the utility room. It will allow the well water to warm up a bit during the week. It could also act as a future RO storage reservoir if I ever decide to go that route. Water changes should be as easy as opening a couple of valves.

Hopefully there will be some water in the tank this week so the driftwood can start soaking. The lighting will take a little while to set up, so it should be good and waterlogged when it's time to start the 'scape. Our church just asked me to be their scoutmaster so I should have ample opportunity to search the local mountains for some nice-looking rock.

slickwillislim

That looks like a fun project. Putting a person inside of a fishtank really helps me realize how big that tank is.

I always like to read about these projects where they put so much timr into the planning and the preperation. The tanks always look so much better. I cant wait to see the finished product.

That wood will look really nice in such a big tank.

BryceM

My biggest worry now is that my skills as an aquascaper will fall short of my skills with getting the equipment together. There's nothing hard about what I've done so far - just mundane assembly that has actually been enormously fun. Engineering has always come easier than art to me. I guess we'll see how it turns out.

George Neubauer

I also have a 180 set up with a filter question. I have been running two Supreme Super King filters, basic mechanical filtration and they each turn 600 gph. I have been happy with them but one has finally failed after 14 years. It seems that these filters are now discontinued. Any advice on which way to go on adding a new filter? The tank is totally planted with the usual small fish and shrimp.

BryceM

Are they rated at 600 gph, or is that the actual flow that you've measured? If you're really pumping 1,200 gph with the two of them the fish must be working pretty hard to stay in one place. The largest canister filter that Eheim makes in the classic line is the 2260. It is rated at roughly 600 gph, but that's with no media, piping, strainers, spraybars or anything. In actual use, flow is probably 1/2 that. It's a beast and holds almost 5 gallons of water itself. It is "sized" for a tank of up to 400 gallons.

An Eheim Pro III is rated at about 450 gph and Eheim lists it for aquariums up to 320 gallons. Obviously, you can see that I'm biased toward Eheim, but there are many others out there that work perfectly well. I'm planning on two 2217 classics, each rated at about 260 gph and sized (per Eheim) for up to a 160g tank. I don't really buy into Eheim's ratings so I'd plan on at least doubling or tripling what they recommend. IMO, they do a much better job of filtration than circulation. This is why I went with a separate Eheim 1260 in-line pump to run the CO2 reactor, UV unit, and 66" long spraybar.

I suggest starting a new thread in the "Equipment" section where more people will see it. I'm sure you'll get lots of opinions. Just remember that Eheim's actually are the best

SnakeIce

I had some of the same concerns when I first started getting the gear together for my 75 gallon tank. I set up a 10 gallon tank and started playing with materials and plants. The plants arn't quite as important since you have greater freedom in the large space of the big tank, but getting practice with the scale of the hardscape and how plants aranged around that hardscape changes how things look is helpful.

Even if you don't have all the plants to complete the scapes in the small tank it will still excercise your ability to see what isn't in place yet. Here are some examples of what I played around with.





You can temporarily mark an area on the floor equivalent to the bottom of your tank to manipulate hardscape materials in like I did here.



Befor I got a photo showing how much drift wood ADG was sending me I went to the local concrete place and got a 5 gallon bucket full for a buck of rip rap rough basalt rock of various sized to potentially use and play with.


Sometimes questions like who or what is going to live in the tank can help give a general shape to things. In the past I have checked out bonsai books and studied up on the rules of arangeing groups of dwarfed trees. I find that there are sound concepts on what kinds of things are apealing in those rules.


Another thing to mention is that these are all things that work for me. I create things after thought and learning on the subject. You may find that you need to hands on physicly play with it more than I have. Talk about what you want, and look at examples to try to build an identity of things you like.

BryceM

Another update. I've moved on from tile-worker to plumber:



The thing in the back left-hand corner is the CO2 reactor. It's made of 3" PVC pipe. You can see the CO2 tubing entering about 2/3 of the way up. The valve above it is an air bleed-off valve for use when priming the system. To the right of the reactor is the Eheim 1260 pump. The pump outlet is the 3/4" vertical line, where the water can be routed through the wall to a floor drain or up to the reactor. Once the water leaves the bottom of the reactor it goes to a manifold where it can either be routed to the UV unit or bypass it for a direct return to the tank. The inlet to the main pump is the 1" horizontal PVC line. Two valves there select either water from the inlet strainer in the tank or from the 105 gallon storage reservoir behind the wall.

Per Gnaster's recommendation, I've used unions in strategic places to make removing and servicing components easy. This was VERY good advice, since ease of maintainence is the name of the game.

A 50% water change takes about 20 minutes from start to finish and only involves cranking a few valves. This is absolutely my favorite part. In many aspects, this tank will be easier to maintain than my current 46g bow.




In this photo you can see the 3/4" PVC return line, which enters the tank at the mid-point, along the back wall. It then flows down to an inverted "T" which lies at the level of the substrate. The horizontal limbs have small holes drilled every 2" along the top to function as a large spraybar. Even with all the plumbing, intake strainer, reactor, and UV unit, the circulation in the tank appears to be even and fairly strong. As near as I can tell, the system moves about 350 gph actual. One of the main goals was to evenly distribute the CO2 in the tank. Hopefully this will do the trick.

I currently have one of the Eheim 2217's hooked up with its Hydor 300W in-line heater. So far I'm quite impressed with the Hydor unit. The single heater raised the tank from 60F to 76F in about 10 hours. I'm waiting on some additional 5/8" tubing to connect the second Eheim & Hydor. The return lines from the two canister filters will be placed at the center of the tank with one directed toward each front corner. My goal here is to provide enough surface movement to avoid a surface film, but not so much that the CO2 is wasted.

The Manzanita wood has been soaking for about 4 days. A few of the smaller pieces are already sinking, but the big ones will take a few more days. Despite what anyone says, Manzanita wood does contain some tannins. After 24 hours the water was quite darkly tea-colored. The leeching does seem to be slowing down though.

The lights are supposed to arrive this week, so I'll be transitioning from plumber to electrician. I'm planning on keeping the electrical stuff to the right side of the cabinet. The ballasts will be up off from the floor to hopefully protect them from stray water.

Still to do: install the CO2 regulator & pH controller, wire the lights, find some rocks for hardscape, arrange the driftwood, select & order plants, and ...... finally, plant the stupid thing. Maybe sometime within the next week or two.