David R

The big crater is from when I filled it up, I probably should have levelled it out before making the video. :oops: The sand actually looks like the craters of the moon at the moment, I think because they have so much space the geos take a mouthful then swim a couple of lengths while spitting it out, and because they aren't going over the same ground it leaves the little dimples in the sand.

+1 on having a floor drain, even though this is going to be a salt tank by the looks of it. If you plumbed it right you could take the closed-loop system off line, open a dump valve to empty it, transfer the RO water across and add salt mix, run a circulating pump for a few hours to mix and pre-heat it, then put it back on-line and you would have performed a 200L water change without having to even touch a hose or bucket! I'd also think about having the closed loop and RO containers made our of glass or acrylic. A couple of 100x50x45cm glass tanks wouldn't be much more than food-grade plastic IMO and being able to see what is going on inside them would be very handy. What are you going to do for ventilating the room? I'd say you would want some sort of externally vented extractor fan running on a timer. If you're running a reef (or cold water) tank it would be a good investment to put a heatpump in that room too, as you'd probably be able to get away with not having a chiller. I love planning stuff like this, it looks like a great set up, hopefully you get to put it into action! ps. a 200L water change is only ~7% on a tank that size, you sure you don't want to make those containers a little bigger?

Any more of that L240? I'm still gutted I didn;t get one

:oops: I know I'm not the only one...

Not sure if it would come up, but if you check the TDS it should be fairly low with rain water, ours is <10ppm. If you're really worried you could take enough town water with you to set up the tank then figure out if the tank is treated before you need to do a water change. I presume you've asked the landlord?

Someone on MFK wanted to see a quick video, so here it is! http://youtu.be/EQqWsuCOYbM

which is why I think he is worried about the previous tenant/owner adding it to the water tank...

I've seen Greg ship large tanks down the line so it certainly isn't impossible. He travelled up to Whangarei to build mine, but I think Palmy might be a bit of a stretch! Any pics of yours Matto? What thickness glass did he use. Maybe we need a 1000L-club thread for all the big tanks on here... :lol:

Oh yes!! I think Texas would be an interesting species to see how breeding affects the size and growth-rate, if you had space it would be interesting to keep one of the others from the group that you separate from the pair and grow it out alone to see if/how much faster it grows than the breeders.

I think if you're worried about the pipes through the base causing trouble in an earthquake then you could either have a small lip around the edge of the stand to stop the tank sliding sideways with the shaking, or simply have the drains and returns running out the back of the tank so that at worst they would crack if the tank moves. As for the supplier, I don't have any idea about lower NI builders, but Greg Kingston aka Tanks2U is very good and very well priced, it may be worth looking into even with the cost/hassle of shipping. The dimensions you've mentioned are right on the border-line between 12mm and 15mm glass, 12mm would give you a safety factor of 2.4 which is certainly acceptable but not great. 15mm would seriously increase the cost though. Looking forward to following your build, there's a few of us here who have recently set up 1000L+ tanks so there should be plenty of good ideas floating around.

Haha!! They are Pterophyllum scalare 'Peru Altum'. So basically an altum-ish looking Peruvian variety of the regular angel. Phil Collis imported them and they have been bred here many times since.

Yep, one big low dense tangle of wood across the back left, ideal pleco habitat. Just transferred the angels across as it was too hard trying to feed them in the 400L with no geos to clean up the spare flake.

Standard Cenrtal American cichlid fare really, get a group of half a dozen or so and let them pair off naturally, then remove the others. 300L should be ok for a pair depending on the footprint, I've also seen them breed at a very small size so you may not have to wait too long. They love to dig so don't get too fussy with aquascaping. Moderately hard water, well filtered, and probably on the cooler end of the tropical spectrum as they're from quite far north.

Or those over-seas on ground water from limestone areas where they need to use RO water to keep uaru, geophagus, angels etc as the water comes out of the ground incredibly hard. I :love: my rainwater!

As I said, I think the glued socket joins are more solid and leak-proof than the threaded screw together Hansen ones (which are kinda like how a canister filter pipe attaches to the taps). Cutting and gluing the PVC is pretty simple and you end up with a very strong and rigid finished product. I've even used it with no glue, just pushed together firmly, for drains on numerous occasions. Certainly cheaper than the Hansen fittings, though I haven't found a PVC bulk-head that works with anything thicker than 6mm glass, they don't have enough thread so I usually use the RXPlastics water tank ones with an adapter. I'd stay away from metal for the above reasons too.

No idea if it is a worry or not, I'd suggest testing it with a few less precious fish first if you're concerned. But with the amount of rain we have had lately I would expect your tank to be full of fresh pure water and not much else, unless it was treated very recently.

Thats a cool idea. Is it possible to swap the office/linen and the fish room around and move the gap between the lounge/linen over so the fish tank could be in the wall of the lounge? Anyway, this is getting off-topic, sort of. I may be slightly biased and under the influence of my new tank, but having one massive display tank is a very worth-while endeavour if you can make up your mind about what to put in it. I'd never trade half a dozen small tanks for one big one, even though it means I'll probably never keep a colony of tropheus or a pile of bichirs.... :lol: Pipe work? I used PVC waste pipe where ever possible as it is fairly cheap compared to pressure pipe. Not sure how it compares to the black stuff and Hansen fittings though, but I prefer glued socked joins over threaded Hansen style joins.

Haha! Over a hundred different beers there, represents a fair sum invested in improving my palate... Cheers, just remembered I forgot to reply to your email, I will when I get home!

Video of the sump running, no commentary as I didn't want the foreigners laughing at our terrible accent!! http://youtu.be/HXCLBmZJy80

That is basically what I was planning if we built, although I wanted the tank out in the room so it could be viewed from three sides and with swanky suspended lights hanging from the ceiling. Only problem I see with your plan is the couch in the living room is facing the wrong way!! Who needs a TV with a tank like that... 8)

How to make a 17cm Geophagus look small and lost... They seem to really like having the big open space, the only decor at the moment is the stump and they went straight under it when I put them in there, came back an hour later and they're out exploring the open and re-establishing their pecking order... Next mission is building a drip tray, and possibly tidying the garage... :oops:

Forget the diagona bracing, the entire weight of the tank is supported by whatever holds the horizontal pieces of decking timber (!!!) to those skinny little legs. A timber stand needs to be designed so the weight is effectively transferred through to the floor, that one certainly isn't. I also don't like using things like chip board (especially unsealed) around water. Have a look at this thread; http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forum ... Viewing%29 You can skip most of the technical stuff at the top, but look at the image and see how the horizontal supports under the top of the tank sit on top of the legs, transferring the weight directly downwards. That is the main thing this stand lacks IMO, diagonal bracing is something worth considering, but adding it to this stand certainly won't solve all the problems!

The only reason I take water when moving tanks is to avoid acclimatising fish. Catch fish, save ~40% water, move tank, add 40% old water, chuck fish straight in, fill up to full volume keeping an eye on temp. If you don't have fish I wouldn't work about it too much, although I don't know how sensitive plants would be to a 100% water change with cold water, you might need to pre-heat it or add some boiling water [carefully] as it fills to avoid shocking them?

I wouldn't use it, it's very poorly designed, and the construction looks a bit flimsy too.

Sweet, you're sorted then! No grumpy property managers to deal with, and if ever he does look at selling the house you should sort out a deal to buy it. (in fact it probably isn't a bad idea to look into either way, but that's another thread...) So are plecs and africans your main areas of interest?