Psylant

Any chance you have connections for Colomesus asellus, the South American Puffer... or could point me in the right direction?

Super nice tank. Great job! I assume you're running CO2?

Consensus seems that there is attitude with the builder, time delays but decent work.

This is right. He will be the cheapest by a long shot, but you WILL deal with issues in one shape or another.

I think Concept will sell whatever sizes you need for regular glass or starphire. I don't know what the prices are like compared to others. I was going to go down this road myself until I bought a 350g tub instead. A little easier on my wallet lol

Really nice. I'm jealous!

Dang. 7.5 and no chlorine? Sign me up

Thanks for answering. I may have to give discus a shot. Did you order yours or source them locally?

Very nice. Are you using RO water, peat, etc.? Find them more difficult to care for than your other fish? I've never taken the plunge into discus but I've been heavily considering it for a number of years... lol

I just thought of another thing.

The ability to chain the lighting units together to be controlled all as one unit is another nice feature that some premium quality lights have. Definitely not a "must have" but it's a nice feature nonetheless for people with large tanks. Again, this would probably be more of a controller thing than a lighting thing, but that's what most people are looking for in my experience, is controller features and customizability, along with a full spectrum light which you've already designed from the sounds of things.

I built my own LED fixture a few years ago with the help of people on forums. Here's why I built what I did, and probably most other people would agree.

Ideal features for aquarium use...

-Dim each colour of LED in increments of 1% or smaller, all on their own timers so they can be programmed to fade in/out as desired. This is if you wanted to sell controllers... Probably the most requested feature for higher end lighting system though.

-You'd probably need 2 different versions of the light. One for freshwater and one for saltwater corals. Freshwater will be much "warmer" than the saltwater variant as geleen mentioned in the post above.

-Multiple different angled lenses for the LEDs so you can hang the fixture higher or lower as needed to suit your tank and also give better penetration if required. (maybe this could be an "extra" to buy to keep costs low?)

-Splash guard over the LEDs would probably be a good idea for most people. (another extra)

I will think some more and if anything comes to mind I'll post again.

not even close.

i wired up the entire 5m length, side by side with no space and did nothing against t5

it can be done of course but need to spend more cash on high power chips than a basic strip.

suggest to grab individual chips and wire them together seems like you'll get more power out of that than these types of strips.

Well, glad i didn't try the strip LEDs too. I was looking at videos about it...

I've also been looking at getting individual chips. This might be what i'm going with if i can't find anything good.

LED floodlights on ebay work decently. They don't LOOK nice though but they'll grow relatively undemanding plants fine. 10W would be fine on a nano probably.

For the LED floodlights, do you have one which you have used and would recommend?

Nah. I've bought a few off ebay and they're okay. Nothing great. I wouldn't really recommend them because they won't make your tank look nice but the light itself is relatively powerful for the price. I've had about a 40% failure rate in the first year, but they're pretty cheap so expectations have to be low haha. The ones I have look like this:

LED floodlights on ebay work decently. They don't LOOK nice though but they'll grow relatively undemanding plants fine. 10W would be fine on a nano probably.

I use a nano sized, overflow box. The tube on it always stays primed because each end is always in water. Google them, you'll see.

Aren't you afraid that air will build up at the highest point in the hose? That's what tends to happen and over a long enough period of time the siphon will sometimes break. Sometimes people put in a powerhead or something to turn on for 1 min every 6 hours or something like that just to blow any air build up out.

How do you ensure that your overflow box hose stays primed?

That stand is awesome!

Could you tell us (or show us?) how you've set up your drip system?

I have a few tanks/pieces of glass kicking around that could definitely use this treatment. Thanks for the idea lol

Are you fertilizing, do you have CO2? If YES to both, here's how you get rid of it:

1) do a 50% WC, sucking up as much as you can

2) Double dose KNO3 and black out for 4 days

3) after 4 days, do 50% WC, sucking up as much dead crud as possible

4) Double dose KNO3, and make sure your CO2 is at least 20ppm

If you're not adding fertilizer or CO2, you should start... and you can use H2O2 to spot treat it.

This is literally perfect advice. Manual removal of as much as you possibly can substantially increases your odds of this working.

Where is Bow Valley? It looks like it is out of town.

google says:

Address: Wrangler Pl SE, Rocky View County, AB T1X 0L7

Phone:(403) 272-4960

I've had Bow Valley cut tops for a 180g and a 450g and it was the cheapest place by far. They only deal in cash and Mitch can be a little interesting to deal with, but the prices are unbeatable. Phone ahead of time to make sure he's actually going to cut them otherwise you may waste a trip...

If you're on the north side of the city I'd just go to Concept though... Much less hassle.

Standard plywood is just fine again. with any type of structure holding back water bracing is very important...both types of woods will do the same job.

I'm a little afraid of a hidden void in the regular plywood. Even though the PondShield will coat the wood and substantially increase the strength, the weight of the water may crush a layer of the plywood exposing a void behind it, which would be very bad news indeed. I'll try to find marine grade wood but if I cant I guess I'll have to settle for extra thick regular plywood.

Assuming that the water you're putting back into the tank is the right temperature and has been treated, I don't think there's a change "too large". I would agree with jvision about the filthy tank to 100% change type of scenario though with non-hardy inhabitants. The water chemistry would just be too different unless the change was done very slowly over the period of a few hours to allow for acclimation.

Best bet would be a Windsor Plywood store, and yes they do cuts

I'll try there. Thanks.

don't even need marine. standard plywood. get pond liner and use that. imo

When we're talking about 540g of water I'd like to be sure the wood is of nice quality with less defect. I'll be using PondShield to coat the plywood.

Hi everyone,

I'm starting to see how feasible building my own tank would be. Does anyone know where the best place in the Calgary/Okotoks region is to buy marine grade plywood? I heard Oak marine grade was the best, if at all possible. Bonus points if they could do the necessary cuts on site to make transportation and the build easier

Looking good! I like how you have butted the tanks up to each other like that. Nice stock too!

Where'd you get your 3d background from?

In my experience most SA/CA will dig plants up, as mentioned, and then proceed to chew them into tiny pieces (or eat them, depending on the species). Discus are compatible with plants, as well as most species of rams. My advice would be not to bother with most other families/species. I've tried and failed a few times with large CA. I think the longest I had the plants in the substrate in my tank was about 45 seconds. I'm not kidding.

I have one, I think. I used it on my 90g and worked very well for me. Looks good too, but if you want very "even" coverage for fish swimming along the front glass I would suggest possibly another lighting source right at the very front of the glass. The light doesn't "fill" or "bounce" as well as fluorescent lightning.