WickedOdie

So I am currently fighting velvet in one of my tanks. I haven't moved my fish due to lack of space. Basically I'm thinking about buying a 25 gallon tank and moving all my livestock there. It's not ideal living conditions but they are probably going to die to velvet anyways. My biggest concern, I know terrible, but my biggest concern is my plants. I've invested way more money in plants than fish in that tank, so I can't do much more of a blackout for fear of the plants, and my fish aren't doing any better. They are currently at 84 degrees with 2 cups of salt in a 90 gallon tank, which is roughly 32 tbs, give or take. My main question is, if I don't do a blackout period in the 90 gallon with no livestock in it, will the velvet at 84 degrees eventually die off, even if they do feed off light? I have driftwood, inverts and snails in that tank, I can't add medications containing copper. I'm hoping without a host they will still die off. Anyone know?

Before we start there are a few things we should go over before jumping into our project. I'm going to post a series of videos easily found on youtube instead of making them myself. This will save both of us time, as I'm sure you'd like to get started! First lets learn how to bond the acrylic together. Second lets learn how to cut the acrylic. I like to use a table saw, but if you don't have one I'd either get the shop you're purchasing the acrylic from to cut it for you, or you may widdle away at it with a special acrylic cutting knift. For anything bigger than 1/8th, which I assume all of us will be using thicker for aquariums, I'd definitely use a table saw to do it. Please note that you do not need a special plastic cutting blade, you can use a cheap plywood blade with at least 80-100 teeth. The more teeth the better the cut. As long as you move it slowly through the saw, you should have no problems. Always do a couple test cuts first to get the hang of it. If you do plan to silicon your tank for extra support and piece of mind here is a little video on silicon. I wasn't aware there was a huge difference between them until ckmullin posted this video for us to watch. Now that you have a good understanding of how to glue and how to cut your piece, chose the glue that best suits you. While I do use number 3 weldon, I have a lot of experience with the glue. Weldon 16 might be an easier glue to use for those just starting out. Lets get to it. He are the glue's I'll be using. I will only be using number 3 myself. We have all of our pieces cut to length, and we got our dimensions to the way we want them, what do we do now? While we still have the paper, or plastic covering on the outside of our acrylic, dry fit your pieces together. Make sure that they are all the right length and you're not going to have edges over hanging. Now that we have made sure everything is perfect, what I do is I prepare my acrylic edges. I use a 600 grain sand paper and lightly sand down the edges so that they are not rough and do not have any burs. If you have a router and a jig, you may also go ahead and use that instead. It provides a nice finished edge than sanding alone. Now that all of our edges are nicely cleaned and sanded smooth, lets take off our protective coating. If you do not wish to take it off both sides you do not need to, trim a good inch of so off the edges so that you can easily see your joints. Doing so will allow you to keep most of the acrylic covered so that you do not scratch it while working with it. I have taken all the covering off for the purpose of this tutorial. Now, take your bottom and one of the sides. For this I use electrical tape, but if you have another set of hands to help you do not need it. However I'm a lone ranger and live dangerously, so I'll be using electrical tape (DISCLAIMER - If your edge isn't perfect a small amount of weld can leak out and could end up leaving blemishes when mixed with the tape.) In my opinion if you do not have a second set of hands use clamps. Line up the one side with the bottom of your tank and tape them so that they dont easily shift on you. You will be able to make minor changes so that you can have a nice edge. Use a square or something that you know is square to make sure your box is indeed square. Run your bead of weld across the seam, making any minor adjustments to keep it square with nice edges. I let it sit for a minute or two before moving on to my next step.Take your next side piece and tape it like you did the first, this time not just to the bottom but to the other side piece as well. Once you have it set up and taped and ready to go, run your bead of weld on the base first. I only let it sit for about 30 seconds before doing the seam that connects the two sides together. It is not shown in the picture itself, but I do like to prop it up a tad off my surface i'm woking on just so that if it leaks out the seam it will not pool under my acrylic causing it to adhere to the outside surface leaving you with a blemish. I continue this process until I have finished the entire tank. The last side is one of the more challenging sides. I tape it together like I would all the other sides. However welding the bottom to the base is a little tricky, especially with smaller tanks. Do your best to run the bead of weld along the base, but you may need to stop at the middle and start from the opposite side to complete the full weld. This is where squeezing the bottle and allowing the applicator to suck in air before turning it upside down is key. Any drop of the weld onto any plastic surface will leave a blemish. Is it a huge deal? Probably not, it will most likely be covered in substrate. But keep that in mind when doing any welding. Now that you've done the base, you can do the sides like the ones you've done already. Once complete, let sit for an hour or two before removing your tape. Once I have removed the tape, I like to go around the seams again with another bead of weld. If you are using weldon 16 you probably don't need to do this step, but if you're using 3 or 4, I suggest going over once more to ensure your seams are leak proof. If you plan to silicon the acrylic, you can also skip this step. Now our tank is complete... Or is it? Leave it for 24 hours to fully set and dry. You've now waiting this long agonizing 24 hours. But you're through the hardest part. Now we must test to make sure it's water tight. Take your newly built tank and put it in your garage, or outside or somewhere you can afford to get wet in case any of your joints aren't perfect. Fill up the tank. Watch for any leaks that may arise. Mine leaked from the base, so be warned, even those with acrylic experience can still have poor joints. If it does not leak, I suggest leaving it for about 10 out of direct sunlight in order to fully test it. The last thing you want to do is dirt your tank (yes everyone should dirt their tanks haha) Cap it, plant it, fill it and in a few days notice a leak you hadn't noticed before. If your tank does leak, empty it out, dry it with a microfiber cloth and wait a little while until it's 100% dry. Now go back over your seams and joints with your weldon. This is where I really like the number 3. It's so thin that it will get into any place missed and seal it up shut for you. Though if you're using 16 and you took your time you shouldn't have any leaks to begin with. Hope this helps and may your rimless tanks become a reality. I'm going to think up a concept for a nice little top, if anyone has an ideas for a DIY project for it, let me know and I'll see what I can do. I'll add it to this thread later when I've completed the project.

Welcome aboard!

I have it built, just waiting till tomorrow morning and I'll leak test it.

If you're going to do dirt make sure you put some clay in there that's high in iron. If you don't you may end up dosing iron.

Oh absolutely, but if the soil isn't prepped right in the beginning stages, it will have tannin leaching into the water, hence the dirty color. Which isn't terrible, but it doesn't have enough plants in the tank to soak up all those excess nutrients.

I assume by the color of the water it's freshly dirted. You should do a water change, get some of that excess nutrients out before you have an algae breakout. Next, how long is your photo period, what kind of lights do you have? How long has the tank been set up? If it hasn't been long you need to do a bunch of water changes, and if you're going to dirt you need to plant heavy. If you don't plant heavy you're going to have a huge algae problem.

Dirt it! Then you can use whatever cap you want!

That was very informative. Thank you.

I don't remember what solvent I used, I'll be picking some up tomorrow. It's very thin, however I'll still silicon in the end. Better safe than sorry.

Could be a couple things, too much light, not enough light. Could also be a lack of nutrients. Is that dirt under your gravel?

The biggest thing is don't use crappy extension cords. Pay the money, get heavy duty extension cords. Second, lets say you have 10, 200w heaters. You probably don't, but for math sake, that's a little over 16 amps. Your average breaker is rated for 15 amps. As you add more amperage to the breaker the breaker is doing more work. While 16 amps probably wont trip your breaker adding more to the circuit will in turn heat up the breaker, which in turn will cause the breaker to trip. Basically a breaker is made up of two pieces of metal, the two metal strips are together, as they heat up they expand and pull apart. Thus not completing a full circuit, thus tripping the breaker. Over time it will wear out the breaker. Now, this is just your heaters. This doesn't include your lights, filters, pumps, ext. This also doesn't include anything else on your circuit... TV... Lights... Radios, so on. Your best bet if you plan on making a fish room, or whatever it is you're doing is to add a couple circuits dedicated just to your fish tanks. Just my opinion, as I am a journeyman electrician.

Alright, so some back story... I used to really be into tarantulas back in the day. I had a ton of them, I know gross right! Well back then there was and still isn't a retailer in Canada that made decent Tarantula Cages. So I decided as a semi talented guy, that I would make my own. And well... They turned out really nice. I ended up making a ton, and I still have a couple cages in the YYC area if anyone wants a couple. Could probably use them for a terrarium for plants. Not that they are big or anything, so small plants. But back on track. I had to get out of the hobby due to the fact that I had to move and my roommate didn't like spiders lol. So now, I have some extra plexiglass left over, 3/8's thickness. I have enough to make a 10x10x10 cube, and some 12-15x8x8 inch tanks. Basically about 4-4.5 gallons a piece. My question is, would you guys like some step by step with pictures on how I go about's preparing and creating the tanks. TL:DR Extra plexiglass, going to make shrimp tanks, would you like a DIY tutorial.

I'm looking for some hardscape aquarium safe rocks so that I can make mountains and whatnot. Do you guys/gals know where I can get some fairly inexpensive ones in the YYC area?

So thanks to Hung, I have purchased some of his plants today. I plan to plant them tomorrow when I do my weekly water change. I'm basically asking you guys what you think would look nice. I have some dwarf sag, hair grass, and other carpeting plants coming in this week sometime which i plant to place on the right hand side of the open tank for a carpet like effect, where my micro sword is currently growing. Myriophyllum mattogrossense - I'm thinking about putting this beside my current redish brown version of Myriophyllum behind the driftwood and ludwigia granulosa Echinodorus 'Vesuvius' - I was thinking about putting this to the left of the driftwood, there is some die off from the current plant that's there, not sure what it's called, but i plan to pull the dying stuff out which should leave some room for this. Rotala Wallichii - I'm thinking about putting this to the left of the Myriophyllum that I'm adding to the tank. I'm thinking once it all gets growing it should blend well and make for an interesting background. Alternanthera Rosaefoli - Is what I am lead to believe this is. I'm at a loss as to where to put this. I want to keep the focal point the drift wood, so if i was to put this to the right of the drift wood i'm thinking it will create another focal point and keep your eyes wandering. Any ideas would be nice. The tank is dirted, so I'd hate to rip a bunch of stuff out and muck up my tank. Here is the tank itself.

Here's my 90 gallon community tank. Working on making it a rainbow tank. It's been planted for about 3 weeks, waiting for all my ludwigia and AR to take off so I can make it more bushier. I have some dwarf grass, dwarf sag, and some other carpeting plants coming in next week, I should have it planted and a little bit better looking soon enough. I have 4 t5 6400 4' fixtures on top, it's dirted, capped with black gravel. I supplement 1 cap seachem iron twice weekly. I do not supplement co2 yet. I should have it looking good in no time.

Gasping for air usually indicates low o2. Have you tried a water change and or throwing in an air stone?

Basically the subject says it all. I can't keep cichlids because it's dirted and heavily planted. So basically I'm looking to brighten up my tank. I need more color! Any suggestions? It's 90 gallons, currently have rasboras, danios, And some clean up crews. I'm not really to get any Molly's or anything.

I found the sunblast bulbs at blue grass for 15 bucks a bulb. Still better than a pet store! Thanks everyone for the advice.

Maybe I'll take a drive to leevalley and have a look. Thank you.

So I have a 90 gallon dirted and heavily planted tank. I've been using 2 standard 6500 40 watt t8 bulbs. It's okay but I feel like I should get better. Soooo... I purchased a dual t5 fixture. My question is, is there a place to buy cheaper bulbs? I don't want to spend 40-80 dollars a bulb at pet stores. Any ideas?

Thank you all for your kind welcomes. And thank you for the heads up, I'll definitely keep an eye out.

Hey everyone! I'm new to the forums, and the hobby. Just thought I'd drop by and introduce myself!