Big tank/Office build

[jcunningham0295]

Speechless.  Very awesome Steve.  So happy you got this going.

[Stan M.]

Very nice Steve!

[Regalblue]

Now you just need a big ass Midas Cichlid for it.  

[lohachata]

noooooo........................tetras......10,000 cardinal tetras......

[Maize-N-Blue-D]

noooooo........................tetras......10,000 cardinal tetras......

LMAO - plus 10,000 neon tetras....and 10,000 tiger barbs.   full color spectrum....

[Steve]

10,000 tetras? I was thinking just one tetra, that way he would be the happiest tetra in the world!

Just finished up going through the filters and cleaning them up real good and replacing the hoses with some reinforced PVC hoses. Got the dual 300w inline heaters plumbed and mounted and currently starting to get the tank up to temp, sure takes a long time to heat this amount of water Found I was missing one of the bottom pieces which holds the screw fasteners on the lid of one of the fx5's so going to order that tonight. Once that gets here I'll rinse the matrix pond media and then seed the filters and get the cycle going. I'll be able to add some well established media from my other tanks so should be able to cut a lot of time of the cycle most likely.

[kodyboy]

That looks awesome!  Like a public aquarium display:)

[Steve]

Thanks everyone, it's not done yet but getting there. Been a long road to get to this point though and I gotta admit I've been one happy SOB the past week or so now that all my hard work is finally paying off. Also owe a lot of thanks to quite a few of you guys here that have helped me on this project in many ways over the course of problems/issues

Well decided to move behind the tank yesterday and today and start getting the backside in order. I figure maintenance on a tank this size is going to be a big enough pain so I wanted to make sure all the support equipment was clean and orderly so that it will make maintenance go as smooth as it can go. So spent some time routing and securing all the wires so they don't look like a big spiders web, as well as set up a little area to work/store items. Also paid a vist to the dollar store and got a bunch of containers to keep bulk foods in for the fish. Getting closer everyday now.

 
 
 

[Steve]

LED moonlights installed and wired now.

[Ron]

What did you do for the LED moonlights? Wired up LEDs yourself, rope lighting, commercial fixture, ...?

[Steve]

Kind of a combination of commercial and DIY Ron. I had some 24" LED moonlight bars I got off ebay that I wired together, then I wired them to a 7 position Universal plus adapter from another set of lights I had so that they have different brightness settings on them.

BTW ...I just finished running my LED spotlights to a dimmer switch as well (the LED bulbs I bought are dimmable) Which now gives me full control of the lighting in the tank. I'll snap a few pics in a bit of that

You guys gettin tired of the updates yet? LOL

[Steve]

 
 
 

Here's some pics with the dimmer switch on it. I ran the cable for the switch through the rock wall and attached it to the front trim work around the tank opening that way I can control it while sitting at the desk. Honestly the pics don;t do it justice, for some reason the pics don;t look like that much of a difference in lighting, but in person the dimmer actually knocks the brightness down by at least 50% or more.

Pics above are full brightness and least brightness, it's also variable between the two.

[Ron]

Thanks for the details Steve.

[GrizzlysDad]

10,000 tetras? I was thinking just one tetra, that way he would be the happiest tetra in the world!

A MONSTER adult Black Piranha (Serrasalmus rhombeus) is technically a "tetra" so that will qualify 

My personal preference over the Piranha would be another Characin (aka tetra),
the Goliath African Tiger Fish (Hydrocynus Goliath)

BTW Steve, extremely happy that the project is finally coming along so well.

[Steve]

Setting up the water storage containers/area now. Have the first of two 42 gallon storage containers set up with bubbler and heater to off gas and preheat the water which should give me the ability to change about 30% water from these two containers.

Also set up the filters with established media in the form of matrix media, bio rings and floss the other day, and added 24oz of Smart Start Complete as a little extra safe guard so plan to start SLOWLY stocking later today. It'll be a solid month 6-8 weeks of stocking so that I don't add too much to the bio load at once, but the first few inhabitants will be going in later this evening.