Big tank/Office build

[Steve]

First batch of stocking is complete. In this first round of stock there are-

6" OB
4" yellow lab x2
5" Yellow tail Acei
5" Williamsi North (Blue lip)
4" to 6" Synodontis multipunctatus x 6
5" to 7" Synodontis eupterus x3

[Steve]

BTW  - Ron you may recognize the big catfish, he finally is in his proper home

[Ogre44]

They look so small in that tank!
Congratulations Steve, that's just awesome

[Ron]

BTW  - Ron you may recognize the big catfish, he finally is in his proper home

I definitely noticed! Looks great! How are they coping with having so much room?! 

[Steve]

Right now I don't think they know what to do with themselves. The OB is trying to run the tank at the moment, but he gets tired of chasing after about 4ft and gives up.

[Ron]

Right now I don't think they know what to do with themselves. The OB is trying to run the tank at the moment, but he gets tired of chasing after about 4ft and gives up.

The beauty of keeping them in a big tank. 

[Steve]

Had four Hydor 1" LED spotlights leftover from another project so decided to put them to good use by mounting them in the ceiling so that they light up sections of the rock wall to give a nice dramatic lighting effect for evening viewing 

[spas]

Well Done Sir!!! That looks better than most zoo exhibits!

[Steve]

Thanks guys. I am REALLY enjoying it these past few days. It's so nice sitting at the desk and having such a big wall of water right in front of you

Just doing my first water change in it as I type. Ammonia was a tad higher than I liked so making sure to keep it low during the initial stage. I'm defiantly going to get another 42g water storage barrel. Just moving the pump from tank to barrel to refill is so much easier now.

[Ron]

To help tame the cycling a bit, as a mini-cycle is almost always inevitable even when using established media in new filters, I feed a bit less. Fish in the wild don't eat anywhere close to the consistency of which we feed them in the home aquarium. Eating lighter for a few weeks shouldn't be a big deal. Less food in equals less waste out.

[Steve]

Good point Ron, I was still feeding these guys like I was when they were in my other tanks. I'll have to remember to scale down the food for the next few weeks.

[Steve]

Update- The seeded media seems to have now taken hold. I was doing 25-50-% water changes daily there for the first week or so because there was a .25 nitrite reading after about 24 hrs. But now the past few days the nitrite is gone and comes up 0, nitrate is steady around 10-20ppm, and tank seems nice and healthy/active. Went ahead and did a 50% wc last night and then added my group of six clown loaches. The loaches must really like all the new space because they use to hide during the day in the 55g but now in the big tank they are pretty much all out and active this morning.

[Steve]

Been working on a little project for this tank the past week or so. Been wanting to find a way to at a realistic storm to the tank with thunder & lightning. Had a failed attempt last week which resulted in a burned out controller and a brief whiff of ozone lol luckily I was testing it on the bench when it happened. But now have a pretty solid way of doing it I believe and just waiting for the parts to arrive.

Purchased a small electronic unit called an Apollo Jammer which is used by DJ's for light shows. The unit has 3.5mm input jack as well as a splitter 3.5 output and it is sound reactive which turns audio input into controllable light output signals. Also purchased 15ft of white LED cut-able light strips. If all goes as planned I should be able to download thunder sound effects on to an mp3 player which will be hooked to the Apollo Jammer, then have small hidden speakers to produce some background thunder off one splitter jack, while the set of white LED lights are ran off the other splitter jack and the flashes will be controllable by the level of sensitivity set to the thunder crashes.....I.E- realistic thunder & lightning.

Should be a neat little addition to the big tank if all works as planned. 

[Regalblue]

Nice!

[kodyboy]

Cool it will be like going to Rainforest Cafe, but with a nicer aquarium!