New 6ft frontosa tank build

[Steve]

Well as of today I have a new home for my frontosa here now. Currently sitting in the utility room till I get the spot in the office cleared and ready for it. First off a pic of the tank...

6ft x 18 x 23 (125-130g'ish)



Here's the plans for where it will be going....



Basically that back wall is a fake wall that is about 12" out in front of the actual back wall. The back wall behind it has 12" deep shelves built into it. So plans are to remove the fake front wall, tear out the shelves, then that will make it so the tank will fit back into the wall and will only stick out from the wall by about 6". Then I'll be rebuilding the wall around it so it is built in and have the top part of the wall hinged for tank work.

[Steve]

Being one to not let grass grow under my feet, I decided to start tonight on tearing down the fake wall. All the bonsai trees are moved and already got the fake wall ripped out. Now I have a huge amount of stuff that has been on those shelves in storage and not seen the light of day in years to be carried from the basement up two levels to the attic so I can knock the shelves out to make room for the tank. These old knees will be sore from that soon.

Should be pretty cool once the tank is in place. Already looks a lot bigger back there with that fake wall gone now.

[Regalblue]

Just reading your description makes my lazy ass tired, lol.

Gonna be interesting to follow the progress on this.

[Steve]

I'm kicking around an idea right now Blair which would make me dead ass tired if I do it lol. I'm thinking about maybe setting up the tanks like in the drawing above. That way I could put a chair in the U shape of all the tanks and be surrounded by tanks on each side when I wan to sit down and enjoy some fish. Problem is the red outlined tank. What I am thinking about putting there would be the 75g Bleekeri tank that I'm currently building upstairs. Here's the bit issues though....between the 6ft frontosa tank and the peacock & hap tank is only gonna be 44"....I need 48" for the 75g bleekeri tank.

The only option to do that is to move the desk and 75g peacock & hap tank about 5" over more. but the desk is 7ft long and the wood stand for the 75g is screwed to the desk to form the L shape of it, and the whole front panel of both is the foam rock facing. So it'd be a big undertaking to move that whole unit over a few inches.

Not sure if I will do that or not but that's an idea I have in my head. I just love causing work for myself 

[Ogre44]

Steve, you should give building a tank a go and make yourself a custom 44" tank to fit that space.

[Steve]

Tons of work done today. Everything is moved out of the way and got the shelves ripped out. Managed to get the tank and stand wiggled out of the utility room and into place by myself (that was fun) and found I had about 1" too little room in the recessed opening. So had to do a little "modification" to the wall to fit it back against the wall. Long ways to go still but got more done in 24hrs than I expected to have done.

[Steve]

I think I really should see a doctor because I dunno what's wrong with me. I don't know why I can't just put a tank on a stand and be happy with it. Now after sitting and starring at this for a bit tonight I think I have a bit of a change in plans.

I think I may end up taking out the lower braces on the wood stand (red wavy line) and then rebuild the brace as more of a base under the legs and attach with metal L brackets. (new base would be red straight lines). That way it would raise the whole tank 4" higher as well as give me 26" of room under the 130g tank, which would be enough room to fit the 75g bleekeri tank in there (blue lines).

[mibwb]

  IT'S CALLED "OCD"....only antidote is to catch "laziness" but then there's problems with that....it's called "Nothing gets doneness

[Steve]

Got a lot of work done today. Raising and modifying the stand was a brutal job because of the way it was built plus not being able to take the tank off the stand while I was working on it, but 8 hrs later it's done.

Stand is modified and braced, new base for lower 75g tank built, foam under both tanks, leveled and filled with water for a 2nd leak test. Next will be building the wall in front and the 6ft 3d background for the main tank, but wont be able to start doing those till later next week once I get some other jobs done.


 

[kodyboy]

Looks great!  I had a u shaped fish area at my old house and loved it:)

[danotaylor]

Nice work Steve. Will be a very relaxing chill zone when you're all done. Not sure how much work I'd get done in that office...lol...what type of front's are you keeping in your 2 front tanks anyway? Thx for sharing mate

[Steve]

I've got four Burundi fronts right now in the 75g tank. The largest male is the one in the above pic and its close to 12" long. Then the other three males are about 9"-10". Once they are moved into the 6ft tank then I plan to pick up probably four more fronts of the same sizes to complete the colony.

[danotaylor]

Beautiful Burundi's Steve. Really stellar buchal hump & trailers. So you have 4 males atm. Are you gonna try to get 4 females and breed them or just enjoy some majestic viewing of Africa's king of the Cichlid world?

[Steve]

Thanks, he's probably my favorite fish I have at the moment. Haven't really decided for sure yet but I am somewhat leaning towards four more males and just having a nice all male show tank with this. Still got a bit to decide on that one though.

[danotaylor]

I guess the fact that they are monomorphic kinda complicates it. On 1 hand you can have a mix of beautiful male & female fish with similar coloration,  but on the other you have to deal with hierarchy at a whole different level when the girls are in da house...