New 240g project

[kodyboy]

Very cool, but a ton of work!

[Steve]

 
 
 

Another full day of work on it today. Still a VERY long way to go but starting to take shape a bit now.

[Steve]

Another full day of work done on it today. Mucho progresseo'!

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[danotaylor]

Looks ripper mate 👍

[kodyboy]

Nice!

[Steve]

You might be an aquarium/fish nerd when the answer to the question of "what are you doing tonight" is...."Oh not much, just building a stalactite/stalagmite for my tank"..lol

[Steve]

 
 

I like the looks of it, but I know I'm just causing myself headaches down the road when I have to net a sick fish lol

[Steve]

Took just a tick under 50hrs of carving but finally all the carving and texturing is thankfully done. Next step I get to look forward to is probably another 20 hours of dryloking/painting/sealing. Probably take a break from it for a few days at least though before starting that stage.

[E.Y.]

Wow.  Think you may have earned a small break.

[Ron]

For that one piece standing off by itself, have you considered what a PITA it might make removing any fish from the tank?

That's the biggest downside of my huge tank. I made a custom net to wall off a portion and keep the fish in a 80-100 gallon area when trying to net them out, but it takes a second person to hold this net piece in place.

[Steve]

Yep made sure I had a plan for that before I decided to do it so I didn't cause myself too many headaches when time comes to net a fish Cause you know it's not a matter of if, but when lol. I am going to mount (silicon'd in place) a 1" tall x 1/2" dia piece of acrylic round stock on the tank floor which will fit into a corresponding size hole drilled into the bottom of the upright column. Then the top of the column will simply be mounted to a 3" wide piece of acrylic which will span the left side top opening. I'll be using plastic screws for all the mounting of column to strip and strip to tank. So when time comes to net a fish I can just unscrew the two screws that hold the 3" strip to the tank top and then the column will lift right out off the 1" acrylic boss on the tank floor. Then just reinstall after I net the fish. Might end up having to push a little sand away from the acrylic boss to slide the column back down over it but it should be a pretty quick and painless process most likely.

[kodyboy]

that is a cool idea!

[Steve]

Yeah Scott I knew I had to come up with something ahead of time because of some issues I had with another tank. A few years ago I did some small 6" tall rock columns in my 10g beta tank and I mounted them directly to the floor of the tank. Anytime I have to net the beta or cory cats from that tank it was a real pain and that was just a little 10g tank lol. So I knew I better come up with a plan ahead of time for this so I didn't lose my mind trying to net fish.

[Steve]

Very slow going since it is so large of a background but spent the weekend getting the first of the 5 panels of the new tanks background painted. Decided to go with a bit darker of a look on this one than some of the ones in the past and really like the way it is turning out. Fish colors should really pop against it once done. One section done and four more to go

[Regalblue]

Cool!  I'm liking the darker also