The stand became our first staining and polyurethaning experience, and it turned out rather well, if I say so myself, although aquarium stands are generally cheap and hideous by nature - there's only so much a good finish can do to spruce up badly made furniture... A word to the foolish - spray polyurethane may be ok for bumpy or engraved furniture, but if you're polyurethaning flat surfaces (like a fish tank stand), you're much better off with a brush. It's difficult with an aerosol spray to apply an even coat (where the little droplets actually touch and fuse, giving you a "coat" and not just "dots of polyurethane on a bare wood background", without causing big slow motion drips to form. Much easier to just buy a can of the stuff and brush it on. Also, the stain-containing-polyurethane stuff is "ok", but I'd still rather cover it with a coat of plain polyurethane, and it really doesn't save any money over buying the stain and the polyurethane separately... Anyway..
We have no real hood or cover for it now. There is a single 4 foot by .. 10 inch or so strip of glass that covers part of the tank. We have two strip lights (with plastic covers, typical fish tank style) sitting on the glass, and another empty strip light thing (ballast removed) to cover the last bit of tank. This minimizes the chances of fish jumping out and reduces evaporation. I'd like to make a "real" hood for it sometime.
The tank is filtered by a big Fluval filter (there is no writing whatsoever on it, but it's approx. 8" in diameter and 15 inches tall and looks just like the filter in fluval's documentation), which sits under the stand in a bucket. It took a few drippy experiences to get the hang of cleaning the media in the filter, but I have the hang of it now, and other than being heavy and barely too big to really get out the door of the tank stand, the filter is a snap to clean. With shut-off valves built into the plumbing, refilling and starting it up is very simple.
An Aquaclear 300 powerfilter with 3 sponges (instead of carbon, etc) is providing additional filtration. One thing about big tanks - remember if you're getting a big tank for the first time, that the larger the tank, the thicker the plastic lip. Be sure to consider this when you plan on the design of your filters, overflow boxes, plumbing or hood. The Aquaclear 300 just barely squeaks over the lip, and it's a tight fit.
We have a Whisper 600 air pump (bubbler) attached to the tank too, which provides additional water movement and aeration. We used to have it bubbling freely through a hole in the bottom of a stump of wood that had a stagnant region in the middle. The bubbles kept food from accumulating in the crevices and rotting, which had been a problem. They also kept our convicts from breeding in there. :-) Now that the convicts are gone, we added a bubbling stone surface instead, hoping that some of the other fish might take refuge and/or breed in the stump. Although some of the catfish and loaches who have inhabited the tank from time to time have taken refuge in it, I've seen no breeding activity so far.
We change about 60-70% of the water about once a month, using a garden hose to siphon and refill. We had purchased a Meridian Automatic Water Changer to help with this, but it was pretty disappointing so now I just do it with a hose. We almost always rinse out the filter media at that time - always the Aquaclear, usually the canister filter. The whole process takes about 1 1/2 hours (it would go faster if we had a stronger siphon, but we're in the basement and can only siphon into the drain on the floor, about 2 feet below the bottom of the tank). I've found that refilling the tank slowly over about 45 minutes with tank-temperature water seems to stress the fish much much less than turning the water on full blast and refilling it in about 15 minutes, which is what we used to do.
The fish in the tank were almost all former occupants of our 55 gallon tank, which is now an african cichlid tank. When we inherited this big tank, it had 3 tinfoil barbs (only about 3" long - underfed for many years!), a skinny Melanotaenia splendens (rianbowfish) and a pictus cat. We put the rainbow with our other rainbowfish, in the planted tank, and the rest were added to this tank when it was set up in May, 1997. The barbs have filled out, gotten a much more luminescent silver sheen, and have grown quite a bit since they were put in this tank. We're happy for them. They're never look as good as if they were well-fed throughout their lives, but at least they seem spunky now.
In total, we currently have the following fish in this tank:
Right now, the tank seems fairly bare to me (any tank that isn't full of plants looks unnatural and boring to me now). In reality though, there are two medium size pieces of wood, and lots of rock caves to break up the bottom and provide some shelter for the catfish and other more timid fish. The hardest part about maintaining this tank is trying not to overfeed them. Whenever we walk into the room, a huge mass of squirming desperate adorable fish wiggle into the corner nearest to us, furiously churning up the water, waiting for their next meal. It's a good thing I work long hours, or I'd have some fat fishies and be doing a lot of water changes!
I have taken a few pictures of this tank, but my technique is still lousy. This picture was taken with a digital camera. At least you can see a few of the fish. Believe it or not, the tank lights were on when I took that one.. I guess a background would be nice too. Aren't those tinfoil barbs looking might fine though? :-) You might notice some cichlids in the photo - for a long time we had 5 Geophagus braziliensis in the tank, but they moved to their own tank in September, 1999. I may move some of them back though because they are beating each other up with no dither fish around.
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Last Modified October 15, 1999
