Danny's Custom 8L Experimental Shrimp Tank
 

So some of you guys may have seen my recently built 4 gallon long shrimp tank with CRS in it. If you haven't go check it out in my sig. Anyway, I actually really like these long and shallow tanks. I've been doing a lot of reading and research on Taiwan bees and caridinas and there's still a lot of mystery to these shrimp when breeding them together. So i decided to make an even longer and shallow tank. I wanted to try experimenting with breeding so I added a divider to my tank. The stability of a longer tank with the convenience of two smaller tanks.

Tank Dimensions: 48L x 6W x 7H (inches) - 8 Gallons Long
Tank Material: 1/4 Inch Acrylic
Substrate: Ada Aquasoil Amazonia New
Filtration: Eheim 2213 Classic Canister Filter / 2 Sponge Filters
Lighting: Small T25 bulb ( Will Upgrade )
Heater: 50 Watts
Airpump: Tetra Whisper 60 (Not quiet at all. Good thing the tanks in my kitchen)
Plants: TBA
Shrimp: TBA

Note: Some items listed above has been ordered and is still in the process of shipping.

Machine cutting the acrylic
http://i1179.photobucket.com/albums/...BD13865E94.jpg

Carbide Edge Smoothing
http://i1179.photobucket.com/albums/...BE2FE2412C.jpg

http://i1179.photobucket.com/albums/...BD2F8D1FA9.jpg

http://i1179.photobucket.com/albums/...BD3AFCF42B.jpg

http://i1179.photobucket.com/albums/...FDABF741CF.jpg

Okay so by now you guys guessed it, my setup is actually two 4 gallon tanks in one setup. But I mean i guess it's the same thing as one tank with a divider in it. Right? My plans for filtering this tank is to use to sponge filters that shoot the water to the opposite tank. On top of that I'm going to do a 2 inlet/inflow conversion to my eheim canister. I might need you guys help on ideas on how to do it. One intake on each side. Ill probably end up doing a custom spray bar that adds water to both tanks. Technically it'll be one tank filtered with the setup I'm going to make.

http://i1179.photobucket.com/albums/...BE498ADFFF.jpg

http://i1179.photobucket.com/albums/...BEFC66DCF4.jpg

http://i1179.photobucket.com/albums/...BECECD74B2.jpg

http://i1179.photobucket.com/albums/...BE5546DB97.jpg

http://i1179.photobucket.com/albums/...BE66F079E4.jpg


I added Coontail and Anacharis for the time being to cycling the ammonia and soak up everything. Now time to play the waiting game.

Well you have me intrigued! Look forward to updates.

wow that is nice!

Wow this is better than the last one... Definitely subscribing!

This will definitely be cool.

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who keeps tanks in the kitchen!

How's this working out so far? You would have to have the two filters moving the exactly same amount of water or one side will eventually overflow.

Sweet build!

Yeah lol the light under the cabinet was never in use so the other day I was like... This is a nice height suspension for a shrimp tank! And my man, I'm right behind you with the Taiwan bees. The prices are even going down!


That was the problem at first but I added the turning valves that allow the ability to let more or less air through. I played with it until I got the right amount of air going to each sponge filter. Great question! It'll probably be a bigger problem when I have the eheim filter. Ill need to one up with an idea to make a spray bar gay distributes water on both side evenly.

I think you're going to run into trouble using a single filter on two tanks. The way you initially described it, it sound as if it were one tank with a divider.

Hoping you can figure it all out, though.

Yeah I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet. I might need to do an overflow or find away to make the tank into one.

Has anyone tried filtering two tanks using one filter before?

It's super-tough to do because the bodies of water are separate. If you were able to combine the tanks so water can level out between the two, you'd be better off.

When it comes to filtering two tanks with a single canister, there are two key problems that are tough to overcome because nothing is 100%. If one half of the intake is dirtier than the other or becomes clogged, then less water is going to be pulled in from that tank. That's going to lead to overflowing in the other. There's also no way to really guarantee that your output is going to disperse equal amounts of water into each tank.

Regarding the sponge filters... it will be next to impossible to really control the amount of water moved back and forth between tanks. Folks who have used those in such a manner in the past did so merely for water movement.

I agree. Another issue I see is that if one sponge filter gets clogged, one side of the tank with flood.

The sponge filter thing is a nonstarter, set them perfectly now, go watch some TV, and come back and see if they're even remotely the same volume in half an hour. If you want to cascade them together, you can either plumb a straight bulkhead from one to the other through the side (with some screen prefilters on it so nothing can move from one side to the other) or cascade from one higher tank into one lower tank. Think about a circuit a->b->canister filter->a instead of a->b == b->a because you're not gonna get that without some fairly sophisticated flow regulation/level sanity checks.

Also if you wanted to run it like that you could have just plexi-welded a stainless mesh screen between the two tank halfs. It'd take some doing to make it un-ugly but it'd also be pretty hidable.