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55 Gallon Planted tank - self built stand/canopy

5K views 35 replies 13 participants last post by  Thark 
#1 ·
Hello,

About 2 months ago I decided I wanted a fish tank for some reason. I have a 1000 gallon pond outdoors, and that formed the basis of what I wanted.

I didn't have many requirements, but here's what I started with:

I wanted to have live plants
I wanted to build the stand myself
I liked the goldfish in my pond, and wanted to have the ability to bring some of them indoors
I wanted it in my bedroom to create a waterfall like sound at night

From there I started asking around and doing some research online, which brought me here.

A visit to the LFS got me a quote on a 55 gallon setup. I liked the dimensions of it, and decided to use that for the basis of the stand I wanted to build. The tank was 48x13x18. I had a few boards around that dimension, so I used that to get to work.

http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2447323840060960171XHEhXG

http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2933134110060960171uFQlYh

http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2310270660060960171pmGzyF

I made this stand out of a maple tree that I felled a while back. While I really like it, I'm not sure that I like it as an aquarium stand. First, I think that the top of it is really pretty, and it's a shame that the tank hides it. Second, I'm not sure if I need to have any space on the stand to store/hide things, which this doesn't provide.

I could build a stand more like this one (but bigger, and more stable with doors):



Any thoughts on if I should just build a more traditional type stand?
 
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#27 ·
As I said, I got some vaseline to try and quiet my own filters, so when I got home I did some cleaning of my own. I had saved the water from my water change the day before, and used that to rinse out the sponge. I took apart the first filter and rinsed it in the old water and tried to lubricate it. When I plugged it back in I noticed no difference...

I then moved over to the second filter. I was taking it apart when I noticed something move on the screen.

I had ordered some sponge pre-filters a week before my shrimp, but they still hadn't come in yet. So when I was trying to clean the filter I was really sad to see that I had a dead rili stuck in the intake. I didn't even know what it was at first and just roughly grabbed it and pulled it out. Then I was like ... is this a shrimp? I put it back in the tank water to see what it was, and it swam away! What a tough little guy.

I was rather glad that the sponges came and I was able to install them. Little did I know that was only the beginning. I saw two more Rili in the filter itself. I drained off most of the water, and then because I wasn't sure if they both got out, I took it into the bathroom with better light to see. I know one of them got dumped out, but I wanted to check on the second one. Well, to my surprise I counted FOUR shrimp still in the filter. That means with the one that was stuck in the intake and the one that I know I dumped out I had at least 6 of my 21 shrimp in the filter!



After double checking again that I got them all out of there, I tried to lubricate that filter as well. I only had one not running at a time, and by the time I was done I noticed no difference in how noisy they were. I was sad.

Because of finding so many shrimp in the other filter and the noise not going away I took the first one apart again. I applied a lot more vaseline. I was glad to find that upon a close inspection I found no shrimp in that filter. I guess the other one has free beer or something and is the popular one. Just to be sure I also took it apart and lubricated it a second time as well.

Here's what I added to keep the shrimp out of the filters:


After all that, the second filter sounds like it's quiet, but with how much noise the other one is making it doesn't sound a whole lot different. I think I'm going to take it apart again next week and try to lubricate it a few more times, and if that doesn't work the tank is going. The goal was to have a waterfall sound in my bedroom, but instead it sounds more like a small machine shop. I didn't realize how poorly it was making me sleep until I turned on a noise machine to cover it up. I felt sooo much better the next day. I'm not sure where I might put it, but with how loud it is it has to go somewhere.

Oh, last week I also noticed this:



I had a second shrimp get berried in my tank. Unlike this first one this one seems to have a little bit better coloration, and she has yellow eggs.
 
#28 ·
Well, I'm able to put in a bit more time here again. I've been busy studying for the past 3 months for a professional certification and it required all of my free time.

Things have been going very well for my tank though. I'll try and update with some pictures over the next week, but until then here's a brief overview.

I fought with Hagen for about 2 months over the noise my HOB filters make. I'm still not completely satisfied, but it's better than it was.

I finished a new stand, and moved the tank to the living room and out of my bedroom (due to filter noise).

I re-imagined the plants. Although I started with about 13 different plants, I had 2 die out on me, and 2 more that I picked out because I didn't like them. I moved the existing ones around, and they've all grown in quite well.

I've had one Otto die, and one Rili (from the ghost shrimp). Besides that, everyone has been happy and healthy. The shrimp have reproduced like shrimp do, and now I seem to have bunches. The first batch of babies that were born are now almost full-size and a few of them are berried now.
 
#29 ·
Well I know I said I had some issues with my Aquaclear 70 filters.

I'm not sure where the problems come from, if I expect them to be too quiet, if I got bad ones, or what. My original idea for my fishtank was to have the water level be a bit low, so it made a waterfall sound. But the sound of the filters overpowered it. I had set it up in my bedroom, and had a hard time sleeping with the noise the filters made. Eventually I started turning them off at night, and sleeping much better.

The tank was moved to my living room, but still kept making noise. I contacted Hagen and they said that I could ship them back and they would repair/replace them if they found them defective. I have two filters, and pretty much every communication with them I had to remind them that I had two. I'd ship them two and I'd get one back, and have to remind them that I had two. I felt like their basic math skills were really lacking. Because I didn't want to send back both of the filters on my tank and leave it unfiltered, they told me that they could ship me two new filters, charge me for them, and then refund my money when they got my mail. I guess luckily for me they still had issues with 1/2, so they charged me for one filter, shipped one, and then shipped a second one free. Then they got the filters from me, but tried telling me that they didn't see any problem with them (excessive noise is not a problem if they run fine), so they shipped me my original filters back, and did not refund my money. I was quite upset at this, but they did refund the money. In the end I was out the cost of two filters, shipping (like $7), and 2 months to end up with pretty much the same filters I had originally. They're still noisy, but I can live better with it in the living room instead of my bedroom.
 
#30 ·
One of the big reasons I wanted to have an aquarium was because I wanted to build my own stand. I put up some pictures and a general guide to how I did it here: http://www.dotd.org/shrimp/diystand.html

The initial stand that I build and have some pictures of earlier in this thread is now just a table again. It did a fine job as an aquarium stand for a few months, but I think it makes a better table.
 

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#33 ·
I was able to quiet my Aquaclear down by pulling out the actual impeller shaft, and coating that with vaseline. I also put vaseline around the edges of the lid, where it mad contact with the body, as that rattled a ton. This helped, but my filter didn't *really* quiet down until it had been running for about a month. It's dead silent now.
 
#34 ·


There's my new stand as of a month or so ago. I've changed the aquascape up a bit since then. Mostly I just flipped the driftwood.

I have 2x 54 watt bulbs from AH supply in as my light source. I forget exactly what bulbs though. The plants all grow great. I simplified things a bit and got rid of a few. I now just have the DHG, Anacharis, and Java Fern as the main plants. I still have the 3 types of moss growing on the driftwood, and the Melon plant and Tiger Lotus as accent plants on the sides.

I'm happy with almost everything about it now. BS87 I read those comments about vaseline too, and I tried a lot of what you did. However it just didn't work for me. I'm not sure why. In the end moving it to the living room was what I needed to do. Either I'm less picky about the noise there or it has also died down a bit with time, but out there it doesn't bother me.

The only thing that bothers me is some string algae in the tank. It's nearly spotless inside except for that stuff. I could pick it out twice a week and it feels like I"m going nowhere. Twice I've tried 3-5 day blackouts, but it was only the plants that suffered. I picked out a big clump of it and added it to a bowl of water heavily mixed with Flourish Excel to see if that helped, but it doesn't seem to be killing it either. When I did the rescape on Friday I picked out as much as I could. However what's really infested is the moss and DHG. I can't pull it off of either without uprooting or removing the plant too.
 
#35 ·
I've noticed that I'm getting some Blue rilis now. Some are neon blue like the Blue Jelly, and others have the typical Rili pattern with blue instead of clear middles. I've had two deaths. Both were full size females that seemed healthy. They were separated by like a month with no other deaths, so I think it was either just old age or stress.

Speaking of stress, my AC has been broken all year. I can tell that they're not nearly as happy with me. As the temperatures rose, all of the berries/saddles disappeared. But oddly, the fry didn't. I haven't seen a saddle in my tank for what seems like 2 months, but there's still babies in there that can't be over 2 weeks old.

They're still active and fun to watch, just not breeding. My new AC goes in Tuesday, so they should find relief soon.

I know it seems contrary to most tanks, but I don't have any desire to have a background. I think it looks nice open and airy. I've tried to keep the cords contained, and I think it looks fine. Either way, it's what I like so I'll be keeping it for a while.
 
#36 ·
For anyone following along, this tank is still doing well. It's been running a week shy of a year now.

Over the summer the Rili stopped breeding. Once I got my AC in they started back up. In September I added some OEBT to the tank and switched from tap to RO water. I can't say I noticed any change really.

Currently there's about 10 pregnant mamas, and about 15 more saddles wandering about. I only ever see 3 tigers at a time, but they're always pregnant too. I just saw the first babies last night (or I assume they were tiger babies, as they had no color but orange eyes).

The plants are doing well. I started with a whole lot, but over time removed the ones that weren't doing so great. I kept the 2 types of moss and added some fissidens. I got rid of the Hornwort and Anacharis. I do a 10% water change weekly and although the string algae still comes and goes a bit, it's very minor compared to where it was, and isn't really noticeable.

Over the summer I stopped updating when I started building 4 new tanks. I liked this one so much I filled them up with all kinds of other shrimp. It's another self built stand that houses 4 15-gallon tanks and they are all visible from 3 sides. All of the wires and framework is hidden for a very clean and natural look.
 
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