My 6 feet of pride and joy

[fish man 101]

Well now that this is just a copy and paste i will post it here too.

Over the last few months i have been gathering and building supplies to set this thing up. It has taken up a lot of time and even more money but finally it is going..This is where it started. I have only got a couple of plants in there that were from other tanks but on Wednesday i will be fillin her up

and after many weeks of grief, excitement and pride here it is.

on the 8/06/07 my new tank received its first drop of water.! Everything went well and only one slight drip leak from my CO2 reactor which is going to be swapped for a mazzei venturi soon anyway. It has taken me a long time to get this set up and to see it full now running smoothly is just awesome.

anyway onto the pics. This is a FTS as of 30mins ago The plants you see are some crappy glosso, blyxa and hygro "rosanvig" that i got from plantnut. Please excuse the bomb crater my return pump has created i will be getting an oceans motions dual way adjustable splitter soon hopefully.


As you can see i have painted the back black and think it look heaps cooler this way. For lighting i decided to use 3 x 150W MH. I didnt have a clue how i was going to mount them untill i saw shakes thread about his DIY MH. sorry Shake i hope you sont mid me copying you idea mate but it was just to good to pass up. I made a stupid error with light purchases and bought crappy Chinese ones from ebay(dont buy these please!) and after a lot of farting around ending up shelling out another $350 for good quality atco electronic ballasts. I love the new ones and will get a pic later of them!
here is a pic of the light fitting hanging over the tank.


And another from different angle

this tank was destined to be sumped so now i bring you the guts of my system. water comes down the durso and into the sump at the L/H side of the sump. It then passes over two Jager 300Watt heaters, passed a temp and PH probe and then back through the pentair 5000 return pump. This return pump is a beast and is soon going to be hooked up to a mazzei venturi which should slow the flow a bit. here is a pic looking diagonally fomr the R/H side. yes there is a lot of surface agitation and i do have a plan th reduce that but more on that later. wster level in sump is now higher than this pic and agitation is much less..


Here is a pic of my "portable" UV steriliser. The steriliser itself is a coralife 9watt unit. This is a relatively small steriliser for the tank but i think it will do the job as i wont use it that much(hopefully)I got the idea from Diablo Canine over at PT forums. It is working well but need to either add more water to the sump or lengthen the outflow pipe. probably a combination of both.


And finally here is a shot of all the electrical. The most dominating thing is the Aqua controller junior. This is a SWEET unit and i love it to bits. It controls everything(temp, PH(CO2), lights, pump etc). it is sweet and you can program evnts into it like a feed cycle. when i hit the down key the feed cycle is turned on. this is a 5 minute cycle that turns off the main pump so that the food soesnt get blasted to smithereens. also i have programed in a sunrise/set cycle. At 08:30 my 80 watts of flourescant turn on, then at 10:00 my MH turn on. Then at 20.00 my MH turn off and then the flouros off at 21:00. finally the moonlights turn on and go off at midnight. All the gear is controlled by x10 wireless gear. I would have liked to use the Direct connect boxes but they only come in 110V. All they are really though is a bunch of realys and plugs so one day i may wire up my own.


I am really happy with the way things turned out and cant wait for my plants to arrive from Dave so i can start scaping.. wooo..
Thanks for all your help and support guys., peace out

[macclellan]

Looks like it could become a nice tank, can't wait to the post-planted pics.

Do you plan to hide the gawd-awful ugly plumbing up the middle?
Sorry to laugh at your expense, but I find it totally amusing that you dropped so much $ on such a nice, elegant setup and have such a ghetto-looking DIY fixture.

[SOLOMON]

looks hot, cant wait to see the plants you decide to use

[fish man 101]

Originally Posted by macclellan

Looks like it could become a nice tank, can't wait to the post-planted pics.

Do you plan to hide the gawd-awful ugly plumbing up the middle?
Sorry to laugh at your expense, but I find it totally amusing that you dropped so much $ on such a nice, elegant setup and have such a ghetto-looking DIY fixture.

hahaha yes i do plan on covering it with some black acrylic soon when school resumes as they have plenty there i can use and also they have the tools.. I plan on routing out a come to replace the gutter gaurd i am currently using

[Tdon1md]

It appears you drilled your bulkheads for the cannisters. Is this correct? If so, isn't your tank tempered? If so, how did you do this without it shattering into pieces?

Awesome looking set up btw!!

[Kolkri]

Wow that tank well look great. Seems very high tech too. Cant wait to see it planted.

[Betowess]

Very nice. What size is it? You have GFI around all that elec, right? Going to be sweet!

[mgamer20o0]

nice build.

[fish man 101]

Originally Posted by Tdon1md

It appears you drilled your bulkheads for the cannisters. Is this correct? If so, isn't your tank tempered? If so, how did you do this without it shattering into pieces?

Awesome looking set up btw!!

yep the cannisters where drilled in. I has the tank custom made so he drilled the holes as he was building. It is all normal 10mm float glass no temper.

and yes it is all earth protected...

[dantra]

looks great, I like the whole setup, can't wait to see it planted.

[Tdon1md]

Thanks for the info Fish. Awesome looking tank, just bummed that I haven't been able to find one person who's drilled a tempered glass tank and got away with it. Not what I wanted to hear so I wanted it to be an exaggeration. I'll drop it now I suppose.

[Storm_Rider]

looking decent so far. sorry if i missed it somewhere, but what substrate are you using?

[fish man 101]

Originally Posted by Storm_Rider

looking decent so far. sorry if i missed it somewhere, but what substrate are you using?

size is 150 gallon Betowess, and the substrate is eco

[medicineman]

Just from experience : you may want to consider hanging MH light that close to water surface. 3 x 150W of metal halide is already serious light over your tank size, even though many people may not consider so, but let me assure you to hang them a bit higher (probably twice of current height). Excessive MH light (usually from hanging too low) may cause problems to your plants.

[FelixAvery]

also it will heat up your water too much ^^