WP's 250 gal Plywood Starphire Tank

[dantimdad]

Woohoo! Plants!

Looks great. You need to send me a piece of the Manzanita.



Steven

[Wasserpest]

Thanks! Actually I had to cut about 1 inch off a branch to fit it under the rim. Would you be interested in that piece?

To use the 30" depth of the stand to its fullest, I built a drawer cabinet that takes up one quarter of the stand.



Finally, all that stuff that I threw into the stand before is all sorted out and readily available.



Labeling all those baby food containers makes my life so easy now. Before I had to lift up each one and check what was in them. Usually it was the last one I inspected that contained the desired widgets.

[Hoppy]

I hope you understand how big a thrill this is for the rest of us. It is something most of us could only day dream about doing. And, those drawers - like icing on a German Chocolate cake.

[Wasserpest]

I'd call that "Redneck Style" No fine woodworking here. But functional.

This is the first drawer cabinet I built in my life. Made a lot of mistakes. Like when I measured, forgot to take the thickness of the wood into consideration.

The next one will be better, with less cutting. Roller glides are an entirely new challenge though.



Need to go plant some more plants.

[gmccreedy]

Driftwood is sweet.

[hydrophyte]

Now with plants!

You can get some really great stuff going in that vast space in there.

That driftwood has great depth.

[Church]

Awesome! I knew checking in on this thread every once in a while would eventually pay off.

Let the drooling begin...

[Wasserpest]

Originally Posted by gmccreedy

Driftwood is sweet.

Agreed. The hunting for it was the best!

Originally Posted by hydrophyte

Now with plants!

You can get some really great stuff going in that vast space in there.

That driftwood has great depth.

Thanks h. Looking forward to make the best out of the space.

Originally Posted by Church

Awesome! I knew checking in on this thread every once in a while would eventually pay off.

Let the drooling begin...

Feels like it didn't take that long...

Things are slowly coming together. The water is clearing up. I haven't filled the tank all the way up yet, to make planting a bit easier. I hope I can finish up the planting later today, and then fill it up and test out the surface skimming of the passive overflow. There is a bit of surface scum from the new substrate.

I started adding some fishies... A couple of Endlers, and the first bunch of Otos. And of course some Cherry shrimpers.

Playing around with the background. I have plastic grids where I can attach plants. Did so with some NL Java Ferns. Unfortunately, the grid I have is clear, which is pretty visible in front of the black background. Need to get some black grid. Going to attach some Anubias to the Manzanita branches.

CO2 via the "Atomizer" seems to work fine. I haven't actually measured levels, but I placed on order for an ebay drop checker.

The canopy seems to be good too. With the fan pulling out air at night, there isn't any condensation on the reflectors. I ordered a fan speed controller kit which is supposed to lower the fans when the ballasts and lights are off, and turn them up during the lighting hours.

Still need to finalize the fert auto-dosing (water pump for N+K, peristaltic pump for micros, test tube for P). And play with the water change setup.

And sit and stare another half an hour.

[tusk]

Man, were have I been. NICE work on this second round. Glad to see you're still doing the plywood stuff

[Wasserpest]

Yeah... where were you?? Glad you made it back! How's your corner holding up?

[chonhzilla]

Excellent job you did there! Love the wood!

[sewingalot]

Oh boy! Plants. I am glad to see them. That beach sand is an interesting thought. I am curious to see your plans on this.

[Wasserpest]

With the tank now up and running, I should post a FTS. There is actually one in the "My tanks" link in my sig. But I am going to wait a bit longer to make it a comparison shot. It is amazing how fast things are starting to grow, so it should look interesting.

Regarding the sand... Well. There is an unexpected issue. As you have seen, the sandy area extends about 1/3 into the tank. When standing in front of the tank, looking down, it is there and looks nice. However, as soon as one steps back a bit, due to the glass and water and optics, the sand totally disappears. A few feet from the tank, looking at it from the center, I just see a bit of the black divider. And in FTS's it will not be present. Not expected!

On the other hand, from above it looks nice, and it gives me a little experimenting area to see how plants do without substrate ferts, compared to a very rich substrate. I planted several things into the sand, and we'll see how they thrive (or not). Lagarosiphon, a typical stem plant, seems to not care at all where you stick it. Growing well in the sand.

There are now 7 Otos, 2 Yoyo loaches, a bunch of Endlers, Amano shrimp and many Cherry shrimpses enjoying the tank. Both Otos and Yoyos are very playful, so I assume the water parameters are good.

[henkychif]

Thks for such a fascinating thread. I really enjoyed following your progress.

[sewingalot]

So, you can't just have a mega beautiful tank, you have to have an experiment going as well? With the ongoing debate of substrates, I am interested to see how this pans out.