madmark285

FYI, the JBL e702 is not sold in the USA. Too bad, looks like a great filter.

Ok, one more thought on this. The question I have, how deep does the water have to be for an arowana? I believe your tank is ~72"x18"x21".Would a water depth of 10-12" be enough for an arowana? This is well below the chipped area. These guys are a surface dwelling fish who hunt in flooded areas of the Amazon, I am not sure if they live in the deep open waters of the river. , What I think would be a amazing tank, a paludarium with an arowana. Your could put a land section in the back corners and 2 islands in the middle of the tank. The arowana would still have enough area to swim around. On the back wall above the water, glue cork to the tank and grow plants off it (this comes from vivariums). You could also put cork on the side walls, this could partially hide any repairs you make to the chipped area. You have two overflow boxes in your tank. Those could be removed and cut down. Install them in the corner land sections of the tank and drill new holes for the thru hull fittings. Now you can use the sump for filtration which also gives you alot more water volume for the system. You could set this up to create river water flow. How big is the sump? This could be a spectacular showcase Amazon river tank! Don't give up yet! Edit: Reading up on Arowana, you may need a upgrade path if you go with this fish after a couple years ie: a bigger tank. It looks like you could get ~80" wide x 30" deep tank in that space. But what I read, you need a minimum of 8' long tank.

You should start a new thread, maybe Mr. OnlyGenusCap has some time and can drop by. He has a bunch of vivariums with poison dart frogs. He is the person who got me thinking about building a paludarium with Yellow-bellied toads. Mrs Mad did not approve of this project 🙂 For a waterfall, I have an idea on building a water distribution box with control values from cheap PVC parts. The idea here, pump the water to the top of the paludarium then pipe it to differ areas which can have different elevation. Controlling water is tricky as it will always take the path of least resistance. A water distribution box gives you the control, I want X amount of water to come out in this spot. A paludarium would be alot of fun to build!!! The forum PlantedTank may be helpful. I would still fix the chip with the windshield repair kits, they are cheap and would help on the appearance of the tank. Let us know, I can suggest how I would fix it.

I am not trying to be the good cop here, I am concerned about offering dangerous advice. I built my fish room in a 3rd floor finished attic space in my 100 year old house. I minimized the risk by putting the 75 gallon tank&sump over a load bearing wall which I rebuilt. But I am not sure i would put a tank in my family room with a wood floor made from old growth oak. I should use more caution when offering advice, I never had a large aquarium failure which dumped a 100 gallons of water on the floor.

One more idea for this tank, make a paludarium with it.

The Odessa barbs I have are very hyper. I have them with Tiger barbs, a rainbow shark and some serpae tetras, no issue with them. I am not sure how some calm slow moving fish would get along with them. Odessa and Tiger barbs is a great combination.

Use alot of cutting oil else you will burnout your drill bit.

She wants an arowana so not filling the tank to the top would be a good idea for that fish ie: they are big time jumpers.

I am the lone go for it person on this thread but I freely admit that a crack forming down the road is a major issue. Just curious if a Windshield Crack Repair Kit could be used. Another option if you are a I like to fix/build things kind of person. Since you want a arowana, a low boy style tank would work just fine. You could breakdown this tank and cut off the damaged glass, the bad section is near the top. So now you have a ~72" x 18" x 18" tank instead of 21" tall. For this project, removing the frame would be the first and possible the hardest part of the job. So the good news, if you can't do this then just trash the tank. What you need is a thin razor knife which can hold 4" razor blades. You have to cut the silicone inside the frame. I have never cut glass but a local glass shop may cut if for a reasonable price. Or cut it yourself. The overflow boxes would have to be cut down, I assume they are acrylic and can be easily cut with the right tools. Where are the holes for the thru hole fittings? Resealing a tank is not that difficult. The hard part is removing all the old silicone. A DIY job may be better than the factory sealing Aqueon does on their tanks.

Another suggestion. The intake pipe on a Tidal 75 fits perfectly inside 1" Sch 40 PVC pipe. I connected the Tidal to an undergravel filter.

On glass cost, the front piece would cost over $200 to replace. Glass is quite expensive these days. A cheap source of glass, buy aquarium on sale at PetCo and break them down. A new 125 gallon tank is ~$500.

Keep calm and don't panic Structurally meaning will the silicon hold the panels together, the tank should be fine. The biggest worry, is there a hairline crack which will grow over time. However the tank may leak and clearly that is a problem. The issue is, it will be difficult to patch up as silicone will not adhere to cured silicone. But if you were already going to reseal it, no worries about the old silicone. I would reseal the tank with black silicone. Go to your local Grainger and buy some 1" aluminum angle stock. Silicone this on the outside corner of the tank, I would do both front corners. Paint it the same color as the wood trim. On the inside, add extra silicone around the chip area. I would embed some fiberglass drywall tape into the silicone. Then cut a small piece of the aluminum and stick into the corner chip area. Cover it with more silicone. If you tape it off to get clean lines and use black silicone, it should look OK. After you repaired the tank, find a place where it cannot cause any damage and fill it up. Let it set for a month or two. Don't give up, you may be able to salvage this tank! Come on, you "repaired my hydronic heat system that could actually explode my house", you can fix this tank! This is an old school tank, adding corner frames kind of fits the tank. On sumps, I show you mine if you do the same 🙂 I am not an expert on sump, if I was I would not have to keep rebuilding them 🙂 But I can help on what not to do with sumps. I will post a video of this sump running tomorrow. You can do this!!!

Tetra will well known in the USA for food, air pumps and Whisper HOB filters. I can't find the Tetra 700 ex for sale in the USA, looks like a nice filter. Tetra been in business for a long time.

OASE Filtosmart Thermo 200 should be 160€, that should be plenty big enough for a 17 gallon tank. But I agree, Oase seem a bit overpriced.

In the US, the OASE Indoor Aquatics Filtosmart Thermo 100 is $110, the Fluval 107 is $124. No clue concerning a performance comparison. Edit: With a canister filter, you have a long intake tube in the tank. Would putting a heater next to the tube be a big deal?

How about Odessa Barbs? Nice color and mine are more hyper than the Tiger Barbs. The ones I got from Aqua Huna are coloring up much better than the PetCo ones I got a few years ago.

I agree with the comments above, alot of these cute little fish we have evolved in the protected areas of waterways. In the open waters, they may quickly become lunch for a large predator. I understand the negative views on plastic/fake plants but your fish may prefer having them over open waters. I suggest buying some to create a protective area in one corner of the tank while you grow real plants in the other corner. I bought these plants, they created a nice jungle in the corner.

So your original plan was an aquarium with a built in internal filter, change in plans? Here is a link to Aquarium Science, nylon scrub pads are highly rated for bio-media. Seachem's Matrix is quite popular for canister filters but this web site has it rated low. In a brain dead moment, I fell prey to Seachem's marketing hype and was going to use Matix in my sump filter, I switched to K1 media. Personally I separate mechanical and bio filtering. My logic, I do not want to worry about killing off the bacteria in the mechanical filter media. I use filter socks and 100 micron felt pads which are cleaned in a washing machine. So if I own a canister filter, I want the ability to clean the foam pads with hot water if needed and would use care in handling the bio-media. I would use nylon scrub pads.

That would depend on what filter you are using in your main tank. But the first option I would consider, just use the spare canister filter as a secondary filter on your big discus tank. When needed, just move it to your quarantine tank. If you are using a canister filter on the discus tank, add extra bio-media which can be transferred to the spare canister filter when needed. Nylon scrub pads would work. You could also bury a bag of bio-media (ceramic rings, matrix, etc) in the Discus tank substrate but I am not sure how effective this would be. When buying fish, you do have some time to setup a quarantine tank. When I set mine up for new fish purchases, I add a small dose of ammonia to make sure the biomedia is ready for fish.

Typically a quarantine tank is setup only when needed and many just use a cycled sponge filter from another tank. I always keep a sponge filter ready to use in my sump. So if you need to quickly setup a quarantine tank with the canister filter, what are you going to use for the bio media? Not complicated but you need a plan.

If using the canister filter from the ebay listing, how are you going to bio media cycled for when you set it up? A quarantine tank may have to be setup quickly.

As someone else wisely pointed out, overfeeding the fish is the major source of ammonia for new tanks.

Test the water daily and wait until the pH stabilizes. This may be a problem if you need to age your water a couple days and you want to do daily water changes. You may need 2 garbage cans/barrels.

I own a Tidal 75. The basic problem with these filter is water bypass. As the sponge filter collects crap, the less porous it becomes. On the Tidal, the water will bypass the filter and go around the basket. I think this is a common problem with all HOB filter, some filter are better dealing with this. I even had this problem with a sump filters. Simple put, water will take the path of least resistance. Canisters filters use pressure to force the water thru the media. In a well designed canister, there is no possible bypass for the water. One issue I see for canister, people tend to clean them once a month or longer. This means organic material is broken down inside the filter and ends up as nitrates. With my sump filter, I have to replace the filter socks every week or two as the water will start to overflow. I am removing organic material before it is breaks down. But nitrates is not a big deal, just do water changes. I bought the Tidal 75 in an emergency, my 75 gallon tank had a slow leak and I needed another filter. My original plan was to use the Tidal on a 40 gallon tank but instead, I built a sump filter for it. I ended up connect to the Tidal 75 to an undergravel filter on a 29 gallon tank, I love it so far. The Tidal is mounted on the side. For 7€, I would get the 207.

LOL, parents can be so restrictive at times. So can you put a barrel on the second floor near the tank? Do you have an outside tap (faucet)? You could just take a hose, toss it out the window and connect to an outside tap. More work but still reasonable easy. An outside tap should be before the water softener. When I do a water change, I just toss and hose out the window and drain the water into the lawn.