madmark285

OK, stupid question time... I going to spray a bunch of Great stuff foam and set a large 10# rock on top of it. So when the tank is filled with water, that should reduce the load on the bottom of the tank ie: the effective weight of the rock may be 7#. Of course too much foam and the rock will now float. This is for my Mbuna tank I am building (75 gallon), the entire bottom will be large rocks. It will be a total of 100-150# of rocks. Am I missing something here? Here is my work in progress

Of course this is the best way to stock your tank. But this doesn't always work when buying fish online. Aqua Huna has reasonable shipping rates but these cost will add up if making multiple purchases. So my question is, how to prepare your tank for a initial big purchase? You can buy a big bottle of ammonia in a bottle and keep dosing your tank for an extended period. You can put food in the tank and let it rot away. My plan for a 75 gallon Mbuna tank, i have already started conditioning the K1 media (fluidized bed) in a 5 gallon bucket. Once the tank is set up, I will run it for a month or so before i buy the fish. Just before buying the fish, I will heavily dose the tank with ammonia. On a positive note, 20-24 juvenile Mbuna cichlids will have a much lower bio load than adults. So as the fish grow, so will the bacteria colonies. Good luck!

One more on cave structures. I see alot of tanks where people strategically stack up large rocks to make small caves. This is alot of rocks and finding the right combo of rocks which fit together can be frustrating. For my Mbuna tank, I will glue together a bunch of PVC condo and just use large rocks as a facade as shown below (work in progress). This rock wall will use foam between the rocks but for something more simple which just sit on the bottom of the tank may not require foam. To clean the condo, just remove the rock facade and stick a siphon hose in the condo.

If interested, I made some caves. Here is the link: Tiger Barbs on Strike! They demand a cave! My current project is 75 gallon Mbuna tank which will have ~24 caves (I call them condos). I made the condos from 4" thin wall PVC shown below. This condo is 4.5" wide, 2 3/4" tall. So I cut a small piece of pipe and put it in the oven at 210 degrees. I made a form using 2x4". So heat up the PC, slide it over the form and press down. To make one with a back on it, you could cut a 8" piece of pipe and make the form 4" long ie: 1/2 the length of the pipe. Just push the back of the pipe together while it is hot. Note: if you want a bunch of caves on the bottom of the tank, I would think about connect a piece of pipe to the back of the condo and connect it to the water return line from the sump. FYI, this is the form I made, the round edges are optional.

Not sure if a 37 gallon tank (20" W x 18" D x 24" H) is big enough for Mbuna cichlids but if you can build a rock wall with lots of caves built in it, the mbuna's will use the vertical space. The 56 gallon tank (30" W x 18" D x 34" H) would be a better option. What I see from pictures of Lake Malawi, mbunas are living in the crevices between huge boulders around the islands. So living in vertical space is somewhat natural for them.

Do you enjoy doing this kind of work? Personally I enjoy restoring hardwood floors, I find it very rewarding. Polish that tank up and it will look far better than a Aqueon glass tank, I love the curved corners on acrylic tanks.

The live rock may be dead rock by now but... can't you just re-establish the bacteria colonies in the rock? Not sure why buy any more.

I agree, Harbor freight sells a Compact Palm Polisher for $18.

A jig saw will cut the acrylic. I would cut a small section so you can use 2 18" waterproof light. The light should cover up the cut which may be ugly. The above light is 4 3/8" wide, you may not need a cover for the big openings.

I made 2 orders with Aqua Huna, 2 out of 15 Odessa died, 3 out of 12 Forktail Rainbow died (they were very young). The Panda cories, Hillstream loaches and tiger barbs were fine ie: no deaths. To quarantine freshwater fish, just setup up a temporary aquarium with a sponge filter and leave them in there for a month. Other may have better advice on how to medicate them if needed. If you just have 6 Tiger barbs, I would not use a quarantine tank. Edit: For my upcoming Mbuna tank (75 gallon) I am working on, I plan to make one big purchase of 20-24 juvenile Mbunas online. The selection locally is limited and expensive. The bio-filter will be well established using ammonia in a bottle.

Yes, they ship via priority mail and only charge $20 for shipping. I live in western New York, Aqua Huna is in Washington state. They dropped them off on Monday night at USPS, I got them on Wednesday. I bought 15 Odessa, 2 of them died. Mark

Odessa barbs! They are just as active as tigers, quite the frenzy at feeding time. I got some from Aqua Huna

The 40 Gallon breeder is nice as it has 18" depth, you can plant heavily in the back of the tank and still have plenty of open swimming space in front.

A quick look at the instruction manual, I found no references to bleeder valve and gauge to reduce strain on motor. But if you buy a pump which exceeds your needs and you restrict the output, that could be a problem. The operating pressure is 200mbar (2.9 psi). These are designed for septic tanks, ponds, etc where you want maximum air flow at all times. Adding a $12 low pressure air gauge may be a good investment. I would just manual bleed off air if needed. If using PVC pipe, the air gauge will cut threads in the pipe with the properly sized hole ie: simple to install.

Not sure if this helps but I did this for a non-pressurized connection: The hose is for portable water made from PVC, the pipe is 3/4" Sch 40. I just put a bunch of PVC glue inside the pipe and slide the hose thru it. To clean it up, I cut the end off then glued it to the elbow. The hose is Camco 25ft TastePURE Drinking Water Hose, it is a snug fit inside a 3/4" pipe.

No but I do get noises from the fluidized bed/air pump. I use the Herbie drain system which is quiet. On my sump, the sloped wall is only 5 inches wide which would have created a major waterfall. On your sump, this wall is ~12" wide and you may not need this feature. On my first sump: The water goes down thru the blue foam pad, this is another way to quiet things up as it eliminates the waterfall. I should have used scrub pads instead of the blue foam. Your sump design looks good.

Understood. Another factor, you buy the K1 media by the gallon. So it comes down to, do I need 2 or 3 gallons of the stuff. So if I use 3 gallons of K1 media in a 29 gallon sump, my fluidized bed chamber would be 12"x12"x8". That seems small compared to the sumps on youtube. But on the other hand, many of the youtube sumps seem to be an overkill. For example, we have this: So does any ammonia reach the fluidized bed? That's alot of ceramic rings. So for my planned 75 gallon tank with ~20-24 Mbunas, I plan on using 3 gallons of K1 media and a secondary bio filter using plastic scrub pads. I think that should be enough. For mechanical filtration, I will use 4 14" filter socks. I read that the chamber should be 67% K1 media, I will go with 60% fill.

Yes I will.I was going to write a journal for my T-34 Sump but after I built it, I came up with a better way to make it. I am trying to design my sump filter which does not require a fully equipt shop ie compound miter and table saws, routers, etc....

Or you could put the refugium in the filter sock area. Edit: For the secondary bio filter, many here recommend using plastic scrub pad.

For my sumps, I put a large baffle seal to the bottom of the tank to control the water level. So on my sump shown below: The wall labeled T-34 controls the water height in the filter section of the sump ie: the water is always this height. As water evaporates, the water level in the reservoir section (where the return pump is located) drops. I want the reservoir section big as possible, this is where I do water changes. A significant amount of water flows back into my reservoir section when the pump is off shown below: It is ~3 inches between on&off (this is a 20 gallon tank). The reservoir section on my first sump was way too small, I could only go ~5 days before I had to add water due to evaporation. Note: microbubbles are not an issue with FW hence protein skimmers are very difficult to implement in FW. And about the heater in a coffin box, I put that in case I forget to unplug the heater when I do a water change. I can add cold water to the reservoir section and just let the heater warm up the water before I turn on the pump.

My first sump had 2 foam blocks in to shown below: Not sure why I have the fine foam block first but this was a disaster, too much water resistance. The water just overflow the foam blocks and went into the pump chamber. And I hated cleaning them. I give this sump a F for failed! Below is a screenshot of Cory's DIY Aquarium Sump Filter: Instead of the up/down water flow, he has the water flow horizontally thru the foam pads. He did not use filter socks. If you redo your walls and want quiet, slope your last wall to eliminate the waterfall into the pump section. I copied this idea from HOB filters, a water slide! My tiger barbs love sliding down it 🙂

I have 2 14" socks in my 40 gallon, I plan on using 4 14" socks for my 75 gallon tank. I may be able to go a couple weeks before washing! Then I remember the nitrates factory debates in the reefing world ie: all that organic material breaking down into ammonia->nitrites->nitrates.. I may have to rethink that one, remove organic waste before it breaks down. Yes, PVC is easy to work with and offer more options for sumps. I am struggling with K1 media dams forming at the exit weir. My solution, just drill a couple hundred holes in the wall section and let the water flow horizontally into the next chamber. That's easy with PVC, would be hard with glass. I screwed up and had to lower wall height using my sump tweaking tool 🙂 That made a big mess!

Sorry, I miss that line. Anyways, You could use silicone to attach the pipes to the bottom then drill some holes in the pipe so the water exits on the top of your 1st chamber. The just add ceramic rings or even gravel in that section for more bio filtration. Just an idea...

I was debating on making something similar to this using PVC trim material from Home Depot. For redundancy, it should have 2 siphon tubes just in case.

If your socks are going into the chamber on the left, I combined the filter socks and fluidized bed section by using 4" thin wall PVC pipe shown below: So the pipes protect the socks from the moving K1 media.