My Crustacean Station

[Shadow_Arbor]

I'm going to use this Journal to record the building of my fish rack (named by a friend as my Crustacean Station lol). Every tank on this rack will have it's separate Journal. I will include links at the end for each tanks Journal and will update accordingly.

BACKGROUND

I've been in the hobby for around four years now. I started off with a 250 liter planted tank, eventually adding a 100 liter planted tank that housed a ton of neocaradina and a single Procambarus clarkii.

Later that 100 liter tank would become a Super red Ancistrus, tiger endler, and mystery snail breeding tank. Around the same time I built myself a low boy, 30 liter, for Cambarellus Shufeldtii breeding. At this stage both the 100 liter and 30 liter (which was built to fit the stand exactly) are sitting on a heavy wooden shelving unit I bought, second hand, from someone who brought them to my country from Mexico (he had two, the second one is being used as a bookcase). I will include pictures of the entire stand a bit lower down in this post which will help this mess of a paragraph make sense. 

About 6 months ago, in the middle of the night, my 250 liter tank cracked and almost flooded my house. After cleaning up the mess and almost giving up on the hobby I decided to focus on small tanks, 60 liters and less.

 

Twin Aquariums

I replaced the 100 liter tank that had previously sat on top of the aforementioned shelving unit with two 60 liter tanks, custom built perfectly to size.

BEFORE:

 

AFTER:

The only tank with water in this picture is my 30 liter Cambarellus Shufeldtii and white Pomacea diffusa breeding tank. Here's a close up:

The aquarium on the top left is currently a high tech tank while the one on the right is my Super Red Ancistrus breeding tank. Both tanks are the same dimensions (L45, W34, H40 cm).

 

Up to date picture of both tanks:

Recently I've built a new 30 liter tank which will be used as a bare bottom tank for raising batches of Super Red Ancistrus fry from wrigglers too 4 cm long fish (selling size). This tank contains a piece of driftwood with tons of Anubias plants glued on for extra grazing area. Sadly the wood is still floating. I'll post a journal on how I built it in the future.

Here is how the entire racking system looks right now:

In the near future I will be adding two more tanks and redoing the existing Cambarellus tank. More on that in a future post, I hope to update you all soon!

 

Tank Journals:

High Tech tank (update coming soon I promise): 

Ancistrus tank (this isn't a journal on this tank, I"ll link the journal when I make it):

 

[Streetwise]

Nice stuff! You built your own tanks?

[aquachris]

beautiful.. love the tanks and squares of everything... makes my OCD smile LOL... except you got to balance your lower 2 shelves left side with more tanks 

[Shadow_Arbor]

9 hours ago, Streetwise said:

Nice stuff! You built your own tanks?

Yes, small tanks I feel comfortable building as I am using 6mm glass and glass bracing on the top. I'll need to find my calculations, but the safety factor is between 10-20 if I'm correct. Will make a journal about how I built them soon.

[Shadow_Arbor]

9 hours ago, aquachris said:

beautiful.. love the tanks and squares of everything... makes my OCD smile LOL... except you got to balance your lower 2 shelves left side with more tanks 

Yes, I agree, I've already got the glass for them, just need to find the time to build them.

[Andy's Fish Den]

Great looking setup you have going there, I like the name Crustacean Station. Your friend is pretty clever coming up with that!