I'll just leave this here.

(Not least because it's bloody heavy)

 

Second coat on. Duram black WB enamel is good stuff and it dries FAST. Two hours from now I'll klap another coat then leave overnight. Possibly (probably) one more coat needed in the morning. Please excuse the mess, it's my holiday roll M.O.



Fun fact: The French word couche - for coat (as in coat of paint) is the same word they use for nappy (as in baby).

 

5th and final coat is done. The back pane is is like polished obsidian from the front, I love it to bits. Here's a pic:





Final resting place decided upon. I had to play Furniture Tetris but it's a great spot and you immediately lay peepers when you walk into the room.




25x5mm neoprene self-tack weatherstripping all round (the top of the frame is ever-so-slightly-not-100%-square-and-level and it's the kind of thing that keeps me awake at night)





Top baseboard test fit. There is another that I will notch the corners of and that will go on the H-brace at the bottom for a shelf.

The pair were cut from a standard 2700x455x16 melamine shelf @Builders. My job for today is to woodfill, sand, prep and seal the cut edges - only the front has edging but I want it black anyway.




My DIY leveling feetses - a brobdinger M16 8.8 bolt (needs 24mm spanner), nylock nut, a FAT 45x5mm washer with 17mm ID. And a condom cut from 16/22 vinyl hose. The idea is to have the washer support the open end of the leg, while the condom keeps the whole lot centered nicely in the 25mm square section. I have PVC "pucks" (really a junction box lid doubled up) with another washer under the head of the bolt, this will hopefully protect the floor. Time will tell, it's gonna be at least 80Kg per leg. At least!



ONWARD!

 

This was an INSANE pita and took three people to get right.



The baseboard had also curved like a banana outside in the sun and the left edge is still sticky uppy and not touching the neoprene. I will have to let it settle overnight and slowly add a bucket or two of water daily over the coming days. There is no quick fix here.

Lesson 1 - don't rely on friction to keep your baseboard in place - styrofoam is grippy AF. Glue or screw your baseboard down onto the frame before you try and place the tank
Lesson 2 - keep melawood out of the sun if you value straight lines and a dry floor.

The irony is that the tank is DEAD LEVEL in all axes right this moment.



ETA: 6PM after a well deserved nap, and an experimental downward push, I can report that very little downward pressure is required to have that corner make contact with the neoprene. It's also just the one corner, so the styro is doing its job and making it look worse than it is with no extra weight. I can begin with media prep!

 

Well I didn't sleep as well as I could've. The physics of the stand itself was bothering me.

I have no idea who made the stand (the tank itself is a budget-ish Black Diamond Aquariums - "The Tank Factory" - affair), and I'm stupid for not having checked the thickness of the steel before setting everything in place. I will assume that it's engineered for profit and not long term robustness, that means 25x25x1.2mm mild steel.

With the help of Ye Olde Friendly Neighbourhood Tin Can Robot, I've discovered that the theoretical maximum center sag along the 1.2m span is around 18mm when the tank is full and filled with scape . That's a kiloparsec of sag as far as I'm concerned and while the sag will be miniscule in the beginning, time is merciless. I am determined to add center legs; this will reduce the sag by a factor of eight.

Even if it's 1.9mm steel, the theoretical beam sag is nearly 11mm. Way too much. As it is now, the bottom pane and silicone shear stress is supporting the frame, not the other way round. WTF they make these cheap, marginal stands is beyond me.

Luckily, in a previous life, I attempted to make a frame for the ADA, so I have suitable lengths of 25x1.9mm square section. Funny how life turns out...

 

Turns out the 25mm was actually 30mm... so had to go buy steel and a day wasted.

This was a major pita - welding thin wall tubing is a black art but it is done and I'm satisfied with the end result x2. It looks crooked but that's just me being overzealous with the flap disk.

 

Those are some seriously big catfish!

 

The LFS didn't have tiger sharks so I had to compromise.

 

Try and use plywood under the tank rather the Melamine swells in bumbs when it gets water then pushes up on the base.

Also adding a runner or a strip of glass on the front and back panel makes these std tanks last forever no deflection.

 

That was my first inclination too, but the plywood at builders was made from pine and had big knots everywhere, so I went for the melamine instead. I sealed the hell out of it and I think it will be okay long term if I'm fastidious.

Touch wood?

The tank has 20mm strips running lengthwise front and rear, but they're laid flat and so only act as bow-out support. But nevertheless I simply don't trust the stock setup. And it's already done so I can sleep easy. It does make leveling a lot trickier, though.



Rear one is waiting, I need to pop to builders today for another nut and bolt.

 

Halaw again! Thank you.

 

Feetses are in and feetsing!

This will be doing filtration duty - the "fat cousin" of the SF-1500F I have on the ADA. Disappointingly (and I only discovered this after I unboxed it ), the housing is identical to the SF-1500F and has the same internal volume. The only difference is the 9W UV element, the stronger pump and, um, a power switch on the housing. I am already mulling over making a pre- or postfilter for it just to get more media into the circuit. I had string algae problems in the ADA which were greatly reduced after I whacked the Penn-Plax on the back, so I'm dubious about the level of mechanical filtration available here. Time will tell if the UV makes up for it.






Le Stuff: Bonsai mix, diamond gravel and silica sand (around ~3mm) from my local nursery, and my secret weapon - unscented attapulgite clay kitteh litter. This brand is Thycor and it's the only litter I know of that is pure clay. What's not shown is acid compost. The mix is roughly 60% bonsai mix, 30% clay and 10% acid compost. It grows plants like crazy in the ADA but I plan to do something different so we'll see. The diamond gravel was an impulse buy and I might do away with the silica sand cap completely.






The Acid Test: The "diamond gravel" is a mix of 5-25mm pieces and it's incredibly attractive when clean and wet. I'm no rock anorak but I can see purple jasper and allsorts. And very little fizzing, just a bit here and there so I'm calling this a WIN.





The Plan: I bought 30x40cm nylon mesh bags from Temu, and 1.5mm mesh netting. There is the spectre of a move in the coming months so I am preparing for that now - the soil is going into the bags with the mesh wrapped around it to control the inevitable fines. But come moving day, all I need to do is remove any scape, catch feesh, uproot plants, drain, lift out the bags as-is, scoop out the gravel, move and reverse the order of operations in its new spot. It might turn into a mess but it's preferable to manually scooping out a layer of soil and sand/gravel that can't be reused as-is without a lot of work or simply dumping it. This is also why I am forgoing the sand cap and just going gravel - I have no interest in seeing the sand, nor separating it from the gravel.





ONWARD!

 

Mix mixed and spread out on the nylon mesh to dry out a bit overnight.



The trick with doing this is to get rid of anything that wants to float. I dumped 4 bags of bonsai mix (about an HTH bucket in total each), the whole bag of cat litter, and half a bag of acid compost into a big 2ft tub and ran the garden hose in it while stirring.

Everything that floats gets discarded, and it also gets rid of the worst of the clay dust.You do lose a fair amount of volume, but it's just bark chips and other junk that turns the water brown and won't feed the plants anyway.

Now I just hope the cats don't get any ablutionary ideas...

 

Bagged and meshed.



I don't have any more peli rock of the same colour or texture - the other rocks I have are a black quartzite - but also only two pieces. A tonne of southern joburg sandstoney dolomite stuff, but not the greatest fan.

Not sure whether I should forgo the rocks entirely and just do a Dutchie hybrid thing. It's already very heavy and the gravel still needs to go in.



I think I'll add the gravel and then decide.

 

Dutch it is!

And I already know what's going to happen. All this started through wanting a cheapy 3-footer because I wanted to grow more plants, and a greater variety. I ended up removing the hardscape from the ADA because of this exact reason, so I'm saving myself the trouble now

Now I babysit and hope physics is on my side.

 

Tank is filled, pump is pumping, first denizens are denizening and hoping for the water to clear. There's a tablespoon of 3:1:6 in there too and now the long wait begins.




It looks so sad. But just you wait! Unfortunately I only have 48W of PAR (if you can even call it that - it's a nightlight compared to the ADA light) but proper lighting has to wait until payday.

On the list so far:

Ludwigia glandulosa
Ludwigia arcuata
Ludwigia repens
Rotala rotundiflora "Green"
Rotala rotundifolia "Laos"
Rotala colorata
Hygrophila polysperma
Hygrophila difformis
Hygrophila corymbosa "Giant"
Proserpinaca palustris
Bacopa monnieri
Pogostemon stellatus "Octopus"
Alternathera reineckii "Mini"
A. reineckii "Rosanervig"
Cryptocoryne wendtii "Brown"
Anubias barteri "Petite"
Dwarf Water Lettuce
Hornwort
Java Fern
Java Moss

Sadly, my Riccardia didn't survive the SA infestation I mentioned earlier. Oh well.

Tomorrow the ADA is getting a haircut! We'll see how well the frags adapt in the fresh tank.

 

Looking less sad. It was the evening and the morning and it was the third day. I had to do a full water change yesterday morning because the initial overnight ammonia and TDS spike was BIBLICAL. At least 8ppm ammonia and over 500ppm TDS. The water is still cloudy from gravel/clay fines, but not looking too bad.



Sorry for the tiny pic, the forum is acting up again.

Currently ammonia is sitting at around 3-4ppm and ph ~7.5. Cmawn Mr and Mrs Nitrifier, git yer schwank on. I am already detecting nitrites... gotta love dirt.

 

One week in. 18 hour photoperiod and I'm fairly impressed by the plant growth but nothing major to report. Slight bacterial bloom.

 

Tank looking great !

Is that CO2 or O2 that youre pumping in there?