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Calzone's new 120x60x45 optiwhite tank build

C

Calzone

Member
Joined
25 Jan 2011
Messages
207
Location
Surrey
My Xmas pressie this year was the opportunity to upgrade the current 60l planted tank to a new 120-H optiwhite.  Some step up but am very excited about it, though probably not as much as the fish!

I've learned a lot from the expertise on this forum and the many excellent and inspiring tank journals so I thought i'd make a modest contribution myself.  I expect there'll be some nice mistakes along the way which hopefully will get sorted and just might save someone else the trouble later...

Right: the specs

Tank:  120x60x45 (LxHxD) optiwhite tank from The Green Machine, approx 320l.
Cabinet: grey ADA style modern look cabinet also from TGM (with matting, and holes cut for filter pipes and electrical sockets)
Filter: Eheim 2180 thermofilter, with eheim filter media pack, plus sera siporax and seachem matrix.  May upgrade to lily pipes later once I've got a handle on flow etc.  will also move the existing allpondsolutions 1000EF filter over to it later for the extra flow and bio capacity.
Lights: Arcadia OT2 4x54w T5 luminaire, probably on just 2 bulbs to start
CO2: TMC v2 pro regulator, fire extinguisher, Aquamedic AM1000 external reactor with scrunchy inside
Substrate: ADA powersand special, ADA Aquasoil Amazonia New and powder, penac p and tourmaline, Nile Sand
Hardscape: red moor root and TGM Blue Stone

Plants and livestock - to be decided

The tank and cabinet were delivered just before Xmas after only about a 2-3 week wait.  Awesome service from Jim and everyone at TGM with advice, chat, and mock up aquascapes to help choose the wood and rock pieces remotely.  They sat in the garage looking huge until after Xmas, when the wife and I shifted them into the new location in the lounge.  Ok, so I'll admit, this tank is so much bigger in the flesh than it looked when measuring it out.  It will have a huge impact visually, so no pressure to get it right there then!!

I soaked the wood for 3 weeks in the bath first, then put together the hard scape.  More on that next, when I work out how to upload photos via photo bucket.....

Calzone
 
wow... dream tank! all i can say is take your time with the hardscape and scaping planning and post a ton of pictures...

and photobucket is easy just register>>upload pictures from "album options" at the top right>>go to album>>hover over your uploaded pic>>bring your curser over the IMG code and click>>ctrl-v on your post and you're done

good luck and following :D
 
Ha! That made me laugh (though am a bit p@ssed this evening...)!!!

Will try and post pics tomorrow, though I think have picked the darkest corner of my living room for this tank and it's so huge need a wide angle lens to take it all in and still get reasonable detail on the hardscape. So pics not at the mark Evans standard!!

Question: if I have white fluffy stuff growing on my wood with nothing added to the tank and no lights, is this most likely some kind of wood fungus, or algae? And will it give up the ghost at some point. Or do I need to do something?
 
Redmoor wood often gives off a fungus, I just leave it and it clears up after about 4-7 days, generally it's nothing to worry about if you've bought it from a reputable retailer, like TGM.
 
I figured the fungus wasn't much to be worried about, and as long as its not poisonous to livestock it will clear up . The wood was from TGM and was in good shape when it arrived, there's no soft bits.
Tank is currently cycling with substrate and wood, but obviously no livestock or plants yet. Am following TGM Jim's recommendation to put the plants in after the ADA Aquasoil ammonia spike has cleared up a bit. The idea being to minimise algae and PWC effort in the early days, as you don't have any lights on.

Test kit showing 4-5 ppm NH3, 1-2 ppm nitrite currently after about 11 days and only 2 50% water changes. No sign of alga (well, possibly a tiny bit of brown diatoms on the glass).
 
OK, some pics. First up, the corner of the lounge where the tank is going to go, with the old 60l outgoing overgrown jungle tank still there (only plug sockets around...) while the new one matures.

img7141d.jpg


Next up, the new tank ad cabinet in place, after a seriously challenging traipse through the house carrying a very heavy and large tank, and discovering that placing a tank of this size on top of a high cabinet in a corner is actually way more challenging than you'd think....

img7142r.jpg


Close up of the tank and cabinet, with one bag each Nile sand and powersand special:
img7144u.jpg


Here with the sand in, using cardboard to keep it in place. NExt time I'd spend more time fixing this cardboard in place, as it didn't do the best job segregating the sand from the aquasoil.... At the top a small amount of sphagnum moss peat I had left over which went in as a base layer.

img7149e.jpg


And finally, my quick sketch of the intended hardscape, followed by the mockup put together by Jim at TGM in his sandbox to show the potential wood pieces.

img7150x.jpg


photomczn.jpg


The "two island" soil and sand in place:
img7151q.jpg
 
Quick question regarding posting photos. I followed the advice the technical part of the forum, and am using imageshack. But my photos appear to only be thumbnails, whereas other posters when you click the photo you get a much larger popup. I figure I must be using the wrong URL link in between the IMG tags. The syntax I've used looks like this (minus the round brackets of course):
(.
img7141d.th.jpg
)

This was from the "clickable thumbnails" link for forums. I tried the other URL They showed but got nothing. The link in the "DIRECT" box looks more or less the same, with the exception of the .th.jpg extension. Maybe that's the difference? Will try it.
 
Time for a few more pics. Some of them are a bit dark due to the lack of ambient light in that corner of the living room and the fact I havent set up my lights yet.

MY objective is to create a 'scape that looks good as per the Nature Aquarium approach, but focuses on the fish. I'm aiming for two hilly islands separated by a sandy "riverbed" area,so that I have two triangular areas leading the eye down to the "riverbed" located at the "golden ratio" point (am definitely learning on this site!!). I'm aiming for a decent amount of wood as the dominant hardscape, supplemented by some nice, smaller pieces of rock to soften things a try to make it look a bit more natural (though no doubt the rocks and wood are never found together in nature!!).

Here's where I ended up after jiggling around the 4 pieces of wood for a while:
img7156bx.jpg


Close up on the left:
img7157l.jpg


And on the right:
img7158f.jpg
 
Calzone said:
Ok - tried that and changed it and got the bigger photos. How do I get thumbnails in the post that turn into pop up full size pics when clicked?
Click to expand...

Nah dont do that. We all have broadband, its easier and nicer to see 800x600 images from the outset, LOL.

The tank is starting to take shape. Hope you got some good steps for that tall monster ! Like the contrast of aquasoil and sand. Its something I have been toying with and after seeing a couple today, plus yours, I have decided to go for it too.
 
I thought it would be good to put up a few pics of some of the equipment, partly cos I'm a bit geeky and like that sort of thing, and partly because there may well be a good few people thinking of buying new items for whom these journals can be useful.

The filter: I went for the Eheim 2180 Pro3 thermofilter, can also be called the 1200XLT according to the box. It maxes at about 1750lph, holds the best part of 25litres water and 12l media, plus prefilter. I will need the flow in this tank, and I prefer well stocked tanks so the media capacity is a bonus. Plus, it has two inlet and one outlet, which might help get a decent flow pattern in the tank. And finally, it has a built in 500w heater, taking another item out of the tank. Downside: the price. Not too many on discount....... Not had an Eheim before but their reputation precedes them.

I knew this thing was going to be big, but I confess I wasn't entirely prepared for the enormousness of the box. I had a moment of panic, worrying whether it would fit in the cabinet (75cm high, but with a false floor meaning usable height inside more like 65cm), and as you'll see, its snug with the pipes coming out at the top. They aren't kinked as such, but the bend in the pipes is such that the profile is flattened into an oval rather than a circle. Probably not much of a flow restriction, compared to the head height, CO2 reactor etc.

Here you can see the filter boxed up, with the media pack, some seachem matrix and sera siporax. Looks like the kit was direct from Germany given it came with a plug adapter (thoughtfully colour matched!!). As an aside, why is it cheaper to ship direct from germany??
img7029c.jpg

Close up of the filter box:
img7030j.jpg


Close up of the top of the filter itself, showing the 3 pipe system, the temp control screen, and the flow indicator (little green triangles). The entire pipe attachment section locks and comes out, which is a godsend as without it would be almost impossible to clean this filter without half flooding the cabinet...
img7035g.jpg


The bits:
http://img853.imageshack.us/img853/6717/img7036q.jpg

That about 3m of hose (didn't measure exactly), and for this tank it was only just enough, literally. Easy enough to cut with a stanley knife (one shortcut on my part gave me a nice little nick on the finger....). The inlet pipes are huge, I would guess getting on for 60cm with the strainer attached. Clearly this is massive and its some kind of hard acrylic so wasn't that easy to cut down to size (plus no mention in the instructions, so I dithered for a while before sawing away - I would recommend a hacksaw as my plank saw wasn't the best tool for the job!!). Three massive baskets of 4l each, fairly sturdy, a long spray bar (about 45cm long so too long to fit in the tank along the short side). The spray bar attaches to the shepherds crook inlet using a piece of hose rather than slotting in directly. Not my favourite feature if I'm honest.

The Eheim media pack is huge, and contains 4 large bags of ehfimech, and 8 large bags of substratpro. This will fill the filter right to the brim. I put the ehfimech into the bottom tray, not quite to the top, then about half full of substratpro in the middle tray, with 1 litre of sera siporax on top (this comes in an open wire mesh which I left on). the top tray has some more substratpro with a 1inch thick layer of Matrix on top. The substratpro comes in the form of of rough spheres about 6-7mm in diameter. Ehfimech is hollow cylinders only about 7-8mm in diameter. Sera Siporax is again hollow cylinders about half an inch on all sides, and the matrix just looks like a bunch of porous stones averaging 1-2cm in size. I can see how the siporax would let good flow through it, but the substratpro really looks like it will resist flow. But pretty sure Eheim will have thought of that.
Bottom tray:
img7046ak.jpg

Middle tray:
img7045s.jpg

Top tray:
img7044mq.jpg

The final polishing wool and "lid":
img7047o.jpg

And finally, the prefilter, which is at the top but competely separated from the trays below. The water comes in through the two small holes, goes under the blue pad, up through it, then down the triangular overflow channel to the bottom, then up through the trays and back out to the impeller through the kidney shaped hole in the middle. Photo in the next post as imgshack playing up just this second....
 
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