Tank upgrade

Yaaay :D , so ive paid and ordered the 2080's yesterday. Should be here in a week or so. The 780L tank should love these babies. Im on the home stretch (its slow when you take your time to do it right the first time) now and all i need next is the CO2 and substrate before i can plant and cycle the tank. WOOOOOO HOOOOOOOO.

I should be getting the Co2 when i pick up the filters. I have my car rego due though so i may have to prioritise...... YEAAAAH Co2! :roll:

Picked up my filters from xtreme on Sunday. These things are beasts. I took them straight home and placed them next to the 3ft tank holding my discus. I walked away only to return to my fish 'wolf whistling', calling out, shaking and struting their stuff up and down the tank. My hussey of a red melon even ducked across to her corner to pretty herself up a little before coming back for the biggest shakedown. Needless to say her partner was egging her on. Was a site to see. :P

Although my 2217 was a little intimidated, he held himself well with only a slight burp and a huff.

I didnt get time to pull them out of the box but will tonight. Will get some pictures of how they look.

congrats mate the 2080 is a real BEAST easilly the best filter I've ever owned, you wont be disapointed by it.

Thanks Jothy. :) They are pretty cool.

Here are some picks so far. I will get more shots of them hooked up tonight with the UV. It took me about an hour to unpack, clean the media and setup the two filters to be ready. I could have easily stretched this out as i was enjoying playing with these babies.

Under the tank shots.

SOOOO COOL!

:cheers Thanks mate. Its coming along nicely.

Took her for a test run last night. She loved it. She shimmers real nice. :lol:

Then i spotted a small slow leak between the Tail and the ball valve under the tank. Its the one i ran out of teflon tape with so its a simple fix. More teflon. Im also going to put some silicon around the PVC pipe going up to the bulkhead. Because the pipe is longish there will be some flex in the pipe when i shut off the ball valve. This could weaken the glue in the bulkhead even when i hold the ball valve with my spare hand, :?

The 2080's are niiiiiiiiiiiiiiice! :wave2

looking good mate, been keeping a close eye on this thread. im liking the looks of it.

Cheers AussieStar :cheers

Its ALIVE! Well sort of... :roll:

I added more teflon.... actually i added teflon. It didnt even have any on that tail. Then i siliconed all the PVC pipes going up to the bulkheads for more stability. Then i filled her up. It felt great. I was like a kid in a candy shop. Its the best hobby i have and really gives the most rewards.

I will run in the filters while i gather substrate and Co2. Then once i have that i will plant her out and let her idol for a few months while she establishes herself and i get some experiences with a high tech tank. At this time i will have some shrimp and a few other tanks mates like some cory's which will help maintain the tank.

The last and best bit will be stocking her with some Discus. Not only will they have a great tank but they will have some welcoming presents. Shrimp.

Im such a douche. I noticed some white slime/fungy on my driftwood so decided to put some meth blue in the tank. I now have blue sand and blue rocks. Oops. :oops:

Doh!!! :lol: :lol:

will they eat the shrimp?

Yep. Double Doh. Oh well. I figure it will fade out to probably a greyish colour. Could be a one off look. :lol:

Discus - eat shrimp? Does a dingo crap in the bush? :wink: If they can find them they will eat them.

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Im such a douche. I noticed some white slime/fungy on my driftwood so decided to put some meth blue in the tank. I now have blue sand and blue rocks. Oops.

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double oops. Did the blue fade or did you have to replace the sand?

It's all looking great.

Thanks

It hasnt faded yet :cry:

The rocks are blue. Will take them out and scrub them during the week. Cant have the fish trippin over that.

The sand - hmm well I swirled the sand in with the sand underneath to see if it will mix back to it was before. Bigger mistake. Instead of looking like smurf skin, it now looks like a sick smurfs skin. I should have taken the top layer out and replaced it.

To fix it i think i will try and replace some of the sand and mix it in. I think it may have a grey tinge but im okay with that. Lessons learnt!

You should share a pic of the smurf tank with, before you replace it. I'm very curious to see it.

Sorry to hear that has happened though. I have done some silly things in my time too. At least it is only rocks & sand that you hurt, and not disucs.

I will grab a pic tonight. :lol:

I want some live shrimp for my discus. What type are they?

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I want some live shrimp for my discus. What type are they?

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Serious? Its an expensive meal! :shock: Im looking at Glass shrimp or Amano shrimp for my tank. The purpose of them is (besides personal interest to keep them and watch them) is to help clean the tank of any algae while im learning to balance things out. Im not buying them for the discus but the tank will eventually house discus so they obviously come first and eat the shrimp.

if you search on these shrimp you will find some info. Good luck. :wink:

Hi Robyn,

Here are some pics. The camera phone doesnt show how blue it is but you can still see my stuff up. Mixing the sand helped but will still need to replace some sand.

last one

:lol: Sorry mate, but I am finding it hard not to laugh :lol: really, that is just such bad luck :)

Steve

HAHAHA no need to apologise. Laugh away. Im finding it funny now but at the time - when the water was dark blue and i noticed the sand was blue like a smurf - i was kicking myself.

I guess projects like these are accompanied with stupid stuff ups from time to time. Ive learnt my lesson. :lol:

:lol: Just add some blue diamonds .......sorted :wink:

Bwahahaha

Love it - thanks for being a good sport & posting the pics

No problemo :lol:

LMFAO That made my night dude !!!!!!

I'll tell you what I like ...and what I don't like about this tank seeing as I run big drilled tanks with Pro 3's

What I like ...pretty much everything except ..... I don't like the return coming up through the bottom. I run my through drilled holes at about 6" down from the surface and I run eheim diffusers on them.

Apart from that you have almost exactly the same set up as I use on my big tanks apart from me running 1 x 2180 and 1 x 2080 because I don't like heaters in the tank and I run a seperate 2217 for chemicals and UV.

Thanks for the feedback Taksan. :)

I too prefer not to see heaters in a tank. I may purchase an external heater to connect to the filters or hide the heaters behind plants once i have planted.

Its good to get feedback on plumbing layout as its my first setup. Do you think for flow, the return is better up high? Because the loc-line nozzle doesnt compress the water, flow is light. Water seems to easily get pushed around the tank though. And surface agitation is very very minimal. This could be a problem in the future (this could also work well with Co2 injection).

I made this rack on the weekend. Its based on Kinezo's post and was pretty fun building. Its to hold 2 x 3ft tanks and 1 x 2ft tank. The 2fter will go on top. I will be moving the tanks into the cupboard in the background so will only have the one big tank in the house.

Gonna paint it blue buddy ? :lol: :lol:

Steve :wink:

:lol: hahahaha, not on purpose!

I painted it white last night. :wink:

Yeh... white with a tinge of blue?

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Originally Posted by Matt15

Yeh... white with a tinge of blue?

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:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :roll:

The blue tinge 'highlights' will come in a week when i notice fungy growing on the stand. :twisted:

Death to Methylene Blue!

So i thought it's about time to post a little update. I wont post full pictures just yet as i will only do this when the tank is finished. (I've currently only finished the left hand side.

Im working on the riccia. I also have to finished the right hand side of the tank. I've got basic hard scape but haven't planted in and scaped that side yet.

The photo below is of the left hand side looking through the tank about 3 weeks ago. That male in front of the pigeon is 15cm's, just to give you a size idea. My trio are lovin the new tank but im in desperate need of more discus. I will be getting these as a present to myself when i get a new job.

I have removed one of the Jager heaters and replaced it with a ETH inline heater. So far its going great.

Current inhabitants include:

2 x Marlboros
1 x Pigeon
26 x cardinals
20 x rummies
4 x sterbai corys. (big fat buggers)
4 x ottos
2 x peppermints
2 x orange spots
1 x red cherry shrimp (an escape from Illusn's plec breeding tank which has managed to survive 3 weeks now)

Future inhabitants:

Maybe 10 more cardinals
Maybe 5 more rummys
More discus.

Im yet to determine whether i will sell my current three and go all wilds or:
* get several more red variations,
* get all blue variations
* get different colours and have a skittles outlook.

All up i want about 8 discus in the tank. That should stock the 780L (not including canister volume) nicely.

Opinions welcome!

ps. Notice the black line on the pigeon fin. This is where i trimmed the fin back to fix a massive tear. The fin grew back in about 3 weeks. The colour is slowly returning.