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New 6ft frontosa tank build

18K views 39 replies 12 participants last post by  JimSparks 
#1 ·
Well as of today I have a new home for my frontosa here now. Currently sitting in the utility room till I get the spot in the office cleared and ready for it. First off a pic of the tank...

6ft x 18 x 23 (125-130g'ish)



Here's the plans for where it will be going....



Basically that back wall is a fake wall that is about 12" out in front of the actual back wall. The back wall behind it has 12" deep shelves built into it. So plans are to remove the fake front wall, tear out the shelves, then that will make it so the tank will fit back into the wall and will only stick out from the wall by about 6". Then I'll be rebuilding the wall around it so it is built in and have the top part of the wall hinged for tank work. Like all my builds this one will have a 3d background in it. Looking forward to doing this 6ft background. Lots of area to play with.
 
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#27 ·
Thanks, I had black sand in mind for this build the entire way through right up till the last minute then changed my mind to the tan. Now I'm glad I did, I like black in the current frontosa tank I have, but I think the blues and black of the fronts will look really nice in this set up now. The brand I use for the sand is Quikrete and it's the Premium Play sand which is pre-washed. That one doesn't require any washing at all. About 2 years ago I used another brand play sand (can't remember now what it was) and it was really cloudy even after a few days. So long as you go with the Quikrete pre-washed you'll be fine. I paid about $2.50 per 50lb bag at Lowes.
 
#28 ·
Man, that is a good looking tank! You have mad DIY skillz. I love the custom painted slate to match the bg. This is your best background to date, imo. I was never totally sold on the ones you did with the cold fusion lights, so I like that you have similar holes in this one, but they stay dark (or at least have so far in the pics). Gives the whole tank some nice depth of field. Really well done. Looking forward to seeing the Fronts in it.
 
#29 ·








3 months of work building the 6ft tank for the Frontosa finally comes to a rewarding end tonight, now I can enjoy it. Just finished filling with water, moving the FX5 over, bringing up to temp and moving my fronts over into it. I'm happy with how this tank build turned out, and think my fronts seem pretty happy now as well!
 
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#31 ·






Added some DIY moonlighting to the frontosa tank so now all the tanks have moonlights. Nice way to sit back and watch the fish after a long day working on.
 
#34 ·


Added some more branches and couple more rocks to the frontosa tank today. Think I have it pretty much how I want it now.
 
#36 ·
Sorry it took awhile to reply, I don't get on this site quite as much as I use too. Here's some updated pics. No major algae growth yet because I like to keep it pretty clean with weekly WC's and such, but there's some small amount growing here & there. Fronts are all doing very good and healthy. I've added a few other fish to the tank as well over the past couple months. A really nice clean Lelupi, a nice goldface comp, a king tiger pleco and a male albin bnp. Also added a couple blue CFL spot lights to highlight the blues in the fronts a bit more.











 
#37 ·
Been close to a year since this tank has been up and running so figured I'd do a bit of an update on this one. Seems my group of 5 male fronts ended up actually being 4 males and 1 female, because they ended up spawning and I now have five 3 month old 2" frontosa in the tank. Also just goes to show that you can't always go by the "rules" of fish keeping because most people (myself included) would say 4 males would kill a single female, but that's not the case with this tank. The 12" Alpha male spawned with the single female and the other males leave him & her alone. All the fronts leave the smaller juvies and smaller fish in the tank alone as well.

I have been growing out some other Tanganyika species as well for this tank. Have around 12 Leelupi that I have been growing out as well as a half dozen yellow face comps. As of now 3 of the comps are big enough and in the tank, and five of the Leleupi are big enough and in the tank as well.

Overall for the past year everything has gone extremely well on this tank. Able to stick with 50% wc every 3 weeks with the FX5 filtering the tank. Fish have all been happy & healthy, now have about half doze smaller fronts in there growing up with them so will end up with around 10-11 fronts once full grown and will probably keep a few so I have a total of about 8 in this tank once full grown.

Some latest pics...








 
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