I have had a 45 gallon for several years now, and after I was finaly able to get all the fish and plants out of it I decided to do something special with it.
This wasn't the way it started though. I was going to empty it out for some gobies that I was really hoping to get. The deal feel though on my end, so I was sitting there with an empty tank in our living room. I had already sanded and restained the stand and built a new canopy for it. And seeing as how I had all the time I needed to work on the tank now, I though why not try my hand at a DIY background?
And so it began...
Here is what I had to work with:
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This was my second try at how I wanted not only the background, but how the stryo rocks on the tank bottom would look as well. I decided to do more than just a background because I thought it would help it all blend in better if parts jetted out into the tank as well.
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I didn't want the background to be flush aginst the backglass for a few reasons. Number one was the idea that the less points where it was siliconed that would create less area's for anerobic bacteria to gather. Number two is that I would be able to plumb as much as I wanted too and not worry how it would look if it was behind the background. So to get around this, I decided to see how well it would work by using three large styrofoam blocks on the back of the background, and silicone those to the back glass to help keep it down in addition to siliconing it to the bottom as well.
This is the spraybar and intake for the main filtration, which will be a Fluval 404 for now. I did several 'wet test' through out the progress with the different stages of the plumbing to get an idea of how it would all fit togeather in the end.
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The filter plumbing from the backside with the pump I've been using to test.
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In the photo above, you see another pipe with a ball valve on it on the right hand side. This is for water changes. I got the idea from Gruntfuttock when reading a post he said that he was able to preform water changes by just putting the hose behind the background, and the fish were none the wiser to what was going on. A big thank you for this idea. All I have to do is hook up the hose to the barb end below the tank, and turn on the ball valve (at least that how it will work once I get the syphon started). And then hook the python up to fill'er up.
I wanted a UGJ system in this tank as well. I went for three jets, and powering them will be a 700gph pump. You can also see in these photo's where the filter intake will pull from. This is the pipe above the bottom extending all the way to the sides of the tank.
The left side
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Right side
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Since the two jets at the back of the tank were going to be fairly well hidden by the background once in place, that left me with the front right jet being exposed. I used silicone and sand to help it blend in better once the sand goes in.
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This is an overall view of the plumbing as well as the pieces that will be on the bottom of the tank. At this point the styro on the bottom was allready siliconed into place.
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You can't tell it from the pictures so far, but the background does not go all the way to the end of the tank. There is about a 1.5-2.0 inch space on either side of the background. I sure don't need fish getting behind the background. If they did I would never be able to get them out when tring to catch them. So to help resolve this, I decided to take window screen, and silicone to the sides of the tank, and then silicone them to the back of the background. This will still allow good water flow to behind the background while keeping wondering fish out of there. I cut holes to allow the filter intakes to poke thought the screen.
This part was extreamly messy and smelly. Thinking back on it, I should have used a putty knife to spread out the silicone over the screen, but I didn't think of this at the time and used my fingers. I didn't think the stuff would ever come off of my hands. lol
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This is what it looks like with the background in place.
Right side
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Left side
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Here you can get a good view of the blocks I was talking about earlier as well some the water change pipe.
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Once I began to silicone the background into place I realized that it was not going to stay flush aginst the back on its own untill it set. So I used some large clamps to help keep it where it needed to be. I didn't put a lot of pressure on them, just enough to keep the background in place. I only had two of these clamps, and three blocks that had styrofoam and silicone, so to help keep even pressure on all of the blocks I did my best to place the clamps inbetween the blocks. I left the clamps on for a little over 48 hours before removing them.
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Here it is. The background on and in place. I put two photo's on here because you can see some things better with the flash, and some better without.
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Seeing as this point I was already over a month and a half into this, I didn't see any reason to slow down. I hadn't really have much thought to lighting. I got to thinking, why not setup a lighting system that better simulated the sun? By this I meen having multiple lights over tank, and each one comeing on, and going off at different times to simulate the rising of the sun, noon day sun, and then the setting of the sun. And to go along with the setting of the Sun, what tank wouldn't be complete without some moon light. I cheated on the moonlight and bought one for $10 off of ebay. Its an LED type, 24". I've never messed with any type of moonlight before, so if it doesn't work out on this tank I've not lost much.
I wanted to use 15" bulbs because I wanted to try and get the bulbs running the width of the tank as opposed to length wise as much as possible. They aren't a perfect fit, but better than 18". But to get them, I bought two 18" shoplights from Lowes, gutted them, and then fit them on the canopy to acomodate the 15" bulbs. The two other lights I borrowed from old strip lights I had. Right now I have regular endcaps, but once I see that the lighting is going to be enough and the way I like it, I will get waterproof endcaps. I will also get the plastic saftey sleves that go over the tubes incase one ever decideds to explode on me. There will be no glass cover over the water, so if I had a bulb break I would never be able to get all the glass out of the tank. The lack of the cover is also why I'm going to get the waterproof endcaps. (I'm going to use T-12 bulbs if anyone has 4 pair of WP endcaps they are looking to sell. :wink: )
On the bulbs: I'm going with T-12 because no place localy carries anything smaller in a 15", and only one place has the 12's. This way if a bulb burns out or something else happens to it I can just run down the street and pick one up. The T-12's or 8's really aren't an issue with the current endcaps because there is enough room for either, but once I get the waterproof endcaps I will be stuck with them.
All four ballasts will be mounted on the inside of the stand, and wires run to the top via a PVC pipe to make everything look more tidy. This is how I have the ballast's lined up:
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I just used the case from one of the 18" shoplights I had bought for this. See, I do like to recycle.
And this is the mess under the canopy. I may eventualy upgrade the ballast to the rapid start to get rid of the starters, but really it's not a big deal at this point, or at least I don't think it is.
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You can see that I did manage to leave enough slack in the wires to allow the canopy to be opened all the way, but not so much that they will get caught or snaged anywhere. I'm no electrician, but I did at least try to keep all my wires neat, and in a certian order. This way if I have a problem down the road with a ballast or anything, I know exactly which one to look at and what wires go to what. This is the rat's nest of wires comming out from the back of the canopy that will lead down to the bottom.
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My only real problem now is finding a good way to allow me to safely have the lights wired to the ballast, but still allow me to disconnect them and remove the canopy when I need too. I've talked some with our maintance supervisor at work and he sugested that I use a wireing harness and I may very well do that. I'm pretty much running with doing that, or using bullit connectors for them, but the harness would be safer.
I'm sure that I've left out some what's, why's and how's along the way here, so feel free to ask. Tring to get a couple months work into a single post I'm bound to have left some things out. lol Also if anyone has any sugestions on something I did that could be done better let me have them. I'm sure this isn't going to be the first and last one I do. So the more feedback I get, the better my next project will be.
Thanks for looking!
This wasn't the way it started though. I was going to empty it out for some gobies that I was really hoping to get. The deal feel though on my end, so I was sitting there with an empty tank in our living room. I had already sanded and restained the stand and built a new canopy for it. And seeing as how I had all the time I needed to work on the tank now, I though why not try my hand at a DIY background?
And so it began...
Here is what I had to work with:
This was my second try at how I wanted not only the background, but how the stryo rocks on the tank bottom would look as well. I decided to do more than just a background because I thought it would help it all blend in better if parts jetted out into the tank as well.
I didn't want the background to be flush aginst the backglass for a few reasons. Number one was the idea that the less points where it was siliconed that would create less area's for anerobic bacteria to gather. Number two is that I would be able to plumb as much as I wanted too and not worry how it would look if it was behind the background. So to get around this, I decided to see how well it would work by using three large styrofoam blocks on the back of the background, and silicone those to the back glass to help keep it down in addition to siliconing it to the bottom as well.
This is the spraybar and intake for the main filtration, which will be a Fluval 404 for now. I did several 'wet test' through out the progress with the different stages of the plumbing to get an idea of how it would all fit togeather in the end.
The filter plumbing from the backside with the pump I've been using to test.
In the photo above, you see another pipe with a ball valve on it on the right hand side. This is for water changes. I got the idea from Gruntfuttock when reading a post he said that he was able to preform water changes by just putting the hose behind the background, and the fish were none the wiser to what was going on. A big thank you for this idea. All I have to do is hook up the hose to the barb end below the tank, and turn on the ball valve (at least that how it will work once I get the syphon started). And then hook the python up to fill'er up.
I wanted a UGJ system in this tank as well. I went for three jets, and powering them will be a 700gph pump. You can also see in these photo's where the filter intake will pull from. This is the pipe above the bottom extending all the way to the sides of the tank.
The left side
Right side
Since the two jets at the back of the tank were going to be fairly well hidden by the background once in place, that left me with the front right jet being exposed. I used silicone and sand to help it blend in better once the sand goes in.
This is an overall view of the plumbing as well as the pieces that will be on the bottom of the tank. At this point the styro on the bottom was allready siliconed into place.
You can't tell it from the pictures so far, but the background does not go all the way to the end of the tank. There is about a 1.5-2.0 inch space on either side of the background. I sure don't need fish getting behind the background. If they did I would never be able to get them out when tring to catch them. So to help resolve this, I decided to take window screen, and silicone to the sides of the tank, and then silicone them to the back of the background. This will still allow good water flow to behind the background while keeping wondering fish out of there. I cut holes to allow the filter intakes to poke thought the screen.
This part was extreamly messy and smelly. Thinking back on it, I should have used a putty knife to spread out the silicone over the screen, but I didn't think of this at the time and used my fingers. I didn't think the stuff would ever come off of my hands. lol
This is what it looks like with the background in place.
Right side
Left side
Here you can get a good view of the blocks I was talking about earlier as well some the water change pipe.
Once I began to silicone the background into place I realized that it was not going to stay flush aginst the back on its own untill it set. So I used some large clamps to help keep it where it needed to be. I didn't put a lot of pressure on them, just enough to keep the background in place. I only had two of these clamps, and three blocks that had styrofoam and silicone, so to help keep even pressure on all of the blocks I did my best to place the clamps inbetween the blocks. I left the clamps on for a little over 48 hours before removing them.
Here it is. The background on and in place. I put two photo's on here because you can see some things better with the flash, and some better without.
Seeing as this point I was already over a month and a half into this, I didn't see any reason to slow down. I hadn't really have much thought to lighting. I got to thinking, why not setup a lighting system that better simulated the sun? By this I meen having multiple lights over tank, and each one comeing on, and going off at different times to simulate the rising of the sun, noon day sun, and then the setting of the sun. And to go along with the setting of the Sun, what tank wouldn't be complete without some moon light. I cheated on the moonlight and bought one for $10 off of ebay. Its an LED type, 24". I've never messed with any type of moonlight before, so if it doesn't work out on this tank I've not lost much.
I wanted to use 15" bulbs because I wanted to try and get the bulbs running the width of the tank as opposed to length wise as much as possible. They aren't a perfect fit, but better than 18". But to get them, I bought two 18" shoplights from Lowes, gutted them, and then fit them on the canopy to acomodate the 15" bulbs. The two other lights I borrowed from old strip lights I had. Right now I have regular endcaps, but once I see that the lighting is going to be enough and the way I like it, I will get waterproof endcaps. I will also get the plastic saftey sleves that go over the tubes incase one ever decideds to explode on me. There will be no glass cover over the water, so if I had a bulb break I would never be able to get all the glass out of the tank. The lack of the cover is also why I'm going to get the waterproof endcaps. (I'm going to use T-12 bulbs if anyone has 4 pair of WP endcaps they are looking to sell. :wink: )
On the bulbs: I'm going with T-12 because no place localy carries anything smaller in a 15", and only one place has the 12's. This way if a bulb burns out or something else happens to it I can just run down the street and pick one up. The T-12's or 8's really aren't an issue with the current endcaps because there is enough room for either, but once I get the waterproof endcaps I will be stuck with them.
All four ballasts will be mounted on the inside of the stand, and wires run to the top via a PVC pipe to make everything look more tidy. This is how I have the ballast's lined up:
I just used the case from one of the 18" shoplights I had bought for this. See, I do like to recycle.
And this is the mess under the canopy. I may eventualy upgrade the ballast to the rapid start to get rid of the starters, but really it's not a big deal at this point, or at least I don't think it is.
You can see that I did manage to leave enough slack in the wires to allow the canopy to be opened all the way, but not so much that they will get caught or snaged anywhere. I'm no electrician, but I did at least try to keep all my wires neat, and in a certian order. This way if I have a problem down the road with a ballast or anything, I know exactly which one to look at and what wires go to what. This is the rat's nest of wires comming out from the back of the canopy that will lead down to the bottom.
My only real problem now is finding a good way to allow me to safely have the lights wired to the ballast, but still allow me to disconnect them and remove the canopy when I need too. I've talked some with our maintance supervisor at work and he sugested that I use a wireing harness and I may very well do that. I'm pretty much running with doing that, or using bullit connectors for them, but the harness would be safer.
I'm sure that I've left out some what's, why's and how's along the way here, so feel free to ask. Tring to get a couple months work into a single post I'm bound to have left some things out. lol Also if anyone has any sugestions on something I did that could be done better let me have them. I'm sure this isn't going to be the first and last one I do.
So the more feedback I get, the better my next project will be.Thanks for looking!
