55g School Tank Rebuild

[Helios]

Thought I'd make a thread on the epic adventure I'm about to take today. I think I've attached the photo of what the tank currently looks like. My plan for this tank/today:

-move the tank into my classroom so I can maintain it
-change out the substrate. It's currently crushed shell? But the chunks are bigger then regular gravel so I'm changing it to sand.
-upgrade lighting for 1 flickering 36inch tube to a 48inch LED
-increase and upgrade the filtration
-add a functioning heater
-take out the broken clay pots and lava rock and rescape with stacked river rock
-replace the background
-CLEAN the tank

Hopefully I don't encounter too many issues. I'll post pics as I get stuff done/need a break.

 

[Helios]

Not sure why only that pic came through but here's the tank.

 

[nightswake]

Pretty awesome wish i had a teacher with a fish tank growing up

Sent from my SGH-I337M using Aquarium Advice mobile app

 

[Helios]

Empty, clean and ready to head to the new room. I'll clean the outer glass once I get it downstairs. There was like 2 years worth of poop in it. I'm guessing the current person in charge of it never cleaned it. It was so gross but looking better.

 

[nightswake]

Thats alot of poo!!!
Its looking good helios cant wait to see how it turns out

Sent from my SGH-I337M using Aquarium Advice mobile app

 

[Helios]

Vinegar/water towel wrap in an attempt to get the calcium smears off the glass. Yeah chemical peel. Hope this works because I'm not sure what else to try.

And the table full of rocks I washed yesterday.

 

[Helios]

I do have a question for anyone reading this. Blue or black background? You can see the rocks in the previous post and the substrate is basic pool filter sand. Thoughts?

 

[rcsguy]

I'm a fan of black backgrounds. Blue could look a little tacky

 

[Helios]

After hours of stacking and restacking, this is what it's going to be for now. I like it but don't love it. I'm starting to run out of gas on this project.

 

[Helios]

Tank is done for today. I still don't like the rocks. There aren't a ton of spaces for them to hide because they are all so big. How do I fix this without it looking super fake? At least it is clean. The filter on the right has a knocking so I'll need to pull it apart and fix it at some point tomorrow. I honestly have no idea what the fish are so if anyone could let me know that would be great. It's been a long day.

Let me know what You guys think.

 

[Helios]

Not sure why it's only letting me do one pic at a time but here are the fish up close

 

[Helios]

Similar to the other but slightly different colors

 

[Helios]

Pic of 3 of the fish

 

[Helios]

Last yellow one. Also I feel like there should be more fish in here. If I get 10ish juveniles and put them in, will they be fine or get eaten?

 

[nightswake]

For helping with the rock stacking try n find some flat rocks to make caves with they really help

Sent from my SGH-I337M using Aquarium Advice mobile app

 

[Helios]

Rescaped the tank today. I still don't love it but I like it better. I basically just stacked things thinking about the size of each fish and making sure there was at least one gap big enough for him. The fish seem to like it better too. They seem much calmer now that there are places to hide.