The slow 112G jungle tank build ...

[Harry Muscle]

It's looking like I've got several months to go still until I actually have plants in the tank, but I decided to start preparing. I figure it's going to cost several hundred dollars to fill the tank heavily with plants, so I've started growing some of them emersed. That way hopefully I can start with smaller cheaper portions. Or at the very least scratch the plant growing itch.

Here's what I setup today:

So far I have some fissidens moss, windolev java fern, and micro anubias. We'll see how this works out.

Thanks,
Harry

 

[unstopaBULLFish]

It's looking like I've got several months to go still until I actually have plants in the tank, but I decided to start preparing. I figure it's going to cost several hundred dollars to fill the tank heavily with plants, so I've started growing some of them emersed. That way hopefully I can start with smaller cheaper portions. Or at the very least scratch the plant growing itch.

Here's what I setup today:

So far I have some fissidens moss, windolev java fern, and micro anubias. We'll see how this works out.

Thanks,
Harry

What lighting? How much do your spray? What dirt and how much? Did you see my earlier reply to your question?


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[brennae]

Yes tell us more about this emersed set up please

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[Harry Muscle]

What lighting? How much do your spray? What dirt and how much? Did you see my earlier reply to your question?


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It's nothing fancy at the moment. I setup two plastic shoe boxes (I'll add more soon hopefully) with an old desk lamp running a 13W compact fluorescent bulb at 3500k. I also have two grow lamps I used at one point as lighting for a 5G nano tank. Each of these lamps is running a 9W power compact bulb. All the light is on a timer for 14hrs on, 10hrs off.

I'm trying this with plants I got for free and all of them don't require soil, so I'm not using any soil yet. I have the fissidens moss attached to a few small pieces of drift wood sitting in about 1/2" of water. The micro anubias and windolev ferns are attached to strips of cut slate, also sitting in about 1/2" of water.

I'm gonna be misting once a day and I've added some fertilizer to the misting bottle (10G worth of Tom Barr's non CO2 fertilizer recommendation).

We'll see how things turn out soon.

Thanks,
Harry

 

[Harry Muscle]

It's finally here:

Now let's hope there are no issues once I unbox everything

Thanks,
Harry

 

[Nils]

Yay! Can't wait to see it up and running!

 

[unstopaBULLFish]

Yay! Can't wait to see it up and running!

+1


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[Harry Muscle]

So far so good with unpacking everything. Here's a quick shot of where the tank is going to end up:

Thanks,
Harry

 

[brennae]

Hey that looks good! Can't wait to see the stand!

Brenna

 

[Harry Muscle]

My Miracles Aquariums issues seem to continue ... instead if reposting please see this thread for this particular issue.

http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forums/showthread.php?t=344684

Thanks,
Harry

 

[Harry Muscle]

My Miracles Aquariums issues seem to continue ... instead if reposting please see this thread for this particular issue.

http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forums/showthread.php?t=344684

Thanks,
Harry

The solution that I decided to go with was to get strips of wood to go underneath the tank trim and sand the strips down to compensate for the hump.

I keep forgetting to take better pictures while I'm working on this, but here's what I bought to fix the problem:

The strips are teak wood which does great around water and won't require any coat to provide protection. They are just a little over 1/4" tall and a little less than 2" wide.

I'm almost done sanding the pieces to compensate for the hump and a few other minor irregularities in the stand top. There where a few spots that needed filler, so I used water proof wood glue to provide the extra depth where needed.

I've also ordered neoprene rubber strips that will go in between the teak strips and stand top (overkill probably, but I like overkill).

Thanks,
Harry

 

[Harry Muscle]

I've been working on assembling the strips of wood that will go on top of the stand. I just finished gluing in the last piece. It will require a bit of sanding to sit better once the glue dries, but it's almost done.

I've also expanded my grow operation. It now includes Ranunculus Inundatus which is doing great already.

Thanks,
Harry

 

[Harry Muscle]

I've been expanding my grow operation a bit more. Here's what it looks like now:

I added a Lagenandra meeboldii 'Red' plant today and some pygmy chain sword (Echinodorus tenellus or Helanthium tenellum):

Here's what the rest of the containers look like:

Thanks,
Harry

 

[Nils]

Looks good! Never heard or seen of that Lagenandra meeboldii 'Red' before. Looks good though! Are all the plants growing good for you?

 

[fishenthusiast]

Cool, man! I'm looking forward to seeing the progression of this build.


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[Harry Muscle]

My plan to use neoprene rubber strips between the strips of teak and the stand didn't work out as expected. The rubber wasn't as "perfect" as I'd like it to be and the glue on back of the rubber was very gunky which added more imperfections to the finished product that it fixed. Fortunately I realized this early on and only had to deal with removing glue residue from one section.

So I've spent the last week or so trying to find a replacement product to use to go between the teak strips and stand. Standard styrofoam is not an option cause I've read that it can retain water and eventually lead to mold issues. The denser foams available at home renovation places turned out to be too dense. I've used flooring under-padding with great success in the past (unfortunately my go to under-padding has been discontinued since). So I took an afternoon and drove around to local flooring places checking out what they have available. I found a pretty good product as Lumber Liquidators that's normally used under luxury vinyl tiles (LVT Underlayment 100 Sq Ft - Tranquility | Lumber Liquidators). It's 100% polyurethane foam and about 1/16" thick. Normally I'd want something thicker, but I've already taken care of the "larger" imperfections with the teak strips. I got a sample and ran some compression tests on it to make sure it won't compress to nothing under the load of the tank (which based on my calculations will be less than 8 PSI ... quite low).

So hopefully tomorrow I'll be getting a roll of this stuff (too bad they don't sell it by the foot) and cutting it to size. That means that hopefully on the weekend the tank will finally end up on the stand.

Thanks,
Harry

 

[Harry Muscle]

The foam got cut today that will go between the teak strips and the top of the stand. Here's a quick shot of the cutting.

I did the cutting on top of two joined sheets of MDF board and I used double sided tape between the strips and the foam to keep the foam from slipping as I cut around the strips.

Here's what the final product looks like on the stand.

In case anyone is as nerdy about this stuff as I am, here's the specs for the foam I used.

This weekend the tank should finally be on the stand, yay.

Thanks,
Harry

 

[Harry Muscle]

Here's how you get a 200+ lb tank onto a stand when all your friends have bad backs and you have to do it on your own.

First find something roughly the same height as the stand. In my case this was an old small Ikea dining table. Put a towel on top and pad one edge real well with more towels.

Next lift one edge onto the table, change sides and lift the other edge and slide it onto the table.

Get your stand ready.

Position the table behind the stand.

Slice the tank across from the table onto the stand.

And finally slide the stand into place ... more or less.

And that's how I finally got my tank onto the stand. It's finally starting to look like a tank project. Yay.

Thanks,
Harry

 

[fishenthusiast]

Here's how you get a 200+ lb tank onto a stand when all your friends have bad backs and you have to do it on your own.

First find something roughly the same height as the stand. In my case this was an old small Ikea dining table. Put a towel on top and pad one edge real well with more towels.

Next lift one edge onto the table, change sides and lift the other edge and slide it onto the table.

Get your stand ready.

Position the table behind the stand.

Slice the tank across from the table onto the stand.

And finally slide the stand into place ... more or less.

And that's how I finally got my tank onto the stand. It's finally starting to look like a tank project. Yay.

Thanks,
Harry

Awesome! What types of plants are you going to have in the tank?


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[Nils]

Woohoo! I couldn't do that for fear of dropping the tank!