Huma's 72g build

[huma-huma]

Ello everyone. I recently got my hands on a 72g bowfront setup free of charge.(score!!) all i had to do was take apart the stand to get it home. Only issues that come with the tank are that the center top frame brace is broken ( split right where it meets the back piece) and the tank/ stand is the unfortunate victim of pretty obvious neglect. (stand is water stained and banged up, tank trim is dirty and has stains on it.) The ultimate goal of this tank is to be a sw reef community thatll house all the cute lil fish that cant survive in my 125. But until then, its going to serve as a guppy heaven/breed out. I have a Marineland Penguin Emperor 400 that will take care of the filtering duties. I also have a 48" coralife dual bulb t5 light fixture. As for decorations, i have a handful of anarachis thats been growing in the current 10g guppy tank. Itll make the move over with everything else. Itll also be bare bottom for the foreseeable future. Yesterday i got the stand screwed back together. About an hour ago i got the center brace fixed and onto the stand. Now for tomorrows tasks, to secure the tank to the wall and level it. Hopefully if all goes well, itll be full of guppies tm night. Heres a few pics. I forgot to get pictures of the condition before cleaning and fixing it.

 

[huma-huma]

The rigged up center brace was how i got the tank. First pic was it sitting in my basement

 

[huma-huma]

tank is up and running! my attempt at fixing the center brace failed when i leaned a bit too much on it although i did get it fixed again, and this time its holding up great! went out today to Lowes and bought about 30-40 lbs of Pea Gravel. had to spend about 1.5 hours actually cleaning the gravel. i was pleasantly surprised by the variation of color in the gravel after cleaning it. it now is in the tank and im currently running 2 filters packed full of carbon to help rid the tank of the cloudiness. heres some pics to prove it all happened

gravel BEFORE cleaning

Gravel AFTER cleaning

 

[Josie]

tank is up and running! my attempt at fixing the center brace failed when i leaned a bit too much on it although i did get it fixed again, and this time its holding up great! went out today to Lowes and bought about 30-40 lbs of Pea Gravel. had to spend about 1.5 hours actually cleaning the gravel. i was pleasantly surprised by the variation of color in the gravel after cleaning it. it now is in the tank and im currently running 2 filters packed full of carbon to help rid the tank of the cloudiness. heres some pics to prove it all happened

gravel BEFORE cleaning

Gravel AFTER cleaning

Rock on! I notice on Craigslist lots of people trying to get rid of fish tanks: I thought I couldn't afford a big one, but maybe I could get one that's been gently used by someone who went, "Keeping fish sucks!" Their loss, my gain.

 

[huma-huma]

Rock on! I notice on Craigslist lots of people trying to get rid of fish tanks: I thought I couldn't afford a big one, but maybe I could get one that's been gently used by someone who went, "Keeping fish sucks!" Their loss, my gain.

do it!! i surf CL everyday looking for fish freebies! its completely worth it

 

[huma-huma]

about a day after adding water.

just taken.

i do currently have 2 filters running on it, my emperor 400 is on the left ( seems as though the motor has gotten rather noisy) and my qt tank aquaclear 20 on the right side. (which is whisper quiet)

more pics later today

 

[huma-huma]

what a day for the fish hobby! we visited 4 separate pet stores and came home with 5 fish and 11 ghost shrimp. (yikes lol)
we picked up a lyretail mail, a orange/yellow cobra ,male, two females, an endlers. the tank has also become home to 8 neon tetras in the past few days, so needless to say its looking more colorful and active. also our anarcharis is growing like wildfire! gonna have to cut it soon

 

[huma-huma]

everything and everyone is doing great! we lost 2 neon tetras(which petco gladly replaced). the live plants have absolutely taken off, ive since trimmed them and planted the cut pieces.

amazing story, stacey and i decided to take a trip to petco just to get out of the house. as we were walking around, i happened to notice a clearance shelf. on the shelf was 3 Fluval 305's. being as to i know that Fluvals canister filters are usually a pretty penny, i initilly didnt pay much attention to it. although i am usually an overly curious person, i decided to check the price because they were on clearance. $22 bucks. . . i instantly went into lil kid mode. i had a cashier check the price to verify and she told me it was $42, after a very short and friendly conversation with the manager, they honored the $22 price but would only let me buy one (crap). so now our 72 has a brand new 305 canister for the low price of $23-24. id say that was quite a lucky find

 

[huma-huma]

the tank was a happy recepient of a 200w fluval heater today. hopefully the warmer water will push the guppies into overdrive for reproducing. as soon as i can find my phone ill get a few pics up. plants are still growing like crazy.

 

[huma-huma]

updated tank shot. notice the plants have taken off and theres a lack of equipment hanging on the back of the aquarium. im excited to get some sort of background on the tank to hide all th wires and the such. i have a dead coralife t5 fixture in the basement that i may be gutting to attempt an led conversion on. i figured sacrificing a dead 48" fixture is better than winging it on a functional 72" fixture (on my 125)

 

[huma-huma]

 

[huma-huma]

Fts of new rockscaping

 

[huma-huma]

Working on pics to update this thread

 

[Galligak]

Working on pics to update this thread

Excited to see them! I bet it looks great

 

[huma-huma]

First pic is the fts. Id like to get more height to the rockscaping. Sec photo is a closeup of the pleco and right side of tank. More in a few

 

[huma-huma]

First one is a pic of one of our endler x babies. Theres about 5-7 of them. Second is the left side of tank. Dont mind the pink starfish... Gf wanted it there

 

[huma-huma]

update time!! since the last post, we have added a few more friends. 1 albino pleco and 6 ghost shrimp made it into our tank. everything else is holding nice and stable for the time being. We have made a decision to start selling some of the guppies, it seems that they are beginning to overwhelm the tank. coming up in September, im going to look into possibly changing this tank over into a fully planted natural tank, complete with dwarf hairgrass and all. hopefully I can shoot some pics later on

 

[redsea]

I will be looking forward to the pictures!

Congrats on your new additions, they are very cool choices!

 

[huma-huma]

haven't updated this thread for awhile. in all honesty I was planning on making this a sw reef tank, but the fish allowance we had set aside ended up all going into the 125 (whoops) so for now this tank shall remain fw. ive noticed over the past few weeks that the appeal of this tank has almost disappeared. therefore I decided to improve it and try to make better use of both the height and the shape of the tank. both the fiancé and I went out (at 1am) and picked out roughly 80 lbs of new rock. it is currently soaking in the bathtub and will stay there till later today. so now I have the fun task of clearing out the current rockwork and laying out a new scape. this is going to be fairly difficult due to im planning on building it up about 75-80%. I did actually take a few pics. please excuse the tank, haven't cleaned it in about 2 weeks so the algae is running rampant. enjoy!!


tank as it sits now.

 

[huma-huma]

the rocks I picked up, they are soaking in the bathtub