2nd fill.....dern bulkheads

So after having the tank running for a couple weeks sans life, my nice piece of manzanita wood sunk and I decided it was time to do a little work on getting this thing closer to being planted.

I hung the light earlier this week, and it is definitely out of the way and I won't have to move it to work in the tank, PERFECT!! We finally got around to going out to the Home Depot and deciding how we wanted to face the stand. We're going for cheap but classy, and went with wainscoting and crown molding (since I have a little experience with it e.g. Mom's basement) and Robin wants to paint it a rich espresso brown. I really like the ledge around the tank, I think it adds a nice dimension.

So I spent a good portion of Monday afternoon measuring and cutting and thinking about ways to access under the stand, but make it look clean. I ended up gluing a couple pieces of wainscoting together along with the edging to make an invisible access door on one side. I was worried it wouldn't work well at first, but it slips into the slot and slides in perfectly flush!! I will rarely have to access anything underneath as all my equipment is behind the wall, but it gives me plenty of room to store things.

I didn't take any shots of the build itself, but I snapped a couple as I filled it a second time. Here it is with the door off.

...and on!


Here is a shot of everything in place in the "back of house". Garbage can sump, submersible pond pumps runnin' the tank.



I ran the light power cord through the wall, and got the ballast mounted up nice and high. I was feeling really good about my progress and was picturing how the hardscape will be arranged (went rock collecting earlier in the week) when I noticed a small drip running down one of the drain lines. NO!!! When we had drained the tank earlier I decided to try to get the rest of the protective plastic off the back of the tank (forgot to do this before everything was hard plumbed through the wall......grrr). We moved the tank around a little, and I guess we tweaked the three-year-old bulkhead gaskets just enough. Everything had gone so smoothly up to this point, I really expected something to go south at some point, so I wasn't surprised to find not one, but two bulkheads leaking. I drained the tank, and felt like I just got kicked in the gut after almost winning the big game......oh well. The past three days I have just walked by the tank and scowled at it a little....no work has been done to it since. I think by Monday I'll be ready to tackle the leaks, and hopefully plan out the hood.

I really planned this whole thing around a limited budget, of both time and money. A big tank on a budget has some limitations, and this tank build couldn't be better suited to a low light, heavily planted, sparsely stocked tank. Some planted tanks are super high maintenance, lots of light, lots of dosing fertilizers, lots of testing, lots of water changes etc. The only addition to this tank is fish food, which becomes plant food, which in turn filter the water quite nicely (as long as things are balanced anyway, which is the real challenge). I'm going for 10 minutes of maintinance a week tops here people, that is the goal. I always thought the Dutch had the right idea for freshwater tanks, not the typical American fluorescent gravel/sunken ship/overstocked ten gallon goldfish tank that doubles as a night-light (sorry Mel).

So a lot of ups and downs with the cube this week, but I think we're making good progress considering.....

-Evan