Journal 75 Gallons of Bliss!

Well, hopefully it works out that way.. I am not convinced there wont be some “Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat” along the way. A common saying during WW2 in Europe was that the road home went through Berlin…


The stand is built and moved in to the bedroom. I have completed Spring cleaning the bedroom and rearranging furniture in the room.


I moved my 2 tier fish tank stand across the room. This frees up space by my recliner. Puts the CO2 tank between them so I dont need to route the hose in front of the door, and gives me much nicer access to my closet.
I like the extra room by the recliner. I feel much less cramped and it gives me better viewing of the 29 gallon across the room rather than next to me.

Thats my Grandfathers Grandfather clock. He built it in 1976. He passed 12 years ago at 96. I remember him building it. My parents gifted it to me as the chiming kept my mother awake. To me the chiming is soothing and drifts me off to sleep at night..



Power strips mounted on the cabinet side out of view. The strip closest to the front will power the Inkbird, canister filter and any other in tank electrical devices added. 1 switch to flip shuts off power to all in tank conductors before sticking my hands or tools in. And the lights will stay on…

All the wires will be coiled and have tie wraps to prevent wire spaghetti on the floor. And if I spill water on the floor I wont have to worry about it getting into the power strips..


I mounted a magnet strip on both doors. Now I just need to find the rest of my Aquascaping tools and maybe I can avoid misplacing them again…



Also nice storage for magnet scrapers too…


I bought some storage bins…

And filled them, organizing fish meds in one, equipment in another, testing supplies by themself, cleaning supplies in another. I just need to make some labels for the bins..

I have never been this organized in my life…

I am hoping Petco has a half off sale on tanks for March..

I plan to update this journal as I progress with the build…

 

[Pepere]

I plumbed in a water changes port to the tank today.

I am running 2 Oase Biomax thermo 350s on this tank. I have separate intakes on opposite corners of the tank. 1 intake is a glass lily pipe with a surface skimmer, the other intake is the Oase supplied intake to draw entirely from the bottom of the tank. Outlets feed in to opposite sides of the tank into a single spray bar that runs across the back of the tank.

During water changes yesterday I cut into the hose leading from the Oase supplied intake and inserted a 3/4” pex Tee and used stainless steel hose clamps over the hose.



I ran the 3rd port to a hose barb screwed to the side of my stand.



I can now attach the black Python hose cone to the hose thread and attach my Python hose to it and run my Python hose to the tub drain and open the valve to drain water to the tub.



Yes, I am going to re route the power strips and wires away from this water drain port. I am building a cabinet for them to mount on the wall to get them out of sight but easily accesible…

Anyhow, Oase intake is height adjustable so I have adjusted for the siphon to break when water is drained down to desired height. I no longer have to worry about draining too much water, or sit there babysitting it.

Once drained, I take the end of the hose draining into the tup and attach it to a cone attach to a python adapter on my bathroom sink and can add water directly into the tank through the water pickup inlet. It diffuses the flow of the water nicely into the tank.

I have only done this on this display tank as the design of my Canopy precludes me from simply hanging an Oase pickup attached to an Oase over the tank fitting and attaching that to my Python. I saw @Jeff Miotke having done this to do water changes on one of his videos and shamelessly reproduced it and use it on all my other tanks.