Do it yourself

Quote: Face

Whatcha think?

As a former owner of one, they are expensive
and time consuming to maintain. Think long
and hard before you do it. The fish totally
depend on you for everything, especially
for cleaning the damn tank regularly. I gave
in after 6 months and gave the $700 investment
to a nephew. That was in the 80's, probably
$1200 now. Pain is the rump-ola..

Quote: Evenbob

As a former owner of one, they are expensive
and time consuming to maintain. Think long
and hard before you do it. The fish totally
depend on you for everything, especially
for cleaning the damn tank regularly. I gave
in after 6 months and gave the $700 investment
to a nephew. That was in the 80's, probably
$1200 now. Pain is the rump-ola..

Suction the bottom and clean the glass once a week?

Unless you plant real plants, everything can moved easily, they just plug into the gravel or sand. It looks easy to me now.

I had real plants in my old aquarium --and perhaps it was more work and maybe the tools have improved somewhat. That was quite awhile back.

Quote: Evenbob

As a former owner of one, they are expensive
and time consuming to maintain. Think long
and hard before you do it. The fish totally
depend on you for everything, especially
for cleaning the damn tank regularly. I gave
in after 6 months and gave the $700 investment
to a nephew. That was in the 80's, probably
$1200 now. Pain is the rump-ola..

You must have skipped the fishing thread.

I have a 25gal, typical of suburbia. Blue stone, little castle, goldfish. It the "kid's" fish.

I also have a 125gal in-house tank and a 125gal garden pond, both which are "natural". The stone in the tank I get myself from a local crick, which means a lot of shoveling and a lot of cleaning by hand. Both the gravel and the slabs of rock are all hand picked and toted from the crick bed. It's arranged "just so" to allow cracks and crevices for crayfish and sculpins to hide. Structure is all hand made. I clip the spidery ends off one of my trees (usually Maple) until I have 10 or twelve twiggy branches with a lot of arms. I then weave and tie them together to make a sort of thick bush, weight it, and sink it in the tank. Sometimes I'll make two, depending on fish and size of the bouquets.

The fish are all native, and what I have in there depends on weather and luck. On the large side I've had bluegill, pumpkinseed, yellow perch, white crappie, largemouth, and smallmouth bass. On the food side I have sculpins, crayfish, emerald shiners, crick chubs, toad tadpoles, and outside, leopard frogs. Every bit of this is hand caught. There is no run to the bait store, no buying of flakes that last a year. Every week I'm trucking to the crick, hauling 20 chubs, a hundred shiners, and a dozen craws. Every other night I'm in the garden at night with a flashlight and shovel picking earthworms.

All of that and we haven't yet got to typical tank maintenance. So believe me, I am quite aware of the work involved =)

Been doing it for 5 years. I absolutely love it.

Quote: Face

Been doing it for 5 years. I absolutely love it.

Yeah, but you can't sleep with a fish in your bed and enjoy it.

(well, I guess you could, but let's not get into that)

Congratulations for thinking about this issue first. When the waterbed craze first hit Manhattan several apartment dwellers found out the hard way that their upstairs neighbors had just installed a water bed.

Stiletto heels can be dangerous in airplanes and East Texas oil fields. You have to account for the glass, the water, the fish and decorations, pumps, and Angie getting in and swimming around nude to see if you even notice her.

Quote: Fleastiff

Angie getting in and swimming around nude to see if you even notice her.

Face is gonna need a bigger tank, in the winter he could let it freeze and play mini-hockey, or foos hockey.

A typical residence is designed to 100 lbs / sq. ft. Your 8' x 2' tank is 16 sq. ft. This means that 1600 lbs is the maximum you should expect the floor to hold as built.

Doubling up the joists under that area or even adding an additional joist can possibly give you the capacity you want. It will also depend upon the rating of the beams that are supporting the floor joists.

Perhaps it would be easier to create an illusion of size and depth and make the tank look enormous.

There are different ways to do that -- paint schemes in the room, mirrors, or even real illusions of some sort. Buy undersized furniture? Okay, maybe not the last.

http://www.lite-tec.co.uk/specialneedsinfinitybox.html

Quote: Fleastiff

Congratulations for thinking about this issue first.

Thanks! I'm not as stupid as I look. Or sound. Or sometimes act... =p

Quote: Fleastiff

You have to account for the glass, the water, the fish and decorations, pumps, and Angie getting in and swimming around nude to see if you even notice her.

I am aware, and (although very roughly) it has been accounted for. The density difference between rocks and water is about two fold. But while it will obviously contain a good deal of rock, they'll also displace water so it's not "direct weight" being added. It's X water + Y rock - (.5 * Y) water displaced. Further, the 3,999.whatever lbs of water figures for a tank full to the brim. I never fill my tanks that high.

The wood frame and acrylic face are additional guesses, but I figured 500lb was a high estimate. I know roughly how heavy a pane of hockey glass weighs, and that's both similar to the type of material and size I would be using. And while it's the heaviest single part of construction, I'll only be using one pane for the face, maybe a small pane for the side, and the rest will be all plywood and 2" x 4". Imagining what I'll be building, I don't have a doubt I can shuffle it along by hand by myself, and I know I can't squat 500lbs.

In short, I have faith in my estimation skills.

Quote: kenarman

A typical residence is designed to 100 lbs / sq. ft. Your 8' x 2' tank is 16 sq. ft. This means that 1600 lbs is the maximum you should expect the floor to hold as built.

Doubling up the joists under that area or even adding an additional joist can possibly give you the capacity you want. It will also depend upon the rating of the beams that are supporting the floor joists.

I certainly plan on doing the homework re: joists. If this home is built anything like my first home, I'll have no work to do at all (4 - 2"x 8") other than adjusting design to go along a different wall. We'll see when I get the drop ceiling out of the way.

Quote: rxwine

Perhaps it would be easier to create an illusion of size and depth and make the tank look enormous.

There are different ways to do that -- paint schemes in the room, mirrors, or even real illusions of some sort. Buy undersized furniture? Okay, maybe not the last.

Lol, no deal. I think my 125 already "looks" quite large. It's not so much a perception thing; I want more and bigger fish. The size of my tank now limits me, as there's not enough room for the aggressive pumpkinseed and they fight. And when I have a few of those, a bass, a perch... it gets crowded. That means I need to use smaller fish, and smaller fish make feeding such a pain in the ass. I can't keep any chub, I can only keep the small ones. I can't use any shiner, I have to net for fry and juveniles. I can't grab any craw, I have to wait for the spawn and get the tiny ones.

If I can use bigger fish, I can use bigger food, and bigger food would drop my hunting times from a necessary hour to about 15min. And since I have a life outside of this and the weather can often ruin a crick for a week or more, that versatility is desirable. Plus big fish are just cool =)

Face, if you want bigger fish and more variety, what about just taking up scuba diving?