wtb aquarium decorations

[ibitegirls]

hollow rocks, fake plants, real plants, drift wood, castles, ornaments, you name them i want them =) nawe im just lookin to decorate a new fish tank i just got. i bought a 55 gallon with stand and ehiem filter with lights for 100 this past week. now im looking to fix it up. so all ideas and opinions are all welcomed

[ken/mark]

Re: wtb aquarium decorations

Ideas: Take a clay pot tie on some java moss or fern (use cotton string so it will decompose) and it will take over the outside; the fish will hide inside the man made cave.You can use petrafide wood (if you are collecting it from outside you need to steralize it by boiling it first)stack it up or it just looks cool.

If you come to the HLA meeting on april 15 at 7:00 pm; Aqua Zoo will host HLA's first meeting.  Max plans to have a small auction for fund raising and we will have some hornwart and elodea plants to sell.


Mark

[PhishPhreek]

Re: wtb aquarium decorations

If you need to steralize something that is too big to put in a pot of boiling water you can put it in a large plastic tub with a lot of bleach.
But be sure to rince it well and add a little extra chlorene remover.

[charliefoxtrot]

Re: wtb aquarium decorations

In my opinion real plants are always better than fake plants, but there's nothing wrong with fake plants and I use them in one of my tanks..   If you go with fake plants silk is better than plastic because it's more real looking and because some plastic plants can damage fins on your long-finned fish, such as bettas.  I'm not necessarily a purist that feels that all fish tanks must be as natural an environment as possible, even though a couple of my tanks do reflect that philosophy.  I really just think that live plants look better and they are better for your water quality.

Other spiffy ideas you can try.  The clay pot thing that mark mentioned is really cool.  I haven't seen it done with java moss but that sounds awesome.  A bit of naked terracotta looks good too, the color is a nice compliment to plants (which is probably why they are used as pots to begin with).  Also, I once saw a guy's website where he took some plastic screen used for cross-stitching, interwove some java moss with it with some fishing line, and let the moss grow out to create a modular moss wall for the back of his tank.  Can't find it for the life of me but I think it's a spiffy idea.

If you want plants but don't want to do a lot of work, you can still get some low-light, low-maintainence plants like java fern and get a nice effect.  Just tie the rhiozome to a piece of rock or something to weigh it down and pull the brown leaves off periodicly.  

I've also tied java moss to peices of cork (actual wine corks when we'd finished the bottle - I rinsed them reall good and boiled them for a couple minutes just to be safe).  The moss is a little heavier than the cork but not heavy enough to sink it so it floats around and looks way cool.

One thing I do is have glass bottles in all my tanks.  That started from my first tank which was a ten gallon I had at work.  I work in IT and some of the guys in my department had some cobalt blue Bawls because we are geeky like that.  They looked good in the tank so when I took it home I kept them in there.  Now all but one of my big tanks has some glass of some sort.  Even the most "natural" looking tanks will have like an old IBC root beer bottle or something.  It's kind of become my trademark.  Just be sure if you do use glass bottles that there are no glued on labels as I'm told the glue will leech into the water and harm the fish.

Of course, last but not least, is driftwood.  Technicly it's bogwood if it sinks but everyone calls it driftwood because even if it's sunk in your tank it floated somewhere for someone to find it, or so the theory goes.

There's just something about a big ol' gnarly piece of wood in your tank to make it look sharp, especially if you've got some moss growing on it.  You can cram bits of java moss or anubias nana into the nooks.  And if you keep plecos at all they will use it for roughage.

Driftwood/bogwood can be a pain for two reasons.  One is getting it to sink.  Some pieces sink right away, some take weeks.  The piece I have in my 20 long sank right away so I was good there.  Some pieces never sink and it's better to just drill a hole into the base and bolt on a piece od slate.  Bury the slate under your substrate and it's just the wood setting on top.

The other thing that driftwood does is leech tannins into the water.  I actually have no clue what tannins are but they turn your water brown.  Like algae they are good for the water quality but unlike algae some people actually like the look of tannic water.  Kind of makes the water look like weak tea but should be clear (not cloudy).  When I put together my 20 long I knew I wanted a sparsley planted tank with wood and tannic water from the beginning and I"m very pleased with how it turned out.

If you really want to put some work into it, you might go for a biotope aquarium.  This is basicly when you simulate a specific regional environment.  This may be easier than it sounds,  a lot of plants and fish used in specific biotopes are easily found in the hobby, you just have to research what goes with what.  And you can be as general or specific as you want (IE: SE Asia vs. a specific river in thailand or something).  

I actually found a website from a guy in Corpus Christi that goes around collecting local plants and fish from South Texas and the Gulf Coast for local biotopes.  I think this deserves a seperate post.

Since I can't seem to get the tag to work, here's the url:  http://users.ev1.net/~spituch/Steve's%20Page/Aquarium/aquarium%20intro.html

Of course you will let us know what you end up doing?

[ken/mark]

Re: wtb aquarium decorations

Hello everybody,
I just wanted to say I would recommend Charlie’s ideas because I have been to his house and his tanks look awesome. My favorite of his tanks is the 20gl he was talking about above, it looks like a marsh and all the lights are dim and it gives it this cool haunted tank effect. He also has a nice planted up big tank I think around 50gl (I forgot) I really like how it is planted up.

I’m not going to recommend it yet but I am planning to have a little Lego nationhood in one of our 10gls but I have to test and see if the Lego chemicals are bad.

Later, Mark

[charliefoxtrot]

Re: wtb aquarium decorations

Thanks Mark.  You're making me blush.

The big tank is a 30 gallon.  It looks even better with the hornwort you guys gave me.  It's about doubled in size and forms a canopy of sorts over the right side of the tank which makes the light look really cool.

The Lego idea sounds pretty sweet.  I didn't think there are any chemicals at all in Legos.  Don't they have to make them non-toxic so 2 year olds don't end up putting them in their mouth and getting sick?  I think if it's just plain legos it should be fine but if there's decals or anything you might have to be careful.

*COUGH*It's been about 25 years since I've handled legos.*COUGH*

[rrocket2002]

Re: wtb aquarium decorations

LOL!!!!   :?

[ken/mark]

Re: wtb aquarium decorations

Charlie you shirr no a lot about legos.  
I am glad that hornwort is doing good for you, our java ferns are doing great and there starting to attach to the clay pots we put hem on.

mark

[Smokin_Cache]

Re: wtb aquarium decorations

I have an old Kodak Brownie new in the box that I think would look cool in a tank. It is plastic and has no decals. It's a reflex so the view finder cover is alluminum. I was going to remove all the springs and latches that might rust and boil it in soapy water to remove any oil. Does anyone think the plastic itself could leech something harmfull?

[ibitegirls]

Re: wtb aquarium decorations

thanks for the ideas guys! im thinkin about doin the clay pot thing. but i would like to see how yalls tanks are setup in person. maybe one day i can swing by and check it out for myself.

[rrocket2002]

Re: wtb aquarium decorations

I use clay pots too.  I chisel holes or chunks out so that when placed upside down, they have a hiding place or tunnel if I make it so.  The fish love it.

I use glass too.  Some that have both ends open.

Raul

[PhishPhreek]

Re: wtb aquarium decorations

For my Kribs, I use half a coconut shell with a 3/4" hole drilled in the top.
The alpha male claims the area and the females claim one coconut hut each.