My New 1.60m South American tank

[Gertbl]

[Gertbl]

Since the start of setting up this tank, I had an idea of creating a kind of Riparium.
This is because I want to keep a group of Copella arnoldi in the tank. I had a group before and they are know swimming in my 1m tank. Because I wanted some bigger cichlids next to the rest of the fish, I had to fill the tank completely.

After someone pointed out to me that it is easy to increase the height of the tank, to create a river bank. Luckily I could use my current top light panel of the tank. The current top panel will be the new rear panel of the tank, so that I only have to place new side panels and top panel. The front of the upper section of the tank will be two sliding glass doors.

This is how I had it fingered out:


The new side and top panels are painted and today I got the two sliding glass doors for the front side.

Today I started on the new background to let it look like a river bank where some parts of woods/roots are pointed out of the river bank.








The plants what I want to use are some moss, ferns and some Philodendron spp.

[dw1305]

Hi all,
I'm really looking forward to this one when it is finished, keep up the good work.
Cheers Darrel

[Gertbl]

Here the result of my almost finished background for the section above the waterlevel.
Tomorrow I will finish the background and might start with placing the panels for the upper section on my tank.

[wijnands]

Few silly questions from me. Wondering if you could do something like this for underwater. What did you use to paint the PUR foam? (assuming that is what you used). Can you think of any reason not to include this underwater? Or would coating the foam but leaving the wood uncoated be too much of a challenge?

[Gertbl]

You can use it also under water. The background that I have under water is done with the same coating, but only covered with sand. Elastopur is a coating that that you can mix with a colour pigment. The background underwater is a mix of Elastopur with a brown colour pigment and sand.

If you want to add wood in the background, take wood that has a hard structure. Wood that is retrieved from peatlands, is not really suitable for using in a background. Better is to use wood like spiderwood or mangrove wood.

Here is a sample of a aquarium background that is made for use underwater:
http://www.vivariumbackground.com/index ... &Itemid=16

The background is covered with a coating of Elastopur and colour pigments.

[DutchFry]

Looks great Gert!

I have one small thing to say about making your own background with wood attached to it. please drill small holes in the back of the wood and in the background and glue (use aquarium kit) a wooden plug into the hole in the wood, so you can stick that into the hole in the background. This way, when the wood starts to rot or is badly overgrown with algae, you can easily remove it from the background and prepare a new piece of wood to go on.

[Gertbl]

Thanks Tim.

It's indeed useful to drill small holes in the background en the wood so that when the wood start to rot, you can easily replace it. But the wood that I used in this background is very hard wood, so I don't think it will rot easily.

[wijnands]

Elastopur seems popular with the reptile crowd.

On pigments.. anything special? Or just those little bottles they sell in the DIY store to colour latex wall paint?

[Gertbl]

I don't know if the colour pigments are the same as what the use in wall paint. But here's a variation of colour pigments for mixing with Elastopur.
http://www.vivariumbackground.com/index ... &Itemid=13


Some new pictures:

[Gertbl]

Yesterday I started, together with a friend, to adjust the tank so that I can add a land part to the tank.
Here are some pictures of how far we are now.

[Gertbl]

[unblinded]

Wow, totally cool. Thanks for sharing. Very nice photos of your fish also.

[Gertbl]

Thanks. Yesterday I bought 4 Awaous flavus for this tank.