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These days I am setting up a 200 liter species tank for Panaqolus L-204. I wish to make the caves by drilling large holes in drift wood so that I don`t need any cheramic or slate caves. What size of drillbit should I use? For now I only have one half grown fish I think is a female, but I plan to buy two males and 4 females sometime in the near future.

I was thinking something like 40mm, or maybee even bigger. The males I have seen seemed to be rather bulky. Because of the very compact drift wood it would be nearly impossible to enlarge an existing hole after initial drilling.

If you have enough driftwood (and money), I would suggest that you drill a few around 30mm, then go up to whatever size you can achieve, up to around 50mm. Of course, you will need a POWERFUL high-torque power-drill - at least if you actually want to drill, rather than "burn" holes in rather hard woods. I use Auger bits, and I found the best way is to use to start of with a big bit, say about 5-10 mm depth. Then pre-drill the whole with a ~20mm bit, and drill that out to the full diameter.

[Edit: I moved this, as it's more to do with the Loricariidae, than it has to do with that than tanks - although I can see how it overlaps].

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Mats

Find yourself an engineering tool shop and they will do it for you. My company have its own tool room so I have access to CNC and I've recently made a cave just like you have mentioned.



Good luck.

Cheers
KingTiger

Can't help with the cave size Harvaard but i am sure we would all like to see pictures of the scape, in fact updated photos of all the scapes would be great

CNC is not really an option on my budget, but it would definetely be a good way to make caves

Drilling large holes in hard wood will definetely be a challenge. To make the caves look natural I want to drill in the direction of the graines/fibres. This makes it even more difficult. I actually wonder if it can be done with an auger bit.

Thank you both for good advice. I will take a look in my tool shed, probably shake my head and revisit the tool shed another day

Haavard Stoere wrote:CNC is not really an option on my budget, but it would definetely be a good way to make caves

Drilling large holes in hard wood will definetely be a challenge. To make the caves look natural I want to drill in the direction of the graines/fibres. This makes it even more difficult. I actually wonder if it can be done with an auger bit.

I think that would be fine - I haven't actually tried with for example mopani, but I have drilled "lengthways" caves to about 140-150 mm depth using a 40mm bit, as I described above. It's not easy, but far from impossible to do. I do, however, have an 18v High-torque power-drill, which at low-speed just about does the 40mm drilling (it's "supposed" to do 32mm, but even that does not always work when drilling length-ways in wood).

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Mats

I have (unfortunately ) to carry an assortment of bits to do my work, this style of bit are what I would use to do this particular job, you have to push a little harder in end grain but they will pull themselves into the piece of wood with a threaded tip, http://www.mytoolstore.com/dewalt/dew02-07.html
Yes you will need a decent drill and you will need to hold the piece of wood solidly so it will not spin, also there is a way to drill a hole bigger if you went too small by screwing another piece of wood on with the proper size hole already drilled into it and using it as a guide. If I was to do a piece of wood like this I would drill an assortment of different size holes but of course I already have the different bits.
They are not that much more expensive than a good auger bit and do a good job without having to switch thru different bits.
I would think a 2' or about a 40 mm would be about right though, if I was to drill just one size.

Do not get those bits mixed up with these http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-forstner-bit.htm if you look at the tips you will notice one is threaded and one is not, the threaded one will pull itself in, the other will not.

Hope this helps
Birger

Another great Havard project!!!!! , I can´t wait to see the tank photos .
It would be great an update of your setups

Birger,

Those drill bits seem very nice. I'm going to see if I can find them somewhere...

Not pictures, but the list of sizes in millimeters are on the dewalt UK site:
http://www.dewalt.co.uk/accessories/pro ... rchy/2040/

I tried the local(ish) store in Aldershot, and they couldn't even give a price, never mind have one in stock. I'm sure a bigger store would. ScrewFix doesn't have them in their list either...

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Mats

I was recommended exactly those drill bits for exactly that job. The only place I could find them was this ebay shop: http://stores.ebay.co.uk/1PLANETSALES4U (I didn't buy it because I found some nice pieces of bamboo which I used for caves in the end)

I dont have the tools yet for drilling. Meanwhile I have made a cave from two pieces hollowed out and joined with small screws. I used a sharp axe and a skrewdriver to pull out wood along the graines. It took quite a few hours, but I am happy with the cave.

While we are posting pictures of home-made caves, here's a couple of mine:
A couple of chunky bits of apple-tree that I've just soaked for the last several weeks. And here is some of my drill-bits used for the job. --
Mats

Just a question, I see how the fish get in obviously, but how do they get out again? Does the hole go right the way through the log, or is the diameter large enough to allow the fish to turn round?

I think they manage to get out backways

(and if I'm wrong, I'm certain I will be corrected)

Generally they can get out but I feel you have to be careful not to have too small a hole available as a fish may force itself in and not be able to get out again, then there are unforseen incidents, I have lost full grown Ancistrus sp.3 which acidentaly jam themselves with their pectorals into pie shaped crevices in stones and I recently lost a female A.claro that figured the uptake tube of a foam filter needed exploring and could not back out past the airline.

Poor lil fishies, and Pl*cos too... I hope my new wood isn't a lethal fish trap.

How long will appletree have to soak before it sinks? Is it heavy and dense like tropical driftwood?

Haavard Stoere wrote:How long will appletree have to soak before it sinks? Is it heavy and dense like tropical driftwood?

It takes several weeks to get water-logged and sink - I don't remember when these got heavy enough to sink (I kept them in the bucket for a bit longer than they actually needed - I drilled them and then didn't put them in a tank for quite some time).

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Mats

I have a lot of oak loggs in the garage. Can they be used?

Haavard Stoere wrote:I have a lot of oak loggs in the garage. Can they be used?

Should be fine.

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Mats

I made a cave or rather a tunnel from an oak log. I didn´t by oger drillbits because they were extremely expensive. Instead I used a cheap flatbit. It did the job.

To round of the edges I used a small rather sharp carpentry knife bought for the occation (sweedish Mora knife of course). After a while I got totally carried away with the knife, and ended up spending several hours. My hands are blistered

The cave turned out ok, but I will use darker wood in the future. Thank you all for advice and suggestions

Nice job, Havaard,
I think my L204 caves will be less artfully crafted. I'm cutting up a nominal dimension, 12 X 12 in ceramic floor tile up to make 3 equally sized
caves ~6-inches deep with a triangular cross sections.

Haavard, do your skills never end???

Hi Haavard.

Led me sow you this new vine with several caves for my L204 tank. There they've a couple of 5cm(2") diameter and 15cm(6") deep caves an others of 3cm diameter and 10cm deep. These is the second piece for them over 70cmx40cmx40cm.







In these chestnut stump I'm working actualy for the same L204 tank. There ara a lot to do before I can put it in there but...it´s only time, isn't it?

That is really nice work

Beautiful stub and vine. I will have to get some more exitingly shaped wood to work with. May I ask where you got the beautiful vine, and what specie it is?

Hi Haavard.

As you can supposed panaques are authentic “sommeliere” and those vines are Cavernet sauvignon . In the caves of those vines my p. maccus and Hypancistrus L262 had breed successfully. Now the p. L204 look really fine feeding and hidden in there. I hope they like it enough to breed in too.

Hey,

may I ask if you get this logs straight from a tree? Old school says in aquarium you can use only logs and roots that has been in peat for ages. Do this relatively fresh branches rot or pollute water with resin?

Thanks!
Btw. great job as always

Old school did not have wood eating fishes

If you have wood eating plecos, you need to add wood every now and then, and the plecos will keep up with the decaying wood

If not, nobody will take care of any decaying wood, and thus it would be better te acertain the wood will not decay

Hi worton.

Vine isn't a tree. It's a riverside climbing bush. But this kind of vine, here, are pruning like bushes to get its grapes. They haven’t resin and are rich in tannins and others fundamental for our lorys. The dark side of vine is that are food for them and day by day it’s disappearing. Those vines are not live plants or fresh wood (I'm a little crazy but I’m not a criminal, I prefer wine to wood) . All of they had been six months to one year waiting for me in the open (or for burn it out). After that I “prepare” them for other couple of months. So, I'd been studding for years stories of the Old School and I think is better to be open and listen (read) to the people who is working every day in the same line we are doing .

Hi Bas.

Old school did not have wood eating fishes

You're great .