Ludnix's tropical 120!
- Thread starter ludnix
- Start date
CAN'T WAIT TO SEE IT!
ludnix
New member
For the past few months my family and I have been working on the roof to our canopy. My dad had envisioned a Tahitian style grass roof on top of the tank and we've finally finished building it.
The angle of this picture makes the right side look crooked, but I assure it's just the slope of the roof in conjunction with the camera angle.
The main element for the Tahitian style roofline is the extreme height compared to it's width, which we tried to emulate with ours.
My dad built the frame for the roof since he was the only one who could properly envision what he had in mind. It's mostly made out of poplar so it's fairly light. Around the frame is pegboard which we used to allow some ventilation of heat, pegboard added a significant amount of weight, but luckily it's still fairly light. On top of the pegboard we used broom bristles (from about 13 broom heads!) and hot glued them to the pegboard (just try and guess how many glue sticks it took!). This was a long an exhausting process which took the majority of the time.
The angle of this picture makes the right side look crooked, but I assure it's just the slope of the roof in conjunction with the camera angle.
The main element for the Tahitian style roofline is the extreme height compared to it's width, which we tried to emulate with ours.
My dad built the frame for the roof since he was the only one who could properly envision what he had in mind. It's mostly made out of poplar so it's fairly light. Around the frame is pegboard which we used to allow some ventilation of heat, pegboard added a significant amount of weight, but luckily it's still fairly light. On top of the pegboard we used broom bristles (from about 13 broom heads!) and hot glued them to the pegboard (just try and guess how many glue sticks it took!). This was a long an exhausting process which took the majority of the time.
Hey. Some of those pieces of Monti look familiar.
Looking at that room, I can hear Bali Jai calling out to me. Oh wait, my wife was listening to "The Sounds of Hawaii" today and some of the music is stuck in my head.
Looks good Eric. I can only stride to be as good as a kid less than half my age.
Looking at that room, I can hear Bali Jai calling out to me. Oh wait, my wife was listening to "The Sounds of Hawaii" today and some of the music is stuck in my head.
Looks good Eric. I can only stride to be as good as a kid less than half my age.
ludnix
New member
Light proofing the canopy.
I recently took on the task of light proofing my canopy doors as they were causing some unsightly light leaks around the perimeter. You can see it very obviously in some of my older photos so I won't bother reposting a picture of how it was before. Instead here's what I've done:
No more light leaking!
What I used was plastic strips that fold in half. I think they are originally for sealing the frames around windows and doors to keep air from leaking in and out but they work well for light too!
The plastic is fairly soft and flexible so when working in the tank it can be crushed by my arm and then return to shape when I'm done. This stuff works well because my doors pull in with magnets and just hang on. When I put the doors on it pushes the door against the black plastic and seals in the light.
Here you can see how my doors have metal disks inlaid in them. They lets them hook on to the magnets in the canopy opening.
I inlaid these metal disks before I applied the polyurethane so they are protected from rusting.
Thanks for reading!
I recently took on the task of light proofing my canopy doors as they were causing some unsightly light leaks around the perimeter. You can see it very obviously in some of my older photos so I won't bother reposting a picture of how it was before. Instead here's what I've done:
No more light leaking!
What I used was plastic strips that fold in half. I think they are originally for sealing the frames around windows and doors to keep air from leaking in and out but they work well for light too!
The plastic is fairly soft and flexible so when working in the tank it can be crushed by my arm and then return to shape when I'm done. This stuff works well because my doors pull in with magnets and just hang on. When I put the doors on it pushes the door against the black plastic and seals in the light.
Here you can see how my doors have metal disks inlaid in them. They lets them hook on to the magnets in the canopy opening.
I inlaid these metal disks before I applied the polyurethane so they are protected from rusting.
Thanks for reading!
ludnix
New member
I recently have been having trouble with the long tentacle anemone. He had been moving all around the front of the tank and reluctant to stay anywhere.
I tried to use a power head to push him back where he originally was but he ended up just moving further and further towards the powerhead instead. I eventually tried to physically move him to the area with the deepest sand bed but he still would move around to the front of the tank where he could smother the zoanthids. I then decided to just remove him entire. I used a bag of ice to get his foot to dettach and returned him to the LFS.
I ended up trading him for a nice tri-color acro frag:
and a nice little flame hawk:
I'm glad to have the anemone out but the clowns sure aren't! When I originally went to bag up the anemone I failed to notice I took the female clownfish along with it until I was walking away from my aquarium with the bag. I had to dump the anemone back in the tank and then lift it physically out the water to prevent the clown from coming with it!
I tried to use a power head to push him back where he originally was but he ended up just moving further and further towards the powerhead instead. I eventually tried to physically move him to the area with the deepest sand bed but he still would move around to the front of the tank where he could smother the zoanthids. I then decided to just remove him entire. I used a bag of ice to get his foot to dettach and returned him to the LFS.
I ended up trading him for a nice tri-color acro frag:
and a nice little flame hawk:
I'm glad to have the anemone out but the clowns sure aren't! When I originally went to bag up the anemone I failed to notice I took the female clownfish along with it until I was walking away from my aquarium with the bag. I had to dump the anemone back in the tank and then lift it physically out the water to prevent the clown from coming with it!
ludnix
New member
I have 3 shrimp that may eventually be prey to the flame hawk but he's far too small at this point to be a concern.
My current fishlist:
Inverts:
My current fishlist:
- Yellow Tang
- FoxFace rabbitfish
- Tomini Tang
- 3x blue/green reef chromis
- Royal Gramma
- Pink and blue spot goby
- Mandarin goby
- Flame Hawkfish
- 2x True Perc Clowns
Inverts:
- Camelback shrimp
- Blood shrimp
- Cleaner shrimp
- Serpent star
- tuxedo urchin
ludnix
New member
I'm currently using 14k hamiltons. They are much more blue than the 15k XM I had in before, and really changed what colors popped out the most but I've pretty pretty happy with them.
Thanks for the kind comments everyone! I'm going to have to get some new full tank shots now that the anemone is gone. I feel it's a lot cleaner now without it.
Thanks for the kind comments everyone! I'm going to have to get some new full tank shots now that the anemone is gone. I feel it's a lot cleaner now without it.
