Painting...

[ncox38]

I just read a thread about a guy painting his hallway in the opposite end of his house and the fumes causing his tank to crash. I have my 125 built into an unfinished wall in my basement. I am having people over this weekend to hang drywall, doors, etc. and it was supposed to be sprayed in 2 weeks by my wifes friend that is a painter. how worried do i need to be about this, what are other people's experiences.

 

[breutus]

I just drywalled sanded mudded sanded mudded sanded mudded (this goes on for a while) sanded mudded okay you get the picture, then painted the room that my tank is in a few weeks ago with no ill effects to the tank, but i didn't "spray" it on i roller'd it.

 

[ncox38]

someone referred me to another thread on this. it said to make sure to shut down your skimmer since it draws air into the water and thus paint fumes, shut off the lights, cover it with plastic, & run an air pump from outside, then do a big water change and change the carbon....not that hard to ensure i dont lose everything.

I think i will go ahead and roller it, it will reduce the amount of paint fumes in the air.

How did your drywall turn out? I hate mudding, it always seems like i start to sand through the paper before i get a good joint, I was thinking about hiring it out this time. So if there are any drywall guys reading this that would like to help a fellow reefer out at a reasonable price shoot me a pm.

 

[breutus]

ehh it wasn't to bad only my fourth time drywalling and this time it was by myself couple of the seems look pretty bad, but I dont think you can tell unless someone points it out.

I almost bought a bazooka for it since you get a darn near perfect seem everytime but figured I would do it by hand.

Good luck, if you end up doing it yourself and need a hand just let me know!

Lucas

 

[rccub23]

breutus is being modest. i think the work he has done looks pretty good.

 

[latazyo]

I painted my room with roller around my aquarium last year with no ill effects

I couldnt even reach all the way behind the tank so there's still a white spot behind my tank, but that is just to show how close I got to it

and I left the skimmer on

oh well, I had nothing to lose though

 

[fazgood]

A lot will depend on the type of paint. Whether you roll or spray there will still be significant amounts of chemicals in the air. As it dries the paint chemicals/fumes will migrate into the air. I would suspect oil paints are bad but if you can smell it, its there and if you have a good gas exchange in the tank, there is no doubt it will get in the water. Latex paint has been tested for human toxicity but I don't think they have tested for fish respiration.

Faz

 

[scbadiver]

I wouldn't be concerned at all. When I remodeled my house the old tank sat smack in the middle of the mess for 5 months. The repeated sanding and mudding(went on for several weeks), primer, painting, the fumes from the vinyl floor glue, blown insulation floating around and into the tank and frankly, the old 75 gal tank looked better than it ever did before. I did have the skimmer removed but the sump sat next to the tank, wide open top and all I did was recirc'd the water, no actual mechanical filtration at all. I say just do it! Good luck with the project. sounds cool.

 

[DrBDC]

I painted the whole basement before our Christmas party and no problems. I didn't even shut down the skimmer, although I would had I not been in a rush (or thought of it) to get it all painted in a couple days.

 

[ncox38]

Ok, great. I appreciate the input.

 

[DrBDC]

In short, don't stress out. Take some simple precautions like the skimmer off, maybe throw a plastic over the tank (which I didn't either). If you really wanted to be extra careful you could run a long hose outside for the skimmer intake and be really really safe.

 

[ncox38]

I didnt think the steps I mentioned above sounded all that unreasonable. I just got the tank looking good again, after the bulb shift, to the point i actually look forward to spending time looking at it . if it crashed i think i would be so discouraged i wouldnt start it up again.