# The Shed Tank



## greenink (14 Nov 2014)

So it's been a while... 

I’ve had a couple of journals before. Here’s the ‘transparent tank’ showing the journey from the moment I knew nothing at all, found ukaps and managed to make something half-decent. Here’s the ‘bookcase tank’, a 259 litre effort from when I’d learned a bit more. And here’s a sort of aborted 'matchstick brink' one in a tiny tank that looked lovely to start with and never got enough attention (or even any water!)

The advice I’ve got on this forum has been incredible, and it seems somehow amazing that the two proper 'bookcase' and 'transparent' journals have been looked at 50,000 times, and that both are in the top 15 threads across all of ukaps. I’ve learned a lot more than I expected too: about aesthetics, chemistry, biology, botany, DIY techniques, a jumble of other random things, and the odd titbit about fish too.

So this is the big, final, do-it-properly journal. 

The one that starts with architectural drawings, planning permission applications and getting the builders in. (I kid you not). The one that tries to think things through properly, so life down the line is a lot easier. The one with some nifty gizmos and ways of doing things.

I hope this journal will be as useful to people as I can make it. It’s going to digress a lot, but hopefully take the time to explain things in a clear way.

It’s worth saying at the outset that this whole approach was inspired a lot by Tony Swinney’s set-up. It’s taken a lot longer to do than I’d thought… which is why I haven’t posted anything on here for about a year.

The first few posts are going to fast forward over the period of about a year. And then it’s going to settle down into a normal journal. So here we go...


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## Vinkenoog1977 (14 Nov 2014)

Well, I'm intrigued... Bring it on!


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## OllieNZ (14 Nov 2014)

Good to see you back  Looking forward to this


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## Easystreet (14 Nov 2014)

Subscribed!! Good luck.


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## Andy D (14 Nov 2014)

Waiting....


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## tim (14 Nov 2014)

Looking forward to this


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## greenink (15 Nov 2014)

So: here are the drawings I gave the builders.



The basic idea was to have a tank mounted flush with the wall, with a large flap that lifts up on the inside for feeding and access, and then basically an insulated ‘shed’ built onto the outside of the house that contains all the fishtank related paraphenalia and wotsits.

The custom-built optiwhite tank is the best dimensions I could think of: 55cm high, 58cm deep, 140cm wide. A grand total of 440 litres when filled. Enough depth from front to back to get proper perspective. Enough height to bank soil right up and still grow meaningful stems. Small enough to be able to reach in everywhere comfortable. Small enough to clean easily. Two sliding glass panel lids to stop condensation and fish jumping. It’s not an open-top kind of deal...

The shed is the clever bit. Insulated walls, doors and roof, with a built-in drain, dedicated electrical sockets for lights, and a thermostatic tap set permanently to 23 degrees to make water changes as quick and painless as possible. (I’ve been fine with London tap water heated by the boiler so far, and don’t see a need to change...) High enough to not need to bend over, and suspend lights well above the surface if I need to.

Here are the foundations going in. Every fish tank should have it’s own foundations...



And here’s a bit more building work.



More soon...


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## Wallis97 (15 Nov 2014)

This looks promising...


From Alex - Internet names may vary. Comment not fit for human consumption. Contains small parts.


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## DivZero (15 Nov 2014)

greenink said:


> Here are the foundations going in. Every fish tank should have it’s own foundations...



I'll tell my girlfriend this "fact". Let's see what happens 

Subscribed!


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## drodgers (15 Nov 2014)

Looking forward to seeing this progress ..


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## Tim Harrison (15 Nov 2014)

That's dedication Mike...Which came first the tank or the extension?


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## greenink (17 Nov 2014)

Troi said:


> That's dedication Mike...Which came first the tank or the extension?



Some things are best left unspoken.



DivZero said:


> I'll tell my girlfriend this "fact".



Rather you than me... Maybe stress the advantages of no water in the house, no buckets, that kind of thing first?


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## ian_m (18 Nov 2014)

I saw in another forum, someone who had an "aquarium shed", he had mains water but didn't have a drain connected to the sewer. So he fitted a large butt to collect waste water from the tanks and fitted sink, and a pump that pumped waste water to a "large spray bar" (ie very long pipe with holes in) mounted on his garden fence. Thus waste water watered the garden. Also had another butt for prepping and heating RO water, again waste watering the garden.


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## greenink (18 Nov 2014)

ian_m said:


> waste water watered the garden


 great idea! though feels right now like that's a pretty long way from being needed. Roll on summer...


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## greenink (18 Nov 2014)

So here’s the final bits of building work coming together, and the tank in place.




Learned a lot from my previous ‘in the wall tank’ that you need a much bigger ‘flip top lid’ than you’d expect, and that it needs to be properly weighted with cupboard supports so it stays open. So some ikea kitchen cupboard hinges are in there...


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## Lindy (18 Nov 2014)

That is really well thought out and is going to look amazing.


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## greenink (18 Nov 2014)

*#Hardware*
The hardware is all recycled from my old tanks, and basically a collection of what I’ve found works best for me and accumulated over the years. Heres a shot of the inside of the cupboard.



So what’s that stuff?

*CO2 diffuser *- AM1000 reactor, set up inline after the filter, filled with customised trifle-layers of filter sponge and filter media. The best diffusion I’ve been able to manage. Results in crystal clear water and never clogs, so you get a constant CO2 rate for months. And with this filling, it’s completely silent. I’ve tried pretty much every other option, and keep coming back to this.

IMG_4404 by greenink@ukaps, on Flickr

*CO2 supply* - 3.5kg bottles of CO2 from London Beer Gas. Cheapest suppliers I can find, delivered to your doorstep the next day. One bottle on the canister, one spare so I never run out unexpectedly.

*CO2 guage and solenoid *- cheap and cheerful stuff from ebay. Never had a problem.

*Heater* - Hydor 1000. Lovely, set to 23 degrees. It doesn’t need to work too hard because of the insulation and the thermostatic tap.

*Fertiliser* - to start with, osmocote granuales under molar clay. On an ongoing basis, a DIY estimative index mix, made up in big 3.5l supermarket milk cartons, and then pumped in once a day using a cheap chinese automated dosing pump. Perfect fert dosage, requires about 15 minutes work every few months to make a new batch of fertiliser.



*70% water changes, once or twice a week* - Turn off the filters. Pop an old eheim filter inlet over the top with a hose out to the shed drain. Leave it to siphon 70% of the water to the bottom of the inlet. Scrape the glass a bit with an old credit card, rub the leaves a bit to get rid of any residue, and waft around inside to disturb sediment. Go and do something else for bit. Then come back, pop in two capfuls of Seachem Prime, turn on the thermostatic tap, and go and have a cup of tea. When it’s full, switch off the tap. Done. No buckets, attaching hoses, sorting temperature or any of that nonsense. No drips inside the house. Hopefully this will mean I do the kind of regular water changes that seem to be the pretty much essential regime for a decent planted tank.

*Filters* - one Eheim Pro 3e 2078, doing 1850 lph. One Eheim 2073 doing 1050 lph. Both totally reliable, lovely things, with the filter media that comes in the box. No purigen to start with, but I might get tempted at some point, to give that final ‘polish’ to the water. The big one powers the heater and AM1000. The little one gets to do its own thing. Together, these give about 7 * turnover an hour flow.

*Powerhead* - a standard Hydor Koralia evo one. I’ve tried to do tanks without these in the past, but prepared to accept it for one this size. At some point I’ll probably remove it and see if I can cope without, but for the start, I’ll accept. This adds another 1150 lph turnover an hour.

Overall, with both filters and powerhead, that’s about 9.5 * turnover an hour in terms of flow. Given that most people here say 10 * is about enough, I’ve got room to spare.

*Inlets* - all DIY acrylic with a pipe bending spring, a paint stripping gun and a saw. Cost almost nothing and I now have loads of them. Really recommend doing this.

IMG_4390 by greenink@ukaps, on Flickr

*Drop checkers* - just cheap ones from ebay.

*Lighting* - three TMC Tropical Grobeam 1500 tiles, suspended on a rail, with adjustable height. (I had these sent back to sort out the high pitched whine, and now they work great.) One Grobeam 500 strip mounted towards the front of the tank to catch iridiesence from fish and reflect if forwards, and give a more evening kind of feel as the lights dim. Also a four bar, pretty standard, spare luminaire mounted high up and out of the way, towards the back, that can be switched on to provide extra light for proper photos.

*Backdrop* - one black roller blind, one light blue roller blind, mounted in the ceiling of the shed, about 20cm behind the back of the tank. Takes about 20 seconds to change the backdrop, and it’s far enough behind to reflect light back into the tank from additional photography lighting to give a sense of even more depth.

*A plastic crate* full of the usual gubbins, tweezers, scissors, flotsam and jetsam.

*And a lovely little light wired* in under the tank so I can see what’s going on.

*Camera*. (I think this is pretty much part of the kit!) Canon EOS 600D, with the cheap 50mm Canon prime lens that is just brilliant and shoots at about a stop lighter than anything else. (Also a 15-70mm prime lense for other shots, but I don’t use this that much.) Infra-red remote for taking pictures while also getting fish to shoal by waving something big above the tank. Tripod.


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## greenink (18 Nov 2014)

*#Hardscape*

I’ve long been a fan of fine-grain bonsai molar clay. It’s available in great big bags from bonsai places.

IMG_5269 by greenink@ukaps, on Flickr

Rinse it in the bag and it leaves no sediment in the tank. Pop a bit of slow-release fertiliser underneath, like osmocote, and then pour it in. Gets better with age as it absorbs nutrients and basically stores them for plants, while allowing good circulation. (Think ADA Aqua Soil with DIY nutrients). It’s all to do with it’s cation exchange properties. Plus it’s seriously cheap.

Here is the osmocote going in to the tank.

IMG_5270 by greenink@ukaps, on Flickr

Have tried various different stones in the past, and decided that I’m just going to be unoriginal and use the lovely Seiryu stone that just always looks great. Haven’t found anything else that has the same fine-grained detail of texture that makes so much difference for a sense of scale.

Took the plunge and bought a few bits here and there over a while. That way it doesn’t seem so expensive. Sort of. How can stones cost that much? Seriously.

Here they are just bunged into the tank, so you can see how much stone there is.

IMG_5272 by greenink@ukaps, on Flickr

Expensive. They are nice though.


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## greenink (18 Nov 2014)

*#Plants
*
So here’s the bucket that got dredged from my last tank, and left to fester in a trug in the garden for a good few months.

IMG_5321 by greenink@ukaps, on Flickr

It’s mainly Lilaeopsis brasiliensis, Hemianthus micranthemoides and Marsilea hirsuita. Tiny bit of Stuarogyne repens. One lonely Cryptocoryne (which I think is wendtii). A bit of moss, though not sure whether it’s mostly Fissidens fontanus or mostly Vesicularia dubyana. All a bit mixed together though. Hopeful that mess will give it a nice, lived in, natural look when it’s planted out.

Slightly depressingly, this lot totally loved being left completely alone in a bucket of rainwater for months. Tripled in volume, no algae at all.

Just shows.

So that left me with a good plant mass to start with. Next up... layout.


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## Tim Harrison (19 Nov 2014)

Fantastic...although it seems quite few of your photos haven't loaded...maybe it's just me.


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## stu_ (19 Nov 2014)

Troi said:


> Fantastic...although it seems quite few of your photos haven't loaded...maybe it's just me.


Nope, me too


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## greenink (20 Nov 2014)

Seems to work if you look on the web but not on tapatalk. Something to do with Flickr settings? Have no idea how to fix it. Is anyone having problems when looking through a browser?


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## Andy D (20 Nov 2014)

They do not work for me on Tapatalk or Safari.

I think he is teasing us really!


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## greenink (20 Nov 2014)

Should be sorted now!


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## greenink (20 Nov 2014)

*#Layout*
I’m not a natural artist. So I need a bit of help getting things nice. And for me that means taking photos and applying various ‘grids’ over the top to make sure I’ve got things properly lined up. And then leaving it a few days, coming back to it and making some adjustments. Bigger stones can be ‘faked’ by piling up a few smaller ones.

Can see that for a more artistic type, this might seem a bit odd. But I find the whole process sort of a satisfying in itself.

The starting rule here with sediment is: put in a much bigger slope of sediment than seems in any way plausible. For one, it will flatten, whatever you do. For two, it gives a real sense of perspective and depth to the tank. Also, make sure that the stones are sloping in a natural way, and give a sense of direction that gives depth too. Pointing straight up is bad. Pointing straight across is bad too.

The hardscape rules that seem to work for me are the standard, history of art, renaissance paintings, aesthetics ones: rule of thirds, diagonals and triangles, golden spirals.

Here’s one of my favourite ever layouts analysed in this way:

Slide2 by greenink@ukaps, on Flickr

You can see how the hardscape is almost perfectly aligned to all of these lines.

Here’s a few early layouts that didn’t cut it.

IMG_5518 by greenink@ukaps, on Flickr

IMG_5586 by greenink@ukaps, on Flickr

IMG_5587 by greenink@ukaps, on Flickr

With this tank, though, for the first time ever, I really took my time with layouts. And after quite a while, I got somewhere I’m pleased with… will post it up later.


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## Andy D (20 Nov 2014)

That's better!


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## greenink (20 Nov 2014)

*#Final hardscape*
So here’s what I went with in the end. Feel pretty pleased with this.

1 July 2014 copy by greenink@ukaps, on Flickr

And for the technically minded, here’s how it hits the major rules. It’s pretty easy to imagine how I can fill the curves of the golden spirals with decent planting.

#ShedTank hardscape by greenink@ukaps, on Flickr

(Yes, it’s a bit paint by numbers, and not hugely original. But I like it.)

Here’s another of my favourite ever tanks analysed in the same way.

Slide3 by greenink@ukaps, on Flickr


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## Tim Harrison (20 Nov 2014)

Awesome...Your grids obviously work.- I can kinda instinctively relate to them, but what exactly aligns with what to make a scape so aesthetically appealing? Maybe a detailed tutorial would be a good idea...fibonacci sequence an' all.


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## DivZero (20 Nov 2014)

I can finally see the photo's on the first couple of posts 

But greenink... That hardscape looks amazing! I can't wait to see how this progresses.


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## Martin in Holland (21 Nov 2014)

Looking great already, can't wait to see how this will turn out.


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## greenink (25 Nov 2014)

Troi said:


> Maybe a detailed tutorial would be a good idea...fibonacci sequence an' all.



I guess it's about making sure that the grid lines act as a boundary between two areas. That can be empty space and full space, or stone and planting, or two different kinds of plants. 

What I've got a bit better at now is imagining how plants will grow in to a space. But that's just a result of too many hours staring at aquariums!


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## greenink (25 Nov 2014)

Will try and do a grid overlay shot when it's grown in to show what I mean!

(And probably prove myself wrong!)


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## Edvet (26 Nov 2014)

My only comment would be: It should have been a larger tank!! (Doing all that work, i would have gone with the largest tank i could squeeze in there)


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## ian_m (26 Nov 2014)

You are really stretching the definition of "shed". Love it.

*shed*
noun: *shed*; plural noun: *sheds
*
a *simple* roofed structure used for garden storage, to shelter animals, or as a workshop. Example : "a bicycle shed",  "a fish shed".


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## greenink (24 Dec 2014)

*#Initial planting*
It’s done! The basic idea is lilaeopsis carpet all over, hemianthus at the back to give height and fill in the golden spiral, and other planting to give a feeling of natural vegetation and mixing.

Hemianthus planted in small bunches about 5cm apart. Lilleopsis in individual plantlets, cutting the root runners between each plantlet, which takes a hell of a long time. Other plants popped in round about.

Day 1 by greenink@ukaps, on Flickr

Filled in slowly with a hose and bit of floating bubble wrap to stop distortion...

IMG_5336 by greenink@ukaps, on Flickr

Plan is water changes every few days. CO2 ridiculously high - permanently yellow drop checker. No fish or shrimp until the plants are properly established. Just pond snails and the odd ramshorn that has made the long journey from my old tank.

Lights on 6 hours a day at 60%, 2 minutes ramp up and down at the start and end. CO2 on two hours before lights on and lights off.


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## greenink (24 Dec 2014)

*First few weeks*
So it’s taking off, slowly but surely. First bunch of photos is going to be pretty poor quality, as couldn’t be bothered to do them properly. Promise they’ll be nicer soon...

Day 15 - pretty limited growth, but starting to send out runners. Stones still pretty clean.

Day 15 by greenink@ukaps, on Flickr

Day 75 - starting to get there. Too much algae on rocks though.

Day 75 by greenink@ukaps, on Flickr

Day 82 - getting a bit faster on growth

Day 82 by greenink@ukaps, on Flickr

Day 105 - Now nearly there and ready for livestock. The algae on the rocks is pretty bad, but have had nothing else problematic at all.

Day 105 by greenink@ukaps, on Flickr


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## greenink (24 Dec 2014)

*#Fish and shrimps*
Think it’s going well enough to turn down the CO2. So over the past week or so have added in the fish and shrimps.

10 cherry shrimp
10 neon tetras
30 harlequins
7 ottos
7 amano shrimp
2 siamese algae eaters (there’s a bit of BBA around the rocks)

All looking pretty happy so far.

Day 117

Day 117 by greenink@ukaps, on Flickr

Will do some proper photos with decent lighting soon. These have all been done with just 60% on the TMC tiles and nothing else.


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## greenink (24 Dec 2014)

#Day 133

So here it is a few days later, with some proper lighting

Day 133 by greenink@ukaps, on Flickr

Bit disappointed the siamese algae eaters haven’t done a better job on the BBA, but otherwise looking good. Will do the first proper trim soon, and apply some Gluteraldehyde solution to the rocks with a syringe as I do the water change to clean them up.

(This journal is nearly up to date with reality now!)


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## darren636 (24 Dec 2014)

I like the rocks as they are

Good work


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## GHNelson (26 Dec 2014)

River bed rocks or Stream/Burn rocks/boulders.......... aren't  perfectly clean!
Most have weed/algae/moss on them even in the UK!
Adds to the aesthetics in eyes.
hoggie


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## nayr88 (2 Jan 2015)

+1^

Looking forward to the trimmed shot, might look a bit wounded as looks heavily overgrown, most rocks are covered, and a little 'too wild' 

I'd be tempted letting it go as much as it has to run with it and add some variety in there with some different leave sized stems a big ol fern maybe and some red colour....maybe a bit of twisty manzanita wood.....

Or keep it clean cut and trim.


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## george dicker (14 Mar 2015)

jealous m8 what u running co2 at with fish and whats ur fert regime


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## greenink (19 Oct 2018)

So. The outside garden took over. Was a bramble forest out there. And this turned into an algae sludge fest. 

But am back and will start a new journal v. soon.

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk


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