ooh, brilliant! As strange as this will sound, that actually sounds like it would be a, dare I say it, pretty tank... weird, right?
what themes do your tanks have?
- Thread starter allaboutfish
- Start date
ooh, brilliant! As strange as this will sound, that actually sounds like it would be a, dare I say it, pretty tank... weird, right?
all my tanks are natural themed..live plants wood...sand or gravel
this has only been up a little while...its desert/jungle.......to keep my cray from noming my plants
just need some drift wood that looks like a dead tree on the desert side.
Its my marbled cray/cherry shrimp tank^_^
this has only been up a little while...its desert/jungle.......to keep my cray from noming my plants
just need some drift wood that looks like a dead tree on the desert side.
Its my marbled cray/cherry shrimp tank^_^
Oooooh, palm trees, some anubias tied to coconut and some Florida flag fish.
wait....are there coconuts in Florida?
its a joke. about immigration.
i think you should do a mangrove swamp for your crabs. first, create a nice sandy beach. get a small divider and silicone it sideways on a slope. ther rest is nothig hard, just a slope of sand. ideally, you want the slope of sand going with the length of the tank. completely cover the divider with sand. at the bank of the slope, where the waters surface ends, well, let me try to draw it out for you.
1. TANK
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2. the periods are the divider. se how the divider declines diagonally? thats what you want. you want it to end about halfway through the length of the tank. of course, the divider is straight in real life, but i cant do that with my keyboard, so i gave it my best shot.
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3. fill the bottom left corner that is concealed by the divider with a peice of styrofoam cut to fit, but just a few millimeters smaller on every side. put sand and gravel around it. this will hide the styrophoam. you need the styrophoam to keep it sturdy.
4 cover the slope with sand. make the sand about a half an inch to an inch deep. the astrix in the diagram shows where the water is at its highest piont touching the divider. from there down, cover the divider with a mixture of sand, rocks, and gravel. this will keep the water from pushing anything away and exposing the sand. once you hit the end of the divider, keep doing this until you hit the other end of the tank, but slowly reduce the amount of gravel and rocks you are using, down to were you have just sand for a few inches. this is like a real beach.
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5. get 2 big peices of driftwood, sort of like the first one in WeedCali's thread, "emmersed crypt vivarium" or whatever its called. put one on either corner of the side of the tank the sand is emmersed on, like how WeedCali did it. custom cut them to fit really well.
6. buy 2 or 3 mangroves and but them along the shore. make sure they are partially submerged.
7. SLOWLY fill the tank with water. its important that you do it slowly, so nothing is disturbed. add water until the surface is even with the first few rocks and gravel on the bank.
8. add all your equipment as you please.
9. cycle and add your crabs!
OPTIONAL- you could put a very weak powerhead at the submerged side of the tank to simulate waves hitting the side of the shore. use a really weak one though, and put it as close to th waters surface as you can.
OPTIONAL - move the divider a bit towards the sumberged edge of the tank, as well as the styrofoam. then, cut another peice out in a rectangle to fit in the area you just cleared, but again, make it a few millimeters smaller on all sides. then cover with sand. this will make a flat area on the top of the beach, witch will be easier to put driftwood on.
OPTIONAL- add a few medium sized river rocks to the emmersed part of the beach
TIP- make part the edges of the limbs of the driftwood under th sand. it will look more natural and be more stable. also sylicone both drifwoods to the walls of the tank where they meet the corners so they are stable.
TIP-make the divider on a not very steep angle, so the sand stays put better.
IMPORTANT!- you need to use aquarium safe sylicone!
IMPORTANT!- fiddlers and red claw crabs live in brackish in the wild. im not sure if you have brackish right now, but use brackish water. the crabs and mangroves cant thrive without it.
IMPORTANT! use a good light. the mangroves will need it.
i hope this helps, as i spent a half hour on this one post!
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