In the beginning, there was light

R

Richer

AC Members
Aug 7, 2002
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Edmonton, AB
... and a 30 gallon fish tank.

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Finals are just around the corner, I've been let out of school for a few days now, so what should I be doing? Setting up another aquarium no less.

After reading Hans' thread on river tanks, I was inspired to make a paludarium of my own. Here's the twist, since I am an university student and finals are just around the corner, I will be on a tight budget, and I'll have no time to run out to look for stuff.

Here's what I have in terms of equipment and materials:

1 30 gallon tank
1 55watt CF fixture
1 giant sheet of acrylic (I forgot the thickness).
5 gallon bucket full of various sized river rocks.
3 sand bags (fill with small pebbles... not sand, go figure)
1 powerhead 402, 2 powerhead 301, and 1 tiny laguna water pump (rated at 80gph).
Various metal corner connectors, screws, nuts, etc.
A few pieces of spare driftwood
Various clay pots
2 AC200s
1 AC500
1 Fluval 404
Various lengths of tubing, connectors, etc.

Things that I've bought or will definately be buying:

1 timer for the lights
Aquarium safe silicon
Epoxy
Chains

I could not for the life of me, find any kind of acrylic bonding glue in the short time I was in Homedepot, so I'm going to connect my acrylic sheets with metal connectors, nuts and bolts, cover the connections with epoxy and silicon. Not the best, but it should work. The acrylic sheets will also be coated in an epoxy+sand/pebble mix to help it blend into the tank. I plan on having an open top aquarium, so I'm going to be hanging the lights over the tank (thus the chains).
The acrylic sheets will be used to seperate the "land" and "water" sections of the tank... not exactly a real paludarium, but I figured it'd be the best way to go, since there isn't much space in a 30 gallon tank to work with.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! =)

-Richer
 
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Double check the information I'm about to give, because I'm a crazy nutcase. You could test this information on a small piece of acrylic and see if it works.

Isn't crazy glue the sealent used for acrylic? It is composed of acrylic acid I believe, which is why it bonds the sheets together.
 
Crazy glue is a cyanoacrylate, thus has a bit of cyanide in it (not in a deadly form though). If used on acrylics it tends to craze or create cracks in the surface. You want something that actually melts the surfaces together which is a methylated solvent (usually). Epoxy dissolvers work great for this sort of application.
 
I was surfing around computer modding sites (yes, I mod computers, let the nerd branding begin), and came across a DIY acrylic glue guide. It involved melting pieces of acrylic with acetone (which I have plenty of). Think I may try that.

-Richer
 
I would use the large rocks to 'raise up' one side of the tank. pile them up to about 1/3 the way up the tank (also 1/3 the length of the tank). use the pump to pump the water in under the rocks and have tubing come out the top, letting the water trickle down the rocks. (plants moss and fern and other plants on the rocks). then have the water come up to however high you wanted, no higher than the rocks themselves though.

gah its so hard to explain

then put a large peice of wood in the water part, having some parts sticking out of the water and put plants on that too.

my friend's dad had a large ( i belive it was approx. 120 gallons) tank like this. had a rock pile at one end and had a turtle that lived on top with mosses and plants on it. a little 'river' ran down over the rocks and into the water.

it was very nice. :)
 
Thats actually a good idea. I do however, want to keep an orchid in the aquarium (what can I say, my mom is an orchid nut, and it rubbed off on me). So I'll probably do the rock pile slopping down into the middle of the tank on one side, and have the other side plexi glassed off... with a piece of driftwood here and there.

-Richer
 
Well, here's what I got so far:

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I put everything in the tank, minus the substrate to see how it looks. Nothing has been glued or sealed yet. I still got some smaller pebbles I'm going to put in there, and I will be coating the acrylic with epoxy and sand/pebbles. That tube you see going up the right side of the tank actually leads to a DIY spray bar I made (which consists of a tube poked with a bunch of holes), and it leads down to the left hand side to that little compartment with those four bioballs in them. Thats going to be my waterfall and biofilter. The whole spray bar/biofilter/waterfall contraption is going to be powered by an AC power 402 with a quick filter attached to it, so it should be able to pump enough water to operate a spraybar and a waterfall. In case you were wondering, the spraybar is just there to help increase the tank's humidity... its awfully dry here, and it'll be difficult to maintain a higher humidity in an open top tank.
My mini pond pump is under that pile of rocks, and at 80gph, it should pump out enough water to give a nice trickling effect over the rocks. Thankfully enough, it has an adjustable flow rate, so I can reduce the rate if its going too fast.

I should probably mention, that waterfall compartment will be filled with bioballs... not just those four ;)

-Richer
 
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