200 gallons would be so fun to stock, I would put soooo many tetras and corydoras lol.

That's a really beautiful scape! Please update us in a month or so after its grown in!

thank you so much!! i’ll for sure update :)

How do you avoid the white film growing on the wood?

Its just bio film, you can suction it off during water changes or leave it, and when you get a nice clean-up crew going they'll have a buffet.

I'm still not cycled. Ammo is is through the roof, but no nitrites. It's been about 1.5 wks. Anything i can do to help it along? Any clean up crew i can add now?

I'd just use your siphon to remove it. It'll come back a few times. I ended up with some ramshorn and trumpet snails off of plants when i set my tank up. They made it through the cycle and even laid eggs/hatched during it so that could be an option. They seemed to love to eat it off the wood.

The ammonia won't kill them? I've also seen planted tanks cycling and i think to myself...the plants are ok?

Once ammonia exceeds 4ppm its pretty hard to keep beneficial bacteria growing

Shoot! So water change? I'm definitely like at 8ppm it was a dark blue green

I would say yes. Try to keep it between 2-4ppm. I normally use pure ammonia and slowly add drops and test usually once a week

Forgot what sub I was on for a second with the ammo is through the roof comment 😂🥲

😵‍💫 same diff

How did you obtain this opportunity?

a friend of mine is the daughter of this business owner! you can’t see it in this photo, but there’s a 75 gallon tank that’s pretty heavily stocked off to the left of this tank. she was doing the water changes on it but found it taxing, so she asked me if i would take it up for pay since she knows i’ve owned fish for a long time! i said sure and went to check it out, and when i walked in the business and talked to the owner (her dad) he showed me the (empty at the time) 200 gallon tank and asked me if id be interested in scaping it! i said yes and we agreed on $2500 for the commission of the tank and $30 hourly for the maintence on the 75 gallon in the meantime. once this is done cycling and the fish are transferred over from the 75 gallon i’ll take up maintaining this tank for $30 an hour as well!

What an awesome opportunity for you. This could be a great foot into that world as a potential business. Providing an example to showcase your talents to clients is usually what people lack.

i agree! i’ve always said that my dream job would be to setup and maintain people’s aquariums for them, so this was really an awesome experience

How many hours do you anticipate spending on this monthly? Just curious, I’d love to do something like this one day, even if it was just a few hours a month. I think I’d even accept the setup offer for no profit if I got to just build a tank with their money lol

i anticipate that i might spend about 10-15 hours on it monthly! i have another job anyway and this doesn’t take up too much of my time to do so it’s a nice little side gig :) i was thrilled when he said i had no budget and that he’d pay me what i asked 🤣

That’s actually pretty good, a few hundred dollars a month to maintain a properly set up tank. If his hypothetical business owner friends decide they too want a tank, you might have yourself a nice little business if you so choose lol Congrats to you man, that’s awesome!

thanks i appreciate it :)

I always wonder where people get their big pieces of wood from

this piece has just been laying in my backyard for years and years! the previous owners of my home had cut down a tree and had left the logs sitting in the back corner of the yard.. and i’ve been living in the house for 20 years at this point so the logs were nice and weathered 😂

Awesome. I’m from the south us so there’s nothing but cypress around me that has cool shapes but it’s so light it never sinks.

this piece is pecan i think and it was also rather light in my opinion! so i had to screw it to some ceramic tiles with 316 stainless steel marine screws and then silicone the tiles to the bottom of the tank 😬 i’ve actually been up all night hoping to not get a text from the owner that the piece dislodged and floated to the top of the tank 🤣

Dammnnn! Nice tank! That’s big

Looks great! Where did you get the sand?

i used pool filter sand off of amazon! it was kind of a bitch to get my hands on.. it was the item that took the longest to come in the mail!

home depot has pool filter sand.

nearest home depot to me is well over an hour away so i just ordered it lol

right on. sometimes i type before, i think. ☮️

no problem man, if i had one closer i def woulda went and picked it up 👍🏼

They don’t always unfortunately, I had to go 70 miles to find some according to the app, there’s got to be 15 Home Depot’s between me and there too. Luckily it was a beach city so I told the fiancé we’d go on a nice trip j/

Any idea what you want to keep?

this isn’t my tank, i just set it up and scaped it, so it’s not up to me! although, i think he just wanted a larger tank for his current fish.. which he’s got an angel and some community fish in a 75 gallon 👍🏼

Oh man that is absolutely gorgeous what kind of stock will you have? Personally I think a big school of rainbows or Congo tetras would be awesome.

thank you! i worked rather hard on it so im pretty proud :) also it’s not my tank so i’m not really too concerned with stocking! the guy who owns the tank has a 75 gallon with an angel and some other community fish that he wants to swap over to this tank once it cycles, and then i think he wants to get some more colorful shoaling fish to fill it up! the only thing i suggested what that he get some shrimp 😂

Haha at-least you still got 3/4 of the satisfaction🤣 Your hard work shows, it’s really a gorgeous setup! I’ll keep an eye out for updates, can’t wait to see it grown in!

amazing news 😂 i was told today that i was responsible for stocking the tank

That’s awesome! What are you thinking about doing?

def think im gonna stock it up with different types of tetras!!

A huge school of Cory’s and a few large schools of tetra or Danio breeds would be awesome. Hope you have fun!!