An Aquarium Leak Escalates
I noticed the other day that the water level in our fishtank was getting lower, after a quick investigation it was clear that it was leaking. There was water down the side of the tank, the wood supporting the tank was discoloured and damp and there were little pools of water on the things below the tank. That’s not a good sign!
I immediately removed all of the electrics from under the tank and dried a few things out with towels, whilst deciding what to do about it. I could drain it and repair it with some sealant, but we put out a plea for a new suitably sized tank on Facebook and soon had a couple of offers. In the end I bought a tank for £20 from someone in Aberystwyth. The tank we had before was quite old and had a few scratches on the glass, so something a little newer would be nice. However, after collecting the tank from Aberystwyth which also wasn’t new, I started thinking that maybe if I was going to go to the trouble of dismantling the entire tank, removing the water, the fish, the gravel, all of the plants etc etc. that maybe it was time to start looking for a nice new tank, complete with a nice new cabinet and probably new electrics too. The project escalation begins!
Now, if you look through this weblog for posts associated with my aquarium you will see that I have always been quite fussy and particular when it comes to the way my tank is set up. I always go for a tank that has luxuriant plant growth and have in the past produced my own yeast fermentation process that gives off CO2. This CO2 coupled with a fairly deep substrate encourages plant growth. The plants then give off O2 which the fish can utilise and I have to provide very little in the way of filtration. I do however have to provide quite high light levels at an appropriate wavelength to stimulate such plant growth, but I’ve always like the natural look of such a tank. With this in mind, I generally custom build my aquaria, customising the hood to add more lights and choosing a low powered filter that doesn’t disturb the water too much. Too much agitation releases the CO2 just as it does in a can of coke and then it isn’t available to the plants. However, this custom set up does tend to be a little messy in terms of extra cables and starters for the lights and bottles of yeast solution all over the place. Keeping on top of the CO2 production is always a chore too so that often falls by the wayside. In fact, I haven’t actually bothered with the yeast fermentation and CO2 production for a while now, and the plant growth doesn’t seem to have suffered too much. Certain species haven’t thrived since I stopped it, but others seem to be doing well.
Plant Growth in our Aquarium
I had a quick look at the cost of completely new setups that would fit in the space available to me and soon started finding what looked like some nice systems. In particular the Aquatlantis Fusion range looked really nice. The cabinets that they come with had nice clean lines and a good range of colours that looked as though they would fit in well with the decor in the room it would be situated in. The tank itself was a good size, just a little larger than the one it would be replacing so would fit snuggly in the place allocated to it. The lighting is courtesy of LED lights which should be sufficient for plant growth yet use much less electricity and give off less heat. I’m not sure yet if they come with a built in automatic timer that I can set or not. LED lights are also safer than old fashioned fluorescent lighting, and this tank has a nice feature that pumps water up over the top of the light fitting. This cools the LED’s still further prolonging their lifespan, and at the same time heats the water a bit so reducing the work needed to be done by the heater. Quite an elegant, energy saving feature really – unless of course the pump required to do this uses up more energy than the heating would! I was also pleased to see that the hood provides easy access to the tank for maintenance. All too often the hoods only have narrow openings that I know would just annoy me.
The tank obviously comes with a heater and a filter too. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to turn the filter down to as low a flow as I would normally like, but having everything built in and specced as a complete set-up should make the entire aquarium and its cabinet look like a proper piece of furniture in the house rather than a fishtank on a stand! As you can probably guess by now, a new Aquatlantis Fusion 101 Aquarium set up complete with cabinet was duly ordered! It’s yet to arrive but I’m sure I’ll tell you about it here when it does.
So, a nice new aquarium set up that will of course require a fair bit of work to install, especially as it will mean dismantling the old set up, housing the fish and plants elsewhere temporarily (in the £20 tank that I bought) and disposing of the old leaking tank. I haven’t quite sorted out the logistics of this process yet as far as space in the house is concerned, but I’m sure I’ll think of something. Whilst thinking about such logistics it crossed my mind that while the tank is out of the room – something that is difficult to do and therefore rarely done, that maybe it would be a good time to fit a new carpet. The carpet in the office was a VERY cheap one that we put down after building the house and needed replacing. This seemed like the ideal opportunity to do so. The carpet shop was visited, carpets picked and a carpet fitter is coming round to measure up next week. Yes, the project continues to escalate as in order to fit a new carpet, all of the bookshelves, cupboards, filing cabinets, office electronics, computers, desks etc etc. will have to be stripped of their contents and removed from the room too. Lots more work, but it will have to be done at some point, so now is the obvious time to do it.
Of course, if we’re having a new carpet, then it would make sense to paint the walls and give the woodwork another coat of varnish before the new carpet goes down. We’ll soon be off to buy some paint too!
None of this was planned, but we should try to re-decorate one or two rooms each year really just to keep on top of things. I’ve recently done the kitchen so we are catching up with this process and now that the fishtank has sprung a leak it looks as though we’ve talked ourselves into re-decorating the office next – maybe a little sooner than we were expecting to do so, but sometimes you need a little push in the right direction.
