Blazend FW Table/Tank

[blazend]

A little back story i had grown out some babe discus fish starting in a 18 gallon and over to a 30 gallon. My GF decided to surprise me with a crazy acrylic build. A COFFEE TABLE!!!

Right when i unpacked this babe i new it lacked filtration and the idea of salt creep taking over the table took us away from doing a clown fish/anemone setup. We decided to migrate our 30 gallon tank over to this 40 gallon coffee table.

After putting this beautiful coffee table together, I found 1 more issue. The lights it came with were 2 24" 3700k shop lights which were horrible considering they were under the tank and seemed to have dead spots all over which were extremely dark.

So before we even started putting water in the tank i tore the lights out and replaced them with 16 feet of led lighting and wired that to a remote.

So after the hard work of getting this thing setup, filtration and bubbler in it i had to move the fish from the 30. After the cycle completed we decided to move 2 fish at a time and make all levels get to 0 and add 2 more. (we had a total of 8 fish- 4 discus 1 angel 1 cheetah 1 tetra 1 pleco )

Here is the final results

The LED were such a good upgrade. We are able to change the colors to do other things then just white light like above.

My night time is purple and each color has a 5 dimming settings.

 

[blazend]

The discus fish actually started in a fluval edge cause they were smaller then dimes. This is week 4-5 of having them and they were already getting bigger.

 

[Pat24601]

It sure looks cool!

 

[blazend]

Thanks Pat! Not the easiest tank to maintain but it is the first tank mentioned when you walk into my house. I usually have to tell guests that they need to also see my reef tank.

 

[StirCrayzy]

Great novelty, FW is a great idea here, much more likely to be successful!

 

[blazend]

Completely agreed. I wanted it salt but just couldn't do it. I was happy with the choice considering the maintenance i have to do already is not easy compared to other tanks.

 

[PSU4ME]

you'll be changing a lot of water with discus!! looks great with the LED colors

 

[blazend]

When they are small i used to do 90% water changes every sunday and during the week would do a 30%. Now that they are bigger i just keep to the 10 gallon water changes every week.

 

[sirrealism]

I really like this. Many years ago I used a 55g tank as a coffee table tank. I used a sponge filter with a power head on it. I kept a 12" clown knife in it with an 8" red tail cat until they out grew it. Then they went in my pond which was 1200g. We didnt have LEDs back then so the best I could do was curly CFLs which worked ok. Hardest part was keeping algae off of the the top glass. I sure do miss that tank.
Really great job on this. Keeping discus is not easy. They are about the hardest to keep for FW IMO.

 

[blazend]

Thanks Sir! Yes, they are a handful at a young age. They are still quite small but watching them grow has been so fun! The 2 big boys as i call them are finally getting the blue markings on there fins which are amazing. I think they are the only reason i still have FW, without them i would have another saltwater tank.

 

[nivek]

Good call going fw. Saves all the heart and headaches down the road from a sw build. Love the lighting.

 

[blazend]

Thanks Nivek. Here is a picture from yesterday of 1 of the 4 discus fish. He is the 3rd to smallest but the first to get the blue in his fins! (You can see it coming in on the lower body part of fin)

 

[SantaMonicaHelp]

Great looking tank, looks really cool with all the different colors!

~Sandra

The new HOG, SURF and DROP scrubbers from www.Santa-Monica.cc

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