[AdeDunn]

NOT an Opae tank, that's why it's here, but rather me re-purposing her 60 litre tank to house a group of chocolate neocaridina eventually. Kinda resembles my Opae tank though. Not finished filling it yet, as I started fairly late on in the day yesterday and my RO isn't THAT fast. lol

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Just a pic of our little Opae tank for comparison.

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The substrate even looks similar, even though it's completely different stuff.

[odin]

Looks great so far mate, definitely going to be following this thread. I use one of those heaters in my Opae ula tank (that's in your fresh water tank) what do you reckon to them? i've not had any issues so far. 60 Litres is going to be very comfortable for the chocolate shrimps which is awesome. Nice work!

[AdeDunn]

It's the first time I've used one to be honest bud. It can't be any worst than the other makes I've tried though to be honest. Of them all Interpet Delta Therm tend to fail the fastest, and usually by sticking on.... I have a Fluval E heater that we've had for many many years, but they need quite good circulation to work properly and are seriously ugly. The Rena smart heater I had didn't last 5 minutes before failing on me. A Hydor external one I tried once did ok, but then started leaking...

So, at the moment I have a Delta Therm in my big tank in the living room (basically as I already had it, unused), an Eheim in my 30 litre, a Dennerle Nano ThermoCompact in the 50 litre, an Interpet Nano heater in the Opae tank and that AquaEl Gold in the 60 litre. Surely I'll find at least 1 half decent one amongst that lot eh? Oh and got 2 Marina 10 watt nano things ordered for the planned nerite rearing tanks too. I'm probably not going to put a heater in the 60 litre retirement/cull tank under the big one to be honest, too much plugged in there already.

The one thing I have noticed though is that the calibration seems a touch out. I set it to 19 degrees but it's maintaining the tank at 22 degrees Celsius. Luckily though that's not a biggy, as 22 degrees is absolutely fine.

I'll get another pic up in a bit bud, finished filling it now and added the marimo balls I'd bought for it a while ago. Also got 20 more ceramic shrimp cubes ordered (quite a lot of which will go into this one) and 3 floating rock island things, my wife spotted on eBay and asked for, ordered but they'll take a while to get here from Hong Kong. The floating island things should add a bit more vertical interest to an otherwise very low down design.

[AdeDunn]

As promised, an updated pic.

Sent from my NEM-L51 using Tapatalk

[odin]

Nice, have you seen the sponge filters that have the media in the bottom?

[AdeDunn]

I think so, the ones that look like a round corner filter with a sponge on top? I'm getting crystal clear water with these Huijukon ones though to be honest. They're a LOT bigger than the ones you usually get on eBay and the like, and cost a bit more. Hook em up to an air pump with a decent air output though and they're awesome. I've got one in my bee tank too as I'm switching that one over to air driven too.

Took a few more pics too, this time partly to illustrate how you can use LED back-lighting with this backing (it's the privacy film that I've mentioned before). It'd work much better with orange, yellow or red LEDs though for sure.

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[odin]

Looks awesome! These are the filters i was talking about: 'QANVEE Bio Sponge Filter'



Pretty cool if you need this sort of thing, i have read of some people using one side for purigen and the other for media.

[AdeDunn]

Ahhh, no not seen those ones before. They remind me of the design of the AquaEL power filters (got a 500 in my big tank).

[AdeDunn]

The cube stack has grown! lol

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[odin]

Looks good man, i use these and i really like them too! https://www.amazon.co.uk/Eco-Bricks-Pur ... eco+bricks