Ash Posted July 18, 2008 Share Posted July 18, 2008 Hey peeps, I've been breeding the yellows & BN for ages with a random assortment of 2nd hand tanks for grow out & the actual breeding colonies. I finally got a rack setup & got rid of one of my old tanks, I haven't finished the lighting yet but for the moment anyway here it is... The stand is made from 40mm square RHS (or is it called SHS?) with a 3mm wall thickness, it is absurdly strong, you could put a car up on it easy. It is simply painted with some cold cal, then hammer coat anti rust paint. The top pair of breeding tanks are 920x480x450h in mm with a 20mm hebel backgrounds siliconed in, but not before being coated with plenty of pond liner in a limestone colour. Substrate is a mix of fine silica sand & left over coral sand from my nano reef tank, also there is some random handfuls of river sand from the evicted tank for the hell of it. The rocks are limestone to help with natural buffering. Electic Yellows on the left (growing out some peppermint BN to go with them) and Ps. acei "Tanzania on the right (still teenagers, no mouthfuls noticed yet) with an established albino BN colony (1m 3f). Ages ago I got an old cracked 10mm 6x18x18 for free off a friend, I patched the crack & added some over/under dividers with gutterguard to make it four 18" cubes for grow out space with the same water conditions as the parents. And finally, my largest Red Devil finally has a decent size tank! The poor guy was in a std 4' tank due to lack of space & his own agro but he was starting to struggle to turn around in it - now he has a 4x2 all to himself, except for some convicts & silver dollars to play with. So funny watching a lucky to be 10cm male convict back down a 27+cm red devil, even funnier when his 6cm wife does it too! That's all for now. The tanks are murky as with the new substrate & need a water change, also the lighting has to be shuffled around to its final, more workable locations Filtration is a DIY plastic tub sump with bioballs up out of the water with hobby fill sitting on top of the drip plate as a mechanical pre filter. I have to upsize this now as the 100l sump capacity isn't large enough, tho I have a 200l tub I was using for grow out that will do nicely. The pump is a Laguna 7500 feeding through a short bit of 25mm vinyl hose into "25mm" pressure PVC that actually has a 29mm ID. I had wanted to upgrade this to all 32mm to get a little more out of the pump but I already have more flow than the through the side 25mm dursos can handle so looks like I was worried about nothing. I could even add another tank or two onto the system (have a spare outlet plumbed up in the PVC just in case). Cheers Ash Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ged Posted July 18, 2008 Share Posted July 18, 2008 The rack is excellent. It is good to see all your hard work in chasing up a great colony of Yellows has paid off. They show great colour as does the offspring. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcloughlin2 Posted July 19, 2008 Share Posted July 19, 2008 Just congratulating you on getting such an excellent colony of yellows going. I remember when the pictures of the few yellows you had before you had some shipped to you and lets say your colony has come a loooooong way. Looks great Ash. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ash Posted July 19, 2008 Author Share Posted July 19, 2008 The colony is largely thanks to Doug on the gold coast (Dfishkeeper), though I have added some other females to the colony as I've found decent ones. The local yellows up here really were woeful back then, still are to a degree. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kilroy Posted July 19, 2008 Share Posted July 19, 2008 Gday mate, You don't happen to have any pics of the rack without the tank do you? I am currently looking at welding up a steel rack and I'm just looking at the structural designs and what reinforcements need to be made. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ash Posted July 19, 2008 Author Share Posted July 19, 2008 neglected to take any sorry, tho I diid make a diagram before making it - only change was gussets in all the upright joints because of the legs being on the outside, but really they were probably overkill, tho I like overkill. The Gussets were simply little pieces of the RHS cut on opposing 45* angles to make a nice 90* to fit into the corners, twelve in all didn't the drop saw love that bit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kilroy Posted July 19, 2008 Share Posted July 19, 2008 Thanks very much for that. Well planned! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DFishkeeper Posted July 19, 2008 Share Posted July 19, 2008 Hi Ash, Nice setup there Good to see those yellows are doing so well, they look great Cheers, Doug Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
azzah Posted July 28, 2008 Share Posted July 28, 2008 How much did the 40mm square RHS cost you? I'm thinking about building a stand like that soon my dad is a panel beater so he has all the welding gear Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GundamCichlid Posted July 30, 2008 Share Posted July 30, 2008 Good posting! Please share the build up cost if you dont mind. Btw does the 40mm square with 3mm thickness will be strong enough for 6ftx20x20 if you only build it with four leg like table. Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ash Posted July 30, 2008 Author Share Posted July 30, 2008 Regarding cost, I actually was given the RHS from a family friend - it was left over from a job he did 2+yrs ago so was pretty weathered & took a lot of cleaning up to make it usable. I think retail the 3 8m lengths (which I only used like 2.5m of the last one) would cost about $80-120 each? Really no idea on cost of the steel hey, all it cost me was a cut off saw wheel, some MIG wire & a fair wack of anti rust paint. Regarding a 6' span - even though this stuff pretty rigid it still bows when you lift it so I don't know about a 6' span without a centre support. One of my 4x2x2 tanks (the green one pictured above) is on 40x40x1.5mm stand with a 4' span & has been fine for about 3 years. Even though obviously the 3mm wall thickness is a lot stronger again than 1.5mm, I'd feel safer with say 40x60x3 (or something like that) with the wider edge sitting vertically to lessen the chance of bowing. Even then, I'm not an engineer so I really don't know if that'd be enough or too much. When in doubt, consult an expert or just build it way too strong. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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