the unwanted improvised african display...

a while back i attempted to "convert to dirt" and start up a fw planted tank... and it failed miserably.... (my organic dirt was leeching too much tannins into my water and the tank looked full of icetea lol)

i gutted it and started over.

so i took this badass texas holey rock from my 240 i had sold, a bucket of crushed coral from jason's reef tank he took down, a 4 foot powercompact reef light i wasnt using, and a Rena XP4 canister filter for a 265 gallon tank... and managed to stuff it all into a 55 gallon tank. over 100lb of rock here. i think it looks AWESOME!




3 black mollies in there lookin aweful small in this tank by themselves lol

dang that cellphone pic looks bad.... its all white on white... the cam had a hard time picking up the detail in the bottom half of the tank... looks better in person.

Looks cool. I know how you feel about white balance!! Lol

Thats cool John, I like that big ole rock with the cave through it! So what are you puttin in it?

I like it!

Looks nice. Have you made a stocklist yet? A colony of demasoni and a few labs would rock that tank! Don't worry about the white. It will be covered in algae in a few days. . . one of the things I don't like about holy rock is how bad it looks once it becomes "established" in the tank. Maybe a few bristle nose plecos would handle that though.

I love the "thrown together" approach, especially when it turns out so damned good.
I love the rock and crushed shell effect, out of interest, did you have to do anything about possible leeching from the rock making the tank too saline?
How about only going half way from SW and making it a Brackish tank? Mono's would look awesome in there!

i think i want to do electric yellow labs with this tank... but im completly open to suggestions and opportunities.

not worried about leeching, this rock spent the better part of a year soaking in my 240, which was a freshwater tank, and i washed all the substrate thoroughly before i put it in the tank...

African's like salt anyway. I have added as much as a tablespoon per 10g and would recommend 1 teaspoon per 10g. It brightens them up and helps protect from some illnesses. Labs will look cool, but you may find that the color looks a little washed out by all the light colored decor. A naturally darker fish would really pop against the light aqua scape. That's one reason I suggested demasoni.

I definitely agree with Stick on the color combination. Thats why I got really dark rocks. I knew I wanted labs, not sure about anything else, but those I was sure of.

Some of the african species with darker colorations would really pop against all the white. I am still new to the Africans, but we go a couple guys on here (Stick being one) that might be able to offer some advice in that arena.

that demasoni is one wicked looking fish.


the 3 black mollies spawned, now have about 60 fry scattered about in the rock work.... lol...

That's some awesome Holey rock, where the hell did you find that?! Also, nice beer

Shank wrote:That's some awesome Holey rock, where the hell did you find that?! Also, nice beer

thanks, i got it from a guy on a forum.

its great, Newcastle Brown Ale, the one and only... the best

Agreed, I love Newcastle! If you can find it, I'd recommend Wychwood's Hobgoblin, this is my personal favorite. If you can't find it, I can snag a couple six pack for you and bring with when we meet up in a couple weeks!

If you like Hobgoblin, then if you see Speckled Hen, you will probably like that too. It's regarded as a "Bitter" in the UK, but is full flavoured and fairly dark for a Bitter.

As for the Austin Holey Rock, I've been looking online but it cost's a fortune. Anyone know of a source that doesn't try to make it sound as though it's been personally dug up by Lance Armstrong?

i found a piece the day i moved to this house in my backyard the size of my head... and it even had a face on it...

pretty neat

yesh... sometimes i feel like batman.




lol!

Lol

Lol, thats awesome

a lil better photo from my friends camera phone.



and 2 pics of my reef from the same phone.

*drools* nice reef tank

Wow Win that's amazing, you set up the tank with 3 mollies, and within a few days you got ALL those corals etc to grow, I never knew marine was so easy!

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lol thats two dif tanks :p

WHAT????
You mean that I can't have the rights to "Wins Wonder Growth" .. dammit, I was going to be making a bundle off the Nano Tank contestants.....say nothing, we may still pull it off.

Lol