Is this tank workable?

[unwired]

I thought I'd put this up to a vote...

Some quick background:
While doing my research on an acrylic nano I'm building I came across an ebay auction I couldn't resist for a super cheap 6 Gallon Glass tank. (The thing only cost me $37 shipped, incl light and powerhead!!!).

Before people start asking too many questions about getting one let me add some important info. The unit was shipped via USPS and looked like it was drop kicked to my front door. Amazingly the glass looks fine. However, the plastic is cheap and the rim around the light and filter area had stress fractures and needed to be crazy glued back down. Additionally, the manufacturer didn't tape down the conponents inside so one internal wall of the filter was completely cracked off (my guess was the powerhead rattled around). I glued that back too so all 'should' be A-OK but only time will tell.

Anyhow, the auction didn't have a view of the filter and its cheaper than I hoped. I'm not a firm believer it's good enough for a nano reef. Since it's glass my only option would be to drill thru the plastic filter and port the powerhead out to a refugium I could make from plexi and affix to the rear of the tank. Then port a hole back into the filter on the opposite and for a return.

On the other hand, my daughter has a goldfish who is almost 3 years old and is living in a cramped 1 Gallon Walmart tank. Should I scrap this as a reef (I'm still building my plexi nano anyhow) and give her fish a new home?

Thanks.

--- Hmm, file is an 80kb jpg but doesn't want to upload into the files directory. If anyone wants to see it or has suggestions let me know.

 

[Trogdor]

I can't really give you any votes because I would need to know if the tank could even hold water without it breaking apart. It sounds like everything was loose during shipping and it may have weakened the glass some. I would fill it and check for leaks. If no leaks then I would add all the power heads and filters that you have in it to see if moving water has any affect on it. If not then it's probably safe to use for what ever you want.

 

[drty811]

i would give her fish a new home and hope fo rthe best

 

[unwired]

Well, I thought I would do the goldfish a favor but I made a big mistake. (To add insult to injury, my wife had no interest in a bigger tank and told me I'd kill my daughters her fish.) :cry:

The goldfish seemed to be doing OK and was eating in his new & pretty tank but I woke up this morning to find him dead. I'm not exactly certain about the cause but I'm fairly sure that a number of factors lead to his death.

I don't think it was the large water change as goldfish normally do fine. There are however a few things I didn't watch out for. First, the powerhead gave off too many bubbles do I disconnected the air line figuring that there would be enough oxygenation from the filter flow that had multiple drips into the tank. Second, I didn't realize that the new tank location was poor and found out too late that the water tamp reached 86deg this morning. (Prob partially the powerhead heat + baseboard heating and window). Additionally, I added a fake plant to the tank but I thought I rinsed it off well.

My daughter seemed to be pretty OK with my error but I'm beating myself up over it a bit b/c I should have watched it more carefully. I could lose 1/2 dozen saltwater fish and not feel as badly as losing her 2 year old goldfish. I suppose that perhaps it's something of a life lesson for everyone. On my side it's about being more careful and for them it's about everything being finite.

Well, I'm not exactly sure what to do about the tank at this point. I suppose I'll let it sit for a while and work on getting my Nano started ("slowly and carefully"). The Nano components are supposed to arrive today and I will begin cycling my tank & sump shortly. I suppose I could always use the 6G as a sick tank or just somewhere to store extra water for now.

 

[Trogdor]

sorry to hear about the death. sounds like the tank over heated. 86F is pretty warm but i'm not sure how flexible fresh water fish are with temp. it also could have been stress related. hope everything turns out well and good luck with your nano.

 

[davenia7]

goldfish really need to stay around 70 degrees as they are a colder water fish and not your standard tropical. I'm guessing that is your fatal error.

 

[KidNano]

how old is your daughter? mine will be born in about 3 weeks. that's tough man. Probably harder on you then her.

 

[unwired]

My daughter is 8 now. Two years ago her teacher bought everyone in the class a fish as a going away present. I met a few families at Walmart buying cheap tanks just like we were.

We heard from others that within a week the vast majority of these feeder goldfish were dead. I let the fish be and fed him a few times a week religiously changing out the water whenever it started to look dirty. I always rinsed the gravel and cleaned the algea off the walls. He seemed pretty hardy. Since he was always alone in the tank his fins looked great and he was getting pretty large in size.

When I got the 6G glass tank in I was going to use is as a spare Nano tank but the cheap-o filtering it had got me worried. Whatever I do next with it, I'll be sure to keep a watchful eye on all the parameters to ensure that whatever I put in has a fighting chance at survival.

On the bright side, my Nano parts did arrive today and I'm cutting some acrylic to build an overflow box with. My biggest issue is that lack of a good level surface here but after I play with a few test strips I'm hoping to seem everything together and start testing out the system. I'm still not 100% sure of my calc for head loss with the pump and I'll need ot play quite a bit to ensure that I don't force too much water into the tank from the sump.

 

[Trogdor]

check out reefcentral.com they have a head loss calculator on their site that works pretty well. it has most of the pumps on the market built in to it.

 

[unwired]

Yep, been there.

What I'm not totally sure about is the comb part of the overflow. I don't know how many combs I should make or how deep each line should be. I figure I can guess and make the combs a bit longer. I can always block them off with some plexi to shorten the length and slow things down a bit.

 

[unwired]

Pic of the 6G Nano

Here's a photo of the 6G tank.

It is a very pretty tank, I'll say that much. You can see the powerhead in the upper left which overheated the tank and killed my daughters goldfish.

I now have a h.o.t. filter connected and decided to run the powerhead temporarily as a makeshift heater.