# Finally working on my floor space



## 6Gears1Speed (Mar 18, 2013)

Hi guys. I've pretty much finished collecting the basic hardware to get my 75 going so I've started experimenting with ideas on floor space. For this tank I wanted to try and use some of the otherwise wasted space on the upper half of the tank so I'm considering a "second floor" so to speak. I imagine people have done this before but I haven't so I'm gonna give it a try. I found some plastic mini crates to use for a foundation, painted them with Krylon Fusion and attached some slate tile with cable ties. The top/second floor is a slate paver with a piece of driftwood I screwed into it. I plan on putting some gravel up there but whether it stays up there or not is questionable since these guys like to move gravel. I don't even know if they will use that floor space to begin with. I might add a piece of pvc or something for a cave up there. By the time it's done I hope to have most of the foundation hidden and I'll have some sort of synthetic plants in there to hide things as well. This is what it looks like so far.


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## cichlid-gal (Apr 27, 2012)

Cute idea. Rather than using zip ties to secure your slate you can use aquarium safe silicon. I think plants would be a good idea too. I've seen java moss mats that you could make to cover the sides of the boxes with also. Plants and stone will make it more realistic looking.

One other idea for this would be to leave the walls in between the two boxes and on the sides so that two distinct caves are created rather than one big one with openings everywhere or make a vertical stack. Lots of possibilities.

Please share pictures when its in the tank and the fish are using it


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## 6Gears1Speed (Mar 18, 2013)

I thought about two separate caves but then I thought it might be better to have escape routes for squatters. If a fish claims that territory I wouldn't want another fish to be trapped and then cannibalized. If there were lots of smaller caves it might be different. I also was thinking that I want to actually see my fish and not have them hide so much that I can't see them. This way I have a view from both the front and sides.

I wanted to use some sort of adhesive rather than ties but the slate is flat and smooth so I doubt anything would permanently stick. Maybe I'm wrong but that area will be covered in substrate anyway as long as they don't move it. Same for the bottom parts of the frame. I suppose I could try drilling holes for the adhesive to grab.

I wasn't crazy about the wood so I took it off for now. I'm experimenting with some rocks. It doesn't look like much now but once I'm done I hope to have it looking more natural, aside from the fact that it's a perfect rectangle  .


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## 6Gears1Speed (Mar 18, 2013)

The more I try to get creative the more I keep coming back to PVC. It doesn't look natural but it really is the perfect cave. Light weight, sinks, different shapes and sizes etc... People used to love it in my 55. I think I'll wind up with a mixture of natural stone and some pvc. I have 5 pieces of it in my 10 with 8 fish and when I turn the lights out they all have their own little hiding spot. The blue johanni's have burrowed under them.


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## toddnkaya (Apr 27, 2013)

5Gears, 
I would ditch the whole egg crate thing. It looks artificial in my opinion. I would skip the PVC too. The idea is create a natural aqua scape , something you might see in Lake Malawi. Tanks can hold hundreds of pounds of rock, so I see no reason for the milk crate thing. 
I would take a look at the best tanks from rate the tank above you thread and type in 75 gallon cichlid tank on YouTube . You can get some awesome rock from LFS or go to a landscaping yard and go nuts. Get some slate, or river rock, Texas holy rock , etc. and stack up some beautiful rock formations . No need for egg crate motel.
Also sand is better for cichlids than gravel.
Instead of PVC you can buy cichlid caves that look really natural or create enough holes and caves with rock.
This of course is my opinion and I do not mean to insult your efforts. I just want to see you develope a beautiful aqua scape . Good luck! Todd


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## 6Gears1Speed (Mar 18, 2013)

I didn't like the crates either so I changed things. I do however like PVC a lot. I'm not as interested in recreating lake Malawi as I am in functionality. The PVC comes in all shapes and sizes and even though the tanks can hold a lot of weight, using lightweight materials makes it easier to manage. Cleaning and rearranging is a lot easier, for me anyway. Here I've created a lot of nooks and crannies for the fish move in and out of and I have more floor space due to multiple levels. Heck, I may even add a third floor with more PVC. Everyone who has ever seen my past tanks liked the PVC and the way they look so that doesn't concern me. I also used egg crate and love it. Thanks for who ever thought of that! I like spreading the weight around and keeping the substrate in place even if it's not required. I found out that have a Leslie pool store nearby so I got 50 lbs. of sand and mixed it almost 50/50 with crushed coral that I already had. I didn't even use it all.


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## Demigod (Mar 22, 2013)

I personally would never use PVC like that... and when I read that's the direction you were going I rolled my eyes.. by I must admit, I really like what you put together there! After some time passes you might even get some algae on the PVC.. don't clean it off! That might look pretty cool!


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## 6Gears1Speed (Mar 18, 2013)

Thanks, I think :lol: . I tried to hide it more than usual this time. Algae does grow on the PVC and it turns green. I still have some small pieces with green on it from years ago but these are new 3" pipes. I went bigger due to the bigger tank. In the past I had to use a Pleco though because the glass got too messy and I had to clean it too often. They clean up the pvc and everything else as I'm sure you know. I scrubbed two more pieces of slate in advance in case I wanted to build another level and tomorrow I'm going to see what it looks like. If it's too much I'll just remove them. I'm gonna try to lift off the existing slate as is and add the other level in the middle then put this on top. The rocks came from Cape Cod, Nova Scotia and Newport beaches. Some have nice stripes that you can't see in the pics and when it gets wet they pop. There are some nice red ones in there too.


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## Demigod (Mar 22, 2013)

I was being honest.. I think you changed my view on PVC a bit. If you put the second layer on top of the first layer won't that expose the PVC more? Looks good now, to me, because the slate hides it but leaves it functional.


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## toddnkaya (Apr 27, 2013)

Tank looks great!!


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## 6Gears1Speed (Mar 18, 2013)

AaronB said:


> I was being honest.. I think you changed my view on PVC a bit. If you put the second layer on top of the first layer won't that expose the PVC more? Looks good now, to me, because the slate hides it but leaves it functional.


That's exactly what happened. I bought two pieces of 3" three way PVC (Sanitary T) and put them only on one side to see how it looked. I put the T's back to back with a space between so you could see through the pipes front to back and from the sides. I took the existing left slate level off, added a layer of slate, put the two news pipes on that and placed the original layer on top. Although it did add more caves and floor space, it looked too crowded and the PVC was much more visible. I took it out.

The plant lying down on the right is fairly tall and I'm going to add one or two more tall plants to get some height in there but no more levels. I cable tie long thin rocks to the bottom of my plants and surround them with rocks so they stay put and you can't see the base. The other little plants come with ceramic bases and supposedly stay put but I've never used them before so I don't know how they will work out. I'll weigh them down if I have to. I don't know if this will be the final configuration and I'm in search of a filter so I have time to play around with it. I have lots of rocks.


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## 6Gears1Speed (Mar 18, 2013)

By the way, the inner pipes are 3" Y pipes with the two openings facing forward, and the outside pipes are T's so you can see front to back and from the side. I like to configure my tanks so that no matter where the fish are settling I can see them. The only time I can't see them is when they borrow under the PVC which they always do.


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## 6Gears1Speed (Mar 18, 2013)

OK well that didn't work for me so I changed it up a bit. I'll wait until I'm done before pics this time :lol: . Lets just say that the PVC haters are gonna hate bad but my fish are gonna LOVE it. The only problem I'm going to have is if I ever have to remove a fish. It's gonna be **** to capture him with all the nooks and cranny's I've built. Hopefully nobody gets sick. No pet store water for sure.


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## 6Gears1Speed (Mar 18, 2013)

Water is in so I figured I'd post the latest.

*** Here's a slideshow of the fish in the tank if you're interested... ***
http://s812.photobucket.com/user/dfs2010/slideshow/Animals/Aquarium/75 Gallon African Cichlid Tank


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## DJRansome (Oct 29, 2005)

This topic is continued here:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=257622


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