30g Emergency Redo

[Gilbotron]

Bit of a craptastic long weekend... One of my tanks (30g coal slag experiment) sprung a leak so I had to empty it and get a new one up and running asap.  I had another 30g I was already planning to redo in a couple months, so I tore that one down, frosted the back, then re-set it up.  Ton of work (cleaning gravel/sand from dirted tanks is not fun!), but luckily it was a long weekend so I had the time to get it all done from start to finish.  The livestock only had to live in buckets for ~24 hrs which was good.

Very similar to how it was before (if you saw it on the Substrate discussion), but much less rock - I wanted more open water for the White Clouds which look great against the frosted back.  Dirted and capped it with coal slag.  Dwarf sag, marsilea hirsuta, hygro and moss trees (WIP) all from the previous setup, and the sword, rotala and some random grass from the other 30 I tore down.  Its a cold water tank so will see how the Sword and rotala fare (the marsilea is barely hanging on) - I have low expectations for all but the moss and sag.  Its looking a little weedy now, but once the dwarf sag and moss starts taking off it should get pretty lush.  I want it to be a low maintenance tank for a large crayfish colony so keeping it real simple (read: functionally planted).

All 20 White Clouds and 10 dwarf mexican crays seem to be liking the new digs...

[matttimms49]

Oh man, that's a worry I think we all have a surprise leak! How did you go about the clean up. I wouldn't know where to start I think I would just panic.

Glad that you had the time to get it sorted and that everyone survived. Did you hook up some kind of filter for the bucket?

The new set up looks good, really looking forward to seeing how the moss tree grows in

[Gilbotron]

I got really lucky - it was a slow leak and I caught it pretty early.  It was a sizeable puddle when I first found it, so I cleaned it up, then checked again 3 hours later and same size puddle.  So I filled 2 x 5g buckets with tank water (and drained the rest), then transferred the fish, crays, rocks, and plants into the buckets.  Ya, I put the filter from the tank in one of the buckets (to keep it seeded - its an in tank filter) then added a small hob i had lying around to the other bucket (with some lava rock from another tank for media).  Once that was done it was just a matter of tearing down the tanks and rebuilding...

Buckets were pretty well setup so I could have left it for weeks like that, except for the fact that crays are escape artists and white clouds are jumpers, so I figured there would be some attrition the longer I left them as I don't have good lids for the buckets.

[matttimms49]

Still a big job to do out of the blue though, glad you rescued it. What type of moss are you planning for the tree by the way?

[Gilbotron]

Weeping moss (thanks Brian!).  I inserted little tufts into some of the areas and now just waiting for it to grow out.  I'm finding plants/moss grow a lot slower in cold water so might be a while for it to fill out.

[matttimms49]

oh nice, I was thinking of using weeping moss on top of the tree roots in my tank too. Just tricky to get a hold of it.