Ya the one I mentioned above. I found it was all the same online, no matter if ebay, amazon, petco, petsmart, walmart, jet, chewy, and even many online pet stores. Its Tetra, Aqueon, Corral Life, Fluval, Lendel, Aqua unless you got to one of the few custom made sites which charge insane amounts. Fluval actually makes a 32.5 gallon I like that is long and wide but not too long, but a few inches out of my comfort zone in spacing. Instead of having the back 1/4th of the tank closed off, it is only the center back with a easily removed cover and 2 pumps/filters behind it. Thought it was pretty genius.
Ya I been fighting that for weeks now.
Look for weed grow lights. They're a shit load cheaper than anything labeled "aquarium". Or do like I did with the domes and use high watt LED full-spectrum bulbs. This shit kicks so much ass, I couldn't contain how well my tank was growing with something like this with CO2.
The other part of it was he would throw in the stand that goes with it and a 24" led strip ( it comes with a led hood with 1 slot filled but has a 2nd you can get many various 24" led strips to fill for additional lighting ) with the 26g bow kit all new for $210. Stand normally $140, light $23 Tank is 190-210 elsewhere alone.That's a nice kit, I just really, really fucking hate bowed tanks. Bow top to bottom looks like absolute shit. Side to side is tolerable if viewed from directly in front of it. Any angle is gonna mess with the viewing experience.
I'd even suggest going with a cube (more vertical space) if it means more gallons. And yeah, no way is a dresser supporting a 40ga tank. The stand needs to be structurally reinforced with 2x4's on the corners.
Low iron glass tanks are the tits, I must admit. Very clear glass. Not so much an issue on smaller tanks, since the glass doesn't need to be very thick, or in most cases is acrylic, but on your 100+ga tanks, the glass can have a green tint to it. It was very noticeable when my old stepfather had a 220ga saltwater predator tank.
Btw, Petco and what-not sell the glass covers to put on those open-top tanks. Another thing I did for a while was to use egg crate diffuser panels. They're cheap as shit and you can cut them to fit as a makeshift cover that's not bulky. It holds the weight of a cat unless only three sides are hitting the lip of the tank. Ask me how I know lol... I had a small 20ga and only had three sides hitting the lip, as I'd cut it short. The cat climbed on top, and it bowed in and the cat fell into the water with the light. Fortunately, the light was on a timer and off at the time, or I might have had a fried kitty (kidding, it was a bathroom socket with a safety breaker on it).
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I've also used dome lamps you can get at Home Depot for like $6 and put in LED bulbs. That was a super cheap way to produce crazy high lighting I needed for growing plants with CO2. Just take off the clamp and set it right on top of the egg crate diffuser.
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Right now I'm rocking a $350 BuildMyLED strip. Built locally. Well fuck... looks like they closed up shop a few years back. The LED's will last 10-15 years (more with the dimmer). The owner of the company had lighting down to an extreme science, both in its efficiency and appearance. A real shame, because everything else out there that's not a simple plant grow-light or designed for coral is overpriced hot garbage.
greenleafaquariums.com
Amazing tanks. CRAZY overpriced. It's cheaper to have a custom tank built with low iron glass that's ported for a sump with a custom stand.
This tank is the first I got to work with grass covering the substrate. 54 litre tank with co2 and 60watt of LED light. Not sure what the grass is called, GF do all the shopping for plants.
Sounds like basic Amazon swords. They suck up all the nutrients in the water and if they're not replenished they starve and die. I had a large cluster of them. I have an inch of soil under two inches of black tahitian sand, with 12-12-12 tomato growing nutrients embedded in the soil, and dosed the water with green leaf aquarium PPS package. They grew large enough to take up almost 50% of the tank, long stems would reach up and out of the tank, occasionally flowering.
Stopped dosing and they died off after a month or so.
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