Aquarium Do It Yourself

100 Pages·2011·2.72 MB·English

PetFish.Net Guide - Aquarium Do It Yourself
Catch Your Fish The Easy Way
By: Jubs
Well I have seen a lot people talking about catching their fish in planted and heavily decorated
tanks and how much of a pain it is. Here is a easy and simple way to catch your fish without tearing
up your tank.
What you need to make it:
Plastic bottle
Razor blade or scissors
The Procedure:
Cut the neck a bit below the taper from the top...
Take the cap off (no brainer but you never know
Flip the top part and put it into the bottle inverted, like so...
Toss in some food, I have found frozen works the best as it attracts the fish more but any will work
for the most part. Then slowly put into the tank and let the air bubbles out and let it sink to the
bottom of the tank. Then you walk away or watch, but it can take from 1 minute or an hour
sometimes depending on how long it takes the fish to figure their way into the trap. 9 out of 10
times they won't be able to figure how to get out. This is useful if you are trying to catch a certain
fish, wait then sort out the fish when the fish you want is in it!
You can make different sizes to accommodate tank and fish size.
These also work very well for catching shrimp as well. This has saved me a lot of frustration over
the years of using it and I highly recommend it for anyone but especially for people with heavily
planted tanks. You can also cut the tip off the bottle a bit if your fish are a little bit bigger then the
opening.
DIY "Tiny Tank" Gravel Vaccuum
By: Jubs

Well I wanted something to get a good cleaning on my smaller tanks without just using the usual
airline to suck out water I wanted a way to get gunk out of the substrate as well. If you have ever
tried doing that with just a piece of hose you know things just get sucked up there is no swirling
around and actual cleaning just straight down the hose! So I came up with this idea...
What you need:
4-5 feet section of standard airline hose
1 plastic 3 ml pipette/eyedropper (whatever size you can get would work but I wouldn't go any
smaller)
A pair of scissors
And finally about 45 seconds
Here's the supplies...
Make a cut on each end like so... (note I would cut less off the big end next time)
Put the airline on the small end of the hose and you're ready to go !
I used this on my 2.5g with sand and it works great! If you get too much suction and have
something like sand you can just pinch the hose a bit to restrict the flow and keep the sand in your
tank. It works like a regular gravel vac as in it will let the gravel circulate in the tube and fall back
down to the bottom, this was the main purpose for making it as you can't do that with a plain hose!
It also gives you enough time to actually clean the tank with the slower flow. I have the smallest
commerically made gravel vac I can find designed for small tanks and it's too fast to get a good
cleaning in before the water level is too low.
DIY In Tank Cannister Filter
By Jubs

So I was at the Dollar Tree (for the people that don't know it's a store that everything is a $1 or
less) yesterday and I came across this...
They are a nut and bolt set with the nuts and bolts separated with screw together plastic
containers. Having had several cannister filters over the years these some what resembled some
of the filter media baskets I have used and something clicked! :hmmm: I have been trying to figure
out something for my 55g as I wanted to up my filtration a bit and I really didn't want to spend much
money in doing so and my option was to pick up an HOB or add another cannister... Well I had an
extra Aqua clear 30 power head...I picked up two of them. When I got home I broke out the
Dremel (I don't even bother to put it away any more I just keep it in my stash spot in my desk in the
fish room still plugged in :hihi:)
So to begin I removed the sticker from the lid, this proved to be a major PITA and I ended up using
a wire brush bit in my Dremel to get all the adhesive off it...
Then I swiss cheesed all the baskets with the Dremel like this...
I added some PTFE/ Plumbers tape to the threads just for extra sealing of the threads. Here is how
I attached the power head to the lid. The hole was snug but for good measure I added a small
piece of rubber hosing to use as like a retaining clip. I did have to trim the flow adjustment arm
down to get it to sit as flush as possible to the lid.
Then I cut a piece of open cell foam I had laying around from another project and put it into the first
basket.