Tazawa Tanks on YouTube has a few videos on mudskippers. He keeps mainly freshwater but has a couple brackish tanks with mudskippers and puffers, you should check him out for more info. They are definitely cool fish and on my list to keep one day.
He does have some great mudskipper videos!
Incredible seeing all the tanks lined up like that!Sorry it has taken so long for an update but I was out of the country and then a whole bunch happened all at once!
Spoiler alert the stands are here and the tanks are on the stands and I am working on getting them functional in between teaching and grading!
Here are some pictures of what we have done so far!
Here are the tanks in front of the custom stands.
Here are the backs getting painted.
Final coat on the large tanks and we got the small one up on the stand. I started to aqua scape it while I waited for the paint to dry.
The small tank. It was such a relief when we were able to get one of the tanks up and it fit perfectly!
A while later I was able to get most of the faculty to help put the large tanks up after some beginning of the year teachers meetings. Seeing them all up on the stands was a little weird for me because it looked so much like the 3D rendering that I had be working with for almost a year!
Next I added some aqua scaping to the the freshwater tank and some sand to the brackish water tank. I had to keep the aqua scape fairly simple because the pacu will have to go back in this tank.
I filled up the small tank.
And added the old fish in. I felt fairy comfortable doing this because the filter was moving with them. Unfortunately, the move stressed them out and caused some of them to die from a bacterial infection.
We then tried to move the rock for the saltwater tank... (it didn't go well)
When we moved it to the tank most of the aqua scape fell apart. I think I may have made the pieces to big or not used enough mortar. What ever caused it, it ended up looking nice when we were finished. This aqua scape will give more room for coral growth too. It was still one of the worst feelings to pick up the rock structures that the students helped me build only to have them fall apart in my hands.
I also filled the large freshwater tank to get it starting to cycle. You may notice that there is some water in the saltwater tank as well. This is the water that I had from running our RODI over the summer. I could have had more but I only had 2 brute trash cans to store the water in.
Adding more water!
Here is where it stands as of now. I know that I shouldn't leave the lights on but I wanted to test them out and make sure they were working. You may also notice that the water level is still pretty low. We have been having issues getting the right size bulk heads to plumb the overflow. I think we finally are on the right track though and only need one more that should be in next week. I am going to start plumbing a bean animal in the overflow while we wait for the last piece and see if I can get things setup for the returns as well. The sump is currently sitting in my classroom waiting to come out to the tanks. The filter for the freshwater tank is currently sitting on top of it. That will have to be a whole other post!
For right now the saltwater tank is sitting there with two gyre pumps to keep the water flowing. I have also been adding so Microbactor 7 and some fish food to get the bacteria going while we are waiting.
