Random Bits of Projects

March 28, 2009

Air Pump Hazards to Remember.

a532361Many of you with fish tanks have at least one air pump and bubble stone. Often they are on the floor because of noisy vibrations or other area a little away from the tank. I just wanted to throw a quick post reminding people who have tanks and alerting those about to start the hobby an easy way of killing your fish due to forgetting about the nature of many of your pumps.

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March 8, 2009

Convert an old-style filter cartridge for the new Tetra model. Save money and customize!

tetra-filter-cropped

(Finally a post!! Woohoo! Geez, long title huh?)filter-cage-new-filter

Some of you out there may be thinking of getting, or have bought, a the newer version of the Tetra, Whisper filter for your fish tank. The type that hangs over the back. The price of the filter cartridges that go with these new ones are expensive when compared to the old models that you can buy in bulk and assemble yourself. This might be putting you off. Or you have several old cartridges laying about you need to use up. Or you maybe your store does not carry the replacements (recently here). Well there is a solution! (Insert happy noises here!)

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November 25, 2008

DIY Aquarium Glass Scraper-Use Those Annoying Plastic Cards!

cc-scraper-blueDo you keep getting those plastic, mock credit cards in the mail? Or how about those free membership cards for use at places such as Best Buy or PetSmart? The kind that you have to save and use at checkout to earn points, but just keep piling up as you save one for each store. If you have a fish tank, you can make a glass scraper out of them. Revenge!

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August 13, 2008

Build a Strong, Inexpensive Aquarium Stand

Welcome!!

This is my most popular post. Thanks for visiting!



Most recent update: March 2011. An idea for hiding cords and a suggestion for leveling the tank has been added. The bulk of this was written a few years ago.

Fish keeping can get to be an expensive hobby. I recently, at the time of this posting, had to upgrade to a 55 gallon aquarium on a very limited budget so I needed an inexpensive stand. For my smaller tanks, I managed to use furniture on hand but this was not possible for a large, heavy tank.

I looked at stands for sale at pet shops and was horrified by the quality of the stands for the price that was asked. They did not look like they would last long. After checking out reviews online, it turns out many of them do not if they should get wet.  If you are like me, I tend to get sloppy during water changes no matter how hard I try to keep the water where I think it should be. Also, any doors and other accessories tended to come apart with regular use.

I decided to look into building my own.

Note: I do respond to comments on old posts. 🙂

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