Photos of the new ACF tank

[SwimminSteve]

My ACFs have officially moved into their custom tank. It was a long time coming and a lot of hard work went into making the 3-D background, but I'm so happy with the results. It was worth the wait. The frogs seem to love it too. It's a 46 gallon, with custom background, and playsand for substrate. There are currently 3 Xenopus laevis and 1 Xenopus muelleri in there, I'll be adding more soon. There are also 4 White Cloud Minnows that add some extra movement and they like to clean up food scraps so that's a plus. They are very fast and swim up high, so the frogs stand little chance of catching them (though they definitely try). The tank is filtered by an AquaClear 70 which I love. The intake tube is hidden under the "rocks" in the background, only the opening sticks out and is hidden in a shadow. All together (not including the tank itself) the background cost me about $100 to build and I have enough supplies left over to make another. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in a fun project. Just takes a lot of patience lol. The muelleri really loves the background because he can sort of grip it when he wants to hang out at the surface. And my wildtype female loves to rest up against it. I wonder if she knows how well she blends in.

Right now I'm keeping the decor simple, but I may spice things up in the future. I'm placing an order with xenopus express soon and I hope to add a nice piebald, a borealis, and a reticulated in a month or so.

[Geoff]

The tank's visually very pleasing but in my opinion I think the frogs would benefit from having more shelters so that they have somewhere dark to seek refuge from the harsh lighting. That might be a reason why they're drawn to the dark background. Oh, and I strongly suspect it's only a matter of time before the White Clouds "disappear".

[SwimminSteve]

Thanks for the tip Geoff, I'll see what I can do. The white clouds have survived the frogs for 2 weeks so far, but hey, you never know. That's why I stuck with the cheaper fish.

[SailAwayAK]

46 gallon. Oooooohhhh Ahhhhhh! I am at a 29 tall with two froggers and probably as far as the husband would let me get. LOL. What did you make your background out of? I would still like to take time to make my decor with rock and sealant but don't know what kind of rock give off stuff to muck up my parameters. Gun shy I suppose. I hate it when tanks crash. I have always wanted sand in the tank. Right now I have bare bottom. I used to have stones but it seemed to trap all the poo and was a huge messy thing.

[SwimminSteve]

I used the styrofoam and cement method. Idea from: Dramatic AquaScapes - DIY Aquarium Backgrounds . The cement does contain calcium and magnesium, but you are supposed to let it sit full of water for a month and do a water change each week. This way any chemicals leach out into the water before you add fish/frogs. I did a water change every week for 5 weeks and their have been no ill effects on my water. The only thing I noticed is that the pH is a bit higher (7.2-7.4). I really like the sand so far, this is my first time using substrate for acfs. It's easy to vacuum and the frogs barely stir it up. It just the cheap playsand from Lowes about $3 per 50lb bag. I'm starting another project now on a 20 high tank. I don't even know what I want to put IN the tank animal wise lol. I just enjoy making the background. I may either start breeding my own guppies or just get some more froggers.

[SailAwayAK]

Very cool. I wouldn't mind a bit higher PH as I seem to dump the PH because of the water sprite messing with my phosphate levels. This just looks so cool I love it.