Been away for a while.

[Sixwing]

... Hi all! *duck* I've been away for quite a while. There was a severe attack of life as I've been attempting to buy a house. Oh my.

The nice thing:
There's room for 2 55g aquaria in the dining room, and SixSpouse has bought in to the idea of a second large display beside the first.

And there's a basement, with a solid concrete floor... and the prior owner thoughtfully put taps in the basement. Yeeaaah! It'll be a bit before I can take advantage of that, but I am SO putting in a 6-foot (or better, I can dream) tank down there eventually.

So, here's what I'm thinking.

The 2 55g tanks will be on a wood-joisted floor above a crawlspace; both of them will be beside load-bearing walls for stability's sake. I want to put them in a corner at 90 degrees to one another, like a capital L shape. (Speaking with the inspector, he thought that corner could take that weight in that configuration just fine.) I'm thinking of putting some kind of a potted plant in the corner between the two, and then mirroring the designs in the tanks for a single, coherent display.

The question is: I have digging fish. I want to give the peppered loaches their own tank, since my dojos have gotten big to the point of pushing the peppers around. I'd like to combine loaches and plants as I do in my current 55, I'm aware that I can't use soil very well with heavy diggers, and I'm thinking of using terra cotta flowerpots to sequester the soil the plants will want from the habits of the fish.

Do you know of any cool-looking tanks that use flowerpots as a design element? My searches aren't turning any up, and I'd like to see if I even like the look of this before I haul off and buy a bunch of flowerpots.

Thanks!

[Muttley000]

Sounds like a cool idea, but I can't say I've seen pictures of a tank done that way. I for one would really like to see some pictures of your loaches. Welcome back!

[J-P]

WB!! We missed you!

Depending on how dense you want to go... I've cut the bottom off of a shallow strawberry container and used that to anchor the plants and protect them from my loach (RIP) in the past. It worked very well... until I got hair algae

[Lyvea]

Or cover the container of your choosing in aquarium-safe silicone and roll it in your substrate so it will blend in, stack some rocks/driftwood whatever around it?

[Sixwing]

Thanks, all! I've missed it here.

Ooh, Lyvea, I really like that idea. Blending in will probably work better than going ceramic pots everywhere, hah.

Thanks for the replies, all! I have some loach photos to share - just need to re-upload them. Google decided to be evil, so I've pulled my Picasa account and haven't gotten everything moved over yet... I think I even finally got some good photos of my peppered loaches, which has been a two-year quest and involved buying a better camera, then waiting months for the fish to reappear. (There could be three. There could be two, that being the most I've seen simultaneously in a while. There could be forty of them and I'd never know until I tear the tank down, which experience I am NOT anticipating. Putting back up, though...)

I do tend to get epic algae in the winters due to the location of my tank - direct sunlight slants in and fires the algae up, which then chokes out my poor stems for the umpteenth time - but I think the new location will fix that.

We shall see; and I'll make sure my new scape is easy to maintain, and I'll really make sure to post photos!