Fish Home Project

Project date: 9/18/2004
Project: Building a Home for a Rescued Oscar (a fish)
Project Time Duration: approx. 2 days!! (&%*#!)
Personal Satisfaction: It turned out nice, was fairly cheap to do. Not Bad, I can live with it
 
The Story Behind the Project:  I have this neighbor whose girl friend's son (age 23) was being kicked out.  The son recently had gotten this Oscar fish and had him in a 10 gallon tank.   The fish barely had room to move around in.  Well he didn't want the fish any longer and the neighbor and his girl friend knew nothing about keeping fish.  So they asked if I would take him instead of having to flush him.    So now I have this fish that's clearly not happy in this tiny tank.   Someone at work ( thanks Ken) donated a 20 gallon long tank.  It had been sitting on his porch for a while but wasn't in to bad a shape.  Hermy, the Oscar's name - he's like a hermit so hence the name, now has a much more decent home and seems happy.  He's even coming out more often and checking me out when I'm sitting close to his tank.  At first he would always hide when someone came into the room. 
  

CLICK ON THE INDIVIDUAL PICTURES TO SEE A LARGER PICTURE
 
     
Ok, cleaned up the tank and it looks good.
Even painted the back flat black to give
it a nice back ground.		 I used fish tank rocks of
course. Make sure you use
rounded rocks.  		Here's the add ons I used.
You're smart people, you
can figure how to use it all.
 
Here's Hermy's house, half a PVC pipe
found at a construction site.  And some
Plexiglas bolted together.  All of it cleaned up. 		I used the aquarium sealer to
stick rocks to the house. 		After apply the sealer I smeared
it into a thin layer.
I placed the smeared house on a towel
and poured the small rocks over it.		 I then pressed the rocks to
the house to make them stick.		 I then put on another layer of
sealant and rocks.
I took part of the plants and made
smaller plants.  Glued them to the
bottom of the tank with sealer and
taped them to the side to stand up.		 Here's other plants I glued
to the tank.  Glued to keep
Hermy from up rooting them
out of the rocks.		 I had to remove the corner seals
due to age and wear.  I resealed
the corners and stuck the air tube
to one of the back corners to keep
the tubing in place.
 
 
I even glued the air stone to the
bottom of tank.		 Here the house has been
glued in place.  I added
some plants as well.		 Tada, here's the tank setup
in my computer room. 
Here's the man of the hour.  Hermy out and about. Hermy checking out
what's going on.
     
Now he's just cheesing
for the camera.		 Hermy tired of the paparazzi,
going back into his home.		  

 

Questions or Comments
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