my in wall 220g tank makeover

[stealthy hunter]

I will certainly post pics, oh yea I forgot to mention that my wife says she wants to decorate the tank with a "sponge bob" theme..... I am not sure that will work in my den but we are still discussing it.

[stealthy hunter]

I got some great news today! I have a friend of a friend that has a 2200g indoor pond and is going to take my current stock.

Now my next issue is how to keep the BB alive until the makeover is ready for new stock. I have some ideas 1) add ammonia daily as I did during a fishless cycle. Or 2) just completely teardown and do another fishless cycle when everything is done.
It has been a long time since I have had to cycle a tank, I have always had a tank to "seed" with and just do a mini fishless cycle.
Any ideas or input on this issue or suggestions on my project in general would be greatly appreciated

[Limming]

It would depends on how long the tank well be down. If its only a few days I'd say feed ammonia but anything longer then 5 or 6 days on a tank that big I'd just do a fish less cycle again when the tank is ready.

[mojosodope]

If your future stock will be producing relatively the same amount of bioload as the previous I would say go ahead and continue daily dosing of the ammonia. Ammonia is pretty cheap IMO and that way your strong BB colony survives.

[Crispy]

nice setup. would love to see a writeup on your diy heating after all this. I would styrofoam all sides including the sump. easiest and cheapest way for sure.

[stealthy hunter]

I have gathered all the materials for my diy heating system. I am going to start a thread in the diy section for this portion of the build. I will post pics here of the completed system, but will go into more details in the diy thread.

[stealthy hunter]

Today I made some good progress on my diy heating system. I hope to start testing everything tomorrow.
I have started a diy thread on the build. Once this is done I plan to start with aquascaping . So far I am looking at stocking with a school of rainbows and possibly some type of loaches. Any ideas on some good tank mates for these guys will be appreciated.

[Cliff]

I'm not too sure on any stocking suggestions, but I would love to see pics as you go along

The pics in your DIY heating thread really did help to understand what you were doing a lot better

I'm looking forward to seeing this all come together

[stealthy hunter]

Heating system is complete and I am testing it now. I will be moving forward with the project ,hopefully a bit quicker now that I know the heating works...

[stealthy hunter]

I know it has been a while ,but life has a way of postponing my projects....lol

Today I built doors to access the tank from the front. And I hope to have them installed in the next couple of days. I have all my insulation and have the heating system up and running. I hope this will progress a bit faster now .

I think I have decided on some of the new stock . To start I will be stocking with a school of bosemani rainbows,a school of denison barbs and some type of the smaller loach species . Still haven't decided on numbers of each probably somewhere in the 12-15 each range .

I will keep y'all posted on progress