DIY Betta Betta Tank 1.0
The “Betta Betta” tank started out as a unique gift idea for a close friend who loves the sound of running water in and around her house. Since I promised her a while back that she’d be the proud owner one of the “first born” Siamese Fighters from our first attempt at breeding them we decided on combining a running water feature with a small cosy fish tank, and the Betta Betta Tank was born.
Version 1 proved to be a huge learning curve and a major challenge to boot. Heres a run down on the construction…
Raw Materials
- Bits of throw away polystyrene packaging collected from the neighbor’s garbage
- Concrete / Quickcrete
- Playpen sand
- Coarse Salt
- Concrete stain pigments (Red, brown, yellow, white & black)
- Sheet of 4mm thick window glass
- 2 Large tubes of marine grade silicon sealant
- 2 cans of matt finish lacquer varnish spraypaint
- A plastic pickle bottle
- A small powerhead/water pump
- 50 or 75 watt aquarium heater
- 60cm of 10mm silicone tubing
Construction Details
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No concept sketch for this one… We just started sticking bits together and ended with a usable idea!  |
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The position of the heater and pump, which is hidden from view by a removable “rock” |
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A bit of shaping with a candle to remove all the rough edges and give the rocks a little more shape. |
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The reason why you don’t do the messy bits in your kitchen or living room! lol |
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Since polystyrene doesn’t stick to concrete and vice versa, the first layer of concrete is always the hardest. Keep trying and you’ll eventually get it covered completely. |
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3 to 4 coats of concrete later and we’re ready to paint on the color stain. This part is seriously difficult and you only find the right colors mixtures by experiment. Start off with a light mixture of yellow, red and brown then and work towards your darker colors by adding a bit more brown, red and black oxide stain. |
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Happy with the colors so we progress to the water test after 10 days of allowing the concrete to cure, and another 10 days for the lacquer varnish to cure… It holds around 4.5 litres of water but the waterfall splashes water onto the floor around it! Back to the drawing board!  |
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Some cosmetic changes. We lowered the waterfall and converted the previous waterfall outlet to an area to hold some small terrestrial plants. |
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Whilst waiting for the concrete to cure we started work on the filter. It’s a very simple 3 stage “bottle filter” consisting of 2 sponge stages and a charcoal stage. |
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The filter inlet pipe showing first and second stage sponge filter meterial. The plastic pipe in the centre has about 40 small holes burned in the tip using a small soldering iron. |
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The assembled filter hanging off the back of the waterfall… |
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After blocking up many small leaks with silicone sealer we were finally ready to add a bit of gravel and some live plants. The filter was pre-cycled in our indoor pond and gravel from an existing tank was added. We tested it for 2 weeks with some juvenile white cloud minnows before adding a healthy red male Betta. |
Lighting
We’ll definitely need to include some form of lighting for the tank to ensure healthy plant and fishy growth. We are currently looking for an adjustable “goose neck” type fitting that we can mount on the back wall of the waterfall - more on this later…
Result
This took around 3 months to complete but it was a whole lot of fun and looks quite kewl! Our male Betta seems quite happy and healthy after 3 weeks in the tank. Water changes are minimal as there is a 20% loss of water through evaporation per week. We have been topping up with fresh treated water every third day and the water quality parameters have remained stable throughout.
We’ll be shipping the tank off to it’s new home in about 2 weeks time!
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April 4th, 2008 at 11:09 am
It’s a beautiful tank, though a bit on the small side (glad you’re fixing that on the 2.0 version) … what concerns me, though, is that there’s no lid. You guys do realize that bettas are jumpers, right?
April 4th, 2008 at 11:37 am
Yes we did realise that some Betta’s are jumpers which is one on the reasons why the side panels on version 2 are nearly 3 inches higher than water level. We also looked at the reasons why fish jump (bad water quality, lack of hiding space when threatened, attractive female Betta in the tank next door etc) and tried to design around it.
Our test pilot “Schmeegle” has been happily swimming around version 1.0 for nearly 3 months now and he’s looking really good! Any sign of a threat and he hides under the rock near the pump…
A pair of golden apple snail roommates are doing a fine job of keeping the algae buildup off the glass too!
April 6th, 2008 at 1:47 am
Wow, you are really good at making stuff. If you were in the US, people would pay you to do stuff like that. I just clicked on your profile webpage in chameleonforums.com and led me to this webpage. I noticed you’re from South Afrika, I took quarters of Afrikaans at UCLA.
April 6th, 2008 at 11:24 am
Thank you Brent! What an awesome compliment!
We’ve done a deal with one of the local pet stores and will have at least 1 product on their shelves by May 1st. I’m hoping it’ll start selling very well and I can give up my boring IT day job and become a “rock star”!
I’ve lived in South Africa for 28 years but I’ll bet you speak Afrikaans better than I do. My engelse tong sukkel nog om die woorde to vorm! lol
December 16th, 2008 at 4:48 am
Are you using RO for your water? If not, you should do some water changes. If you just top off the water will get harder and harder until your fish have problems.