This Fish is a Monster: My Tail Biting Pet Fish ???????? - EP #15: TANK TALES

In today's video, we build a lid out of plywood for my new 20-gallon fish tank... and then a fight breaks out amongst two of my TANK TALE inhabitants and one of my fish loses his tail.

TANK TALES website: http://www.tank-tales.com

In last week's episode of TANK TALES, I transferred all of my live plants... and all of my adult fish from two separate 10 gallon fish tanks into a single, much larger, 20-gallon aquarium.

All seemed well inside my new 20-gallon glass aquarium... until my smallest Golden Wonder Killafish suddenly went missing. After minutes of searching, I finally found the little guy on my kitchen floor, several feet away from the aquarium that had become his new home. He had jumped several inches out of the water, up over the lid, bounced across the counter and the kitchen floor and was ultimately killed when I accidentally stepped on him as I was going about my day.

I didn't want any of my other fish to perish in the same way... so I knew that I had to put a lid on my 20 gallon aquarium as soon as possible.

Before coming up with a more permanent solution to my lid problem, I used a roll of aluminum foil to cover the top of my 20-gallon glass aquarium. I figured the aluminum would be strong enough to prevent my fish from jumping out of the tank, but I worried that the reflective nature of the foil might frighten my little aquatic animals, so I knew I needed to come up with a better solution fast!

I looked online for a 20-gallon tank lid, but they were surprisingly more expensive than I thought they would be. I searched my local Facebook marketplace for a 20-gallon fish tank lid as well, but there were none in my area to be had. So, I came up with the idea of simply making the fish tank lid myself out of a scrap piece of wood.

I had just recently finished renovating my condo, so I had several pieces of plywood laying around in my basement. I grabbed one of these pieces of wood, along with my electric saw, and in a matter of minutes had produced what appeared to be a nearly professional level lid for my home aquarium.

I threw the new wooden lid on the top of my aquarium and to my surprise, it fit like a glove! The filter fit perfectly in the hole I had cut out for it at the back of the tank... and the LED light was positioned perfectly in the hole I had cut out in the middle of the board.

I thought I was a genius to have solved my lack of a lid problem so quickly... and without having to spend even a single dollar, because the wood was a leftover from a previous project and therefore free.

But after just twenty-four hours of my wooden tank lid being in place, I quickly realized why fish tank lids are not made out of wood. --- Moisture!

After a little more than a day, my perfectly straight wooden fish tank lid was starting to bend. The water and condensation inside the tank was building up on the roof of the wooden lid and causing the board to bend upward at its edges.

I wasn't so concerned about the bending of the wooden lid at first, but a few days later, I noticed that the lid had another, much bigger problem --- Mold!

In addition to the water inside the tank causing the wooden lid to bend upward, tiny spores of mold were starting to grow on every inch of the board's bottom. From the top, my free fish tank lid looked like a good solution to my fish potentially jumping to their deaths from inside the tank. But from the underside, it was clear that wood was not an ideal material to be used in the construction of a fish tank lid. I needed to come up with a better solution!

So, once again, I headed to my basement and found a large, flat piece of plastic that had been given to me by a friend. This large piece of plastic was used as a sidewall in her campervan, but was no longer being used, and as I'm somewhat of a cheapskate and don't like throwing things away, I asked my friend if I could keep her unwanted plastic sidewall... in the event that I came up with a use for it at some point in the future.

So, now, with wood being an obviously bad building material for a fish tank lid, I thought I'd give my lid making construction skills another try... but this time with a big piece of plastic.

Just like I had done before with the wooden sheet of plywood, I measured the top of the fish tank and then created a template of sorts for the fish tank lid I wanted to create on the top of the plastic sheeting. Once I was happy with my design, I broke out my skill saw and quickly went about cutting out version two of my 20-gallon aquarium lid.

TANK TALES website: http://www.tanktales.com

#petfish #tanktales #aggressivefish