The Lego Tank!

[EDO]

I have an empty 10 gallon tank sitting around. I'm thinking of building a lego castle to put in it; but the lego would need to be boiled before I can do this. My worries are:

1)the lego would melt if I boil it
2)the color of the lego pieces would come off after long peroid of time under water.
3)If i get bigger fishes, they might knock the pieces off and eat it.
4)lego floats.

 

[Vyache]

My personal opinionated answeres to the above questions:

1) I don't think you need to boil them, just wash in very hot water and place them in the tank long before you add fish; ultimately do a fishless cycle with them in there.
2) I don't think the color will come off, its the color of the plastic they are made of. They might fade after a long time, or absorb colors from medications, but I think the colors should be pretty permanent.
3) You shouldn't worry too much about fish eating the legos in a ten gallon tank. Worry more about the fish having too small of quarters if they grow to be lego eating size. Also consider this: Fish don't eat the gravel on the bottom of the tank even if it can fit in their mouth.
4)Ahh, now this one is tricky. I suppose that you will have to place everything onto a "lawn" type lego and weight or glue that down, or glue at least a few pieces down with 100% silicon. Make sure the silicon has completely cured before getting it wet.

Overall I'd say that lego terain is a pretty cool idea. I've been trying to carve some flower pots to make caves and I've broken both I've tried with so far. Legos would allow one to sculp the perfect shape. I usually prefer "natural" looking decorations, but I've recently decided to decorate a few of my tanks with themes. I'd recommend building in a way that does not allow individual bricks to come off easily. Also I don't know much about the newer styles of legos, just the basic bricks. I don't know if a land speeder driven by JarJar Binks kit would add more complications because of painted or smaller pieces for example. Maybe you should only use pieces from sets for children under 4 or something to limit potential problems with breakability, eatability, and toxicity.

 

[colesea]

I'd hate to disagree with you Vyache, but fish -do- eat the gravel on the bottom of their tank, even if it doesn't fit into their mouths. You don't know how many times I had to take the tweezers and rescue a choaking goldfish! Yup, my little guys loved to root around the gravel so much they'd inhale it, and if it took them longer than 10 minutes to clear the piece, I would catch it out, hold him down, and pull it out with tweezers. Finally I did find some gravel that was too big for them to swallow, but now they've gotten bigger, and I worry still over some of the "smaller" chunks being inhaled again while they are having fun picking around.

So it really all depends upon the type of fish what exactly they will eat, and how small or brightly colored the lego piece is. Make sure you construct your design so no fishies will get stuck in it!
~~Colesea

 

[bathtub]

rather tahn boiling it could try using either a strong saline solution or a proprietry streiliser like chem-pro...
just make sure it's WELL rinsed off.
Colour should be fine (due to plastic type)- and there should be no effects on the water- its a kiddie safe product and relatively inert....

 

[bobrob]

if its a whole bunch of lego blocks then I dont think that they'd float I reckon they wud just stay on the bottom.

 

[Serpio]

just a thought,
once you have cleaned your legos,
you could assemble them under water so that water are trapped inside the legos, thus sinking to the bottom...............?

 

[EDO]

ahhh thanks ppl, great comments.

I'm planning to move the lego plan into a 5 gallon tank that I have, since I've realized that lego isn't too "light reflective", meaning if I turn on the aquarium lights, it will not be that spectacular (sp?). Maybe I should do some testing on the sink first.

 

[1979camaro]

or glue them together

 

[Eire]

Just a thought: you are going to need a good algae eater, so that the lego looks really clean...I imagine that scrubbing algae off lego would be no fun at all. Especially if it is glued to the bottom of the tank, so maybe you should glue the lego to a glass plate, that you could rest on the bottom, and remove the whole thing when you need to.

 

[keprydak]

Originally posted by Vyache
Legos would allow one to sculp the perfect shape. I usually prefer "natural" looking decorations, but I've recently decided to decorate a few of my tanks with themes.

Well, you could always make your castle out of Legos, coat with aquarium silicone, and then roll in some gravel for a more natural looking castle.

And on what was said before about getting them to sink - you could always glue them to a piece of slate as well if you can't find glass.

 

[Abercrombie6202]

Wow if i didn't like the natural look I think the lego idea would be perfect!! LOL, but jsut the though of cleaning off the algae OH god that would be tragic!!!

 

[aidanchick]

That's so totally sweet!

I deffinitly want to see pictures of that once you have it done! If I ever get another tank I am so doing that. I have alot of left over Lego from my childhood, me and my brother had a huge collection of differnt buildings and boats and stuff, we almost saved enough money for the mono rail... that would look interesting inside a fish tank..minus the electrical stuff... ... But yeah, I say go for it...

 

[Jenniferhowe]

sharp edges

I like your idea, but my only concerns is having the fish injur themselves on the sharpe edges. It you have flashers or easily spooked fish that might be a problem. Just something to consider. It would look pretty cool though.

 

[nonamethefish]

Hmm...Just fill some of the pieces with sand before you put hem on and they will sik. Thats what I did with some of my legos.

If you coated it with java moss, it would lok natural, but maybe you want the kiddy look to the tank.

 

[1979camaro]

or riccia too if you wanna cover the plastic...

 

[circuitdragon]

when I was a kid I played with my legos in the bathtub...and getting them to sink was not easy...heh...the "lawn" pieces would come in handy though....just 2 large enough on each side.... _NNNN_
this way, get a few heavy rocks, not too large though, don't want to take away from the castle being the center of attention, and don't want to displace too much water, anyhow, bury the lawn pieces with gravel, then top it off with rocks....just an idea from the dusty cabinet...but should work....I keep hearing about sharp edges, and I don't think legos are all that sharp to me....as a fish I have no idea....I would suggest "rounding" the edges, but I've no clue how to smooth out the plastic after that...little lego debis in a tank can't be good

 

[Qeistalan]

I'm new to MyFishTank.Net; I found the site by doing a search on Google for "legos in fish tanks".

My lady and I started a 50-gallon tank in the last month, using Legos as the decor. Lego made several underwater sets back in the mid-to-late '90s called the Aquazone series, and have a current-year set called Alpha Team; these sets offer numerous underwater vehicles and bases.

Our aquarium holds an Aquazone Deep Sea Base and two Search Subs (yellow and black blocks with transparent blue and green windows). The Base is set upon two blue baseplates, and the plates match perfectly with the two-tone blue gravel floor of the tank.

To ensure everything was non-toxic and "cleansed", we placed the Lego sets in the tank, filled the tank 50%, turned them upside-down (to allow air trapped beneath the plates to exit), then set them down into the gravel. After adding the rest of the water, we let our Emperor 400 Biowheel run for an entire week, testing the water every day for ph/nitrate/ammonia/hardness ... and everything has worked out just fine.

We now have a comminuty tank with 4 fantail goldfish (Nixon, Flash, Goldfinger, and Fat Bastard), 3 swordtails (Spike, Blaze, and Diamond), 2 siamese algae eaters (Nessie and Bigfoot), and 4 otocinclus (all named Darrell, cuz I'll be damned if we can tell any of them apart). They LOVE swimming through the base and moving the crane on top of it ... and despite fears of sharp edges/toxicity/etc., we have yet to notice a problem. I have a friend who used Legos as tank decor; he still has a clown pleco and an angel which were in his Lego tank from 5-6 years ago.

Our only aquarium problem is brown algae (which is EASILY visible on yellow Legos!), but the otos and sae's should take care of the issue handily.

Bottom line: Legos are fine, provided you set up the tank intelligently; your fish will have as much fun with it as you will!

 

[toodles]

Hello Qeistalan! Welcome to MyFishTank!*BOUNCINGS

Your tank sounds really neat! Do you have a photo of it?
For the most part, I enjoy natural looking tanks, but I must admit that from time to time I have had a bubbling treasure chest or sunken ship in one of my tanks. The idea of an underwater adventure theme complete with subs is awesome!
I've also wanted to do a sunken Atlantis kind of tank with the pillars and such, but that's another story.......

 

[lizwinz]

Qeistalan--welcome to mft

i'd also like to see a pic if u can post one...sounds interesting

--liz

 

[Qeistalan]

Finally have some photos