The Aquarium Thread

In My Humble Opinion
1

Inspired by Asimovian’s thread on how to move an aquarium, I started wondering, how many Dopers are also aquarists?

I have three fish tanks, all cycled and balanced properly;

a 2.5 gallon tank occupied by a lone female Betta, white body and red fins, with a faint bluish cast between the fin rays (Chiana) and a couple brown ram snails, and a decent amount of plants, I’m trying to turn this tank into a heavily planted nano-tank, 2.5 gallon tanks are considered nearly impossible to cycle, but it can be done, using filter media from an established tank, and planting heavily with aquatic plants, it’s a precarious balancing act, but it can be done

a 10 gallon tank, well on it’s way to being heavily planted, occupied by a male Crowntail Betta (Rocky) with a gray-and-iridescent blue body, with a yellow-to-silver fade on his fins

and my pride and joy, my 20 Long heavily planted tank, containing a male Crowntail betta (Nova) yellow body and yellow fins (you can see him peeking out from the right coconut hut near the left of the tank), a orange male Platy, 4 Kuhli Loaches (three spotted and one black), and a Clown Pleco, along with a bunch of Cherry Shrimp and Amano Shrimp and a pair of Brigesii Apple snails as the cleanup crew

the 20 Long is so heavily planted, and understocked fish-wise, that I can easily go 6 months or more between water changes, I basically just top it off as water evaporates, it’s also a fairly low-tech tank, hardware consists of;
55 watt Power Compact flourescent bulb and 20 watt standard flourescent (75 watts of light into 20 gallons of water, approx. 3.1ish watts-per-gallon)
Ebo-Jaeger 100 watt heater (20 years old, and runs just as good as the day I bought it)
Fluval 204 canister filter filled with Fluval Pre-filter, polyester filter floss, and Fluval Bio-Max rings
DIY Carbon Dioxide injection system going right into the Fluval filter’s intake

nothing special really, basic off-the-shelf stuff, yet the tank is both maintenance free and completely stable, it’s as close to a truly balanced system as a closed environment like an aquarium can be

the secret of a truly maintenance-free community tank?
live plants with enough light to support them, take care of the plants, and they’ll take care of the fish, the fish produce waste, which the beneficial nitrifying bacteria and plants consume, the plants release oxygen which allows the fish to continue eating and producing more waste to feed the plants…

I’ve got enough plant mass in the tank that I could probably shut down the filter and let the plants be the filter

2

Sigh. My aquarims… aquaria… my aquarium and my other aquarium are a hot mess. I have a 29 gallon one that was doing great, but didn’t get much maintenance for a while and has gradually depopulated - I have three or four survivors, I think. The light part of the hood freaked out and I e-mailed Marineland, who said send it in and they’d send me a new one, which I just did (it’s been months.) By the way - Marineland really does stand behind their products, they replaced it no questions asked. So I have to get that put together and working, and restock. I’m considering taking out the couple surviving community fish (two zebra danios and an I-forget) and doing angelfish or maybe an oscar. The plants are doing fine in the darkness, surprisingly.

I have another little three gallon hex with some Java fern and theoretically a betta, but I’m afriad to look in there because I’m 70% sure it’s dead. I’ve been putting off the inevitable for ages - I need to do something about the algae problem and clean the tank up and and and, and I feel pretty bad about the whole thing. I might just dump that tank for the time being.

3

It’d almost be nice if we could get a long-term aquarium thread to keep going.

I’ve been out of the freshwater planted aquarium hobby for years, and am only recently playing around with it again.

Back in the day I had metal halide grow lamps suspended over CO2-driven tanks and used to support my addiction by selling plants back to the local fish store (LFS).

Right now I’ve got two tanks going in the sunroom. Sunroom, you say? Yes. How’s that for a challenge? I’ve got a 10 gallon with a yeast/sugar CO2 reactor running I’m trying to use as a plant nursery, then a 35-gallon ornamental goldfish tank I’m slowly trying to cycle into a plant tank as well.

4

Don’t the goldfish eat the plants?

5

Well, now that you bring it up…

Yes. Goldfish are wonderful but very mouthy creatures. Everything goes in the mouth. Plants, gravel, your fingers, they spend their lives trying to fit everything in the mouth. But, that just presents me with an additional challenge. They won’t eat certain plants. My tank is open topped and I have floating Hyacinths and Azolla. Azolla is sorta like duckweed except it’s an aquatic fern rather than true blooming plant and goldfish don’t like it much.

Underwater, I’m trying to get plants going that goldfish also don’t eat, and can’t dig out of the gravel. That means plants that don’t root in the gravel and can be anchored to rocks. Things like Java Fern and Anubius plants. I’m also experimenting with a form of what I think is Vallesneria. That’s a grassy like plant. They’d dig it right out of the gravel if I tried to plant it directly, but what I’ve been doing is planting it in a Jiffy peat pot filled with gravel and letting it grow out in my little 10 gallon aquarium. Once the plant is thoroughly rooted and pot-bound, it can be transferred into the goldfish tank where it will be molested initially, but eventually judged not mouth-worthy and left mostly alone. My goal is to work out all the plants that can co-exist with mouthy goldfish.

6

See, the reason I asked being, I’m trying to decide what to put in my 29 gallon tank and I’d thought about goldfish, but figured they’d eat my plants, and the plants are probably the only thing that keeps everything from dying all the time in any of my fish tanks.

7

I wouldn’t recommend goldfish + plants in general, unless we’re talking outdoor pond.

8

I’ve got a 10 gallon that is sparsly planted. 2 small Amazon Swords, and 2… uh… things. Not sure what they are, they look like spider plants with a bit of a stalk.

I have a handful of fish in there, as it started as a fish tank that I dumped plants into one day out of sheer obstinance (my wife said I’ll just kill the plants. We’ll see!).

9

Heh. My goldfish aren’t the plant botherers in my tank, it’s the crayfish that tear everything up. I used to be ridiculously hardcore into aquaria, and even co-owned a LFS for a while. Now I keep my two Ryukin, in a nice 39 gallon and give them fresh river plants every 4 weeks or so. Beside the ryukin and crayfish, i’ve got two lovely dojo loaches that zip about the bottom.

Hardware:

39 gallon
HOT magnum system (i love these guys)
suspension light with double 10,000 k bulbs
Shultz’s aquatic plant potting medium and mexican beach pebble bottom
huge cedar burl I got from an estuary.

10

Me too. Great filter for the money. I wish they made an extension that would put the outflow a little deeper into the tank.

I had a “Blue Freshwater Lobster” crayfish once. I found it six months later behind a dresser in my bedroom, way away down the hall from the living room tank it escaped from.

11

I’ve always wanted to set up a reef aquarium but I don’t have the time it would take to maintain it. I’ve used tanks like this for inspiration. Check it out, it will blow your mind.

12

That’s an incredibly impressive setup, very natural looking reef

I’m also very fond of Takashi Amano’s Aquascapes

13

You can make one from Pvc. You’ll need to find the next biggest size and use some silicone sealant to get it right but it’s easily done. The HOT tubes are of some bizarre off size that no one carries.

14

Lord Amano reigns, but I started with Kaspar Horst and Horst Kipper. Amano’s tanks are an inspiration, if you have the time and staff.

15

[slight hijack] Speaking of Aquariums, has anyone been to the one in Atlanta yet? I think it would be worth a visit just to see the whale sharks.[/hijack]

16

We have a 125-gallon saltwater tank. At the moment we have:
1 yellow tang
1 blue hippo tang (the world’s stupidest fish)
1 royal gamma
1 pygmy angelfish
3 pajama cardinals
1 lawnmower blenny
2 anthias
2 clownfish
1 clam
1 cleaner shrimp
Several emerald crabs & other crabs
Some snails
Peppermint shrimp (I think the sea anenome may have eaten most of them though)
Various corals

17

Tank looks nice, Mac.

I’ve got a 3 gal here in the office, and 30 and 55 gals at home. All heavily planted.

The 3g is ultra low tech with cherry shrimp and endlers breeding in it.

The 30 is moderate light with DIY CO2 and bosemanii rainbows.

The 55 has pressurized CO2, 260w, and primarily angels. I was planning on getting a 90, but I picked up the 55 for free. Planning on getting something in the 120 range when I move in a year or so.

Any of you guys hang out at plantedtank.net?

18

I recently picked up what are probably Cherry shrimp. At the store they were labeled “Algae Eating Shrimp” but they look like Cherry shrimp and the guy at the store called them “cherry something.” How prolifically do they breed? Anything special you do? Do they seem to have any effect on algae?

19

That tank is ultra low tech, so no, I don’t do anything special for them other than to drop in a piece of an algae wafer a couple of times a week. The shrimp will be all over the tank - including on the walls where I presume they are eating algae, but that tank gets very little algae other than a little green spot which I wipe off every couple of weeks. Sorry, but I really don’t know how prolifically they breed - the number in the tank seems to have ebbed and flowed a bit over the 2-3 years it has been up.

It is kinda frustrating, tho predicatable, that that tank is the one I pay the least attention to, yet it is probably consistently the best looking and healthiest appearing of my tanks! :smiley:

There is a shrimp forum over at plantedtank.net.

20

I have a goldfish and a bowl that I bought at Meijer. When the goldfish dies, I buy another one. This keeps me happy after the never ending mega disaster that was my attempt to keep an aquarium stocked with game fish. Largemouth bass are not aquarium friendly, they eat like crazy, stress like sharks do, and a fingerling will outgrow a 120 gallon tank within a year. I’d love to be able to make it work, but in my estimation it would cost eleven hijillion dollars and a much bigger house than I have to make my initial idea workable. ETA- My initial idea was to create a small pond-scape that reflected native Illinois flora and fauna. It is a crazy idea.

One day I might try bluegills and sunfish again. Maybe.