Here is the empty tank, sitting in the stand in the hall.Click here to go back to the Fishes' Main Page
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This tank was set up in early January, 2001. It is a standard 55 US gallon All-Glass tank on a wrought iron stand. It has a Marineland Penguin 170 bio-wheel filter, an Ebo-Jager heater, 2-3" of regular black aquarium gravel with laterite in the bottom third, a large, branched piece of driftwood, a smaller driftwood "log" and several smaller rocks and pieces of driftwood.
Current inhabitants are: (as of January 2002) 3 otoniculus sp., 1 Australian rainbowfish, 1 orange tiger barb, 1 green tiger barb, 2 yo-yo loaches, 2 rosy barbs, 3 Siamese Algae Eaters, one bristlenose pleco and one Cyrtocara moorii which I had to remove from the cichlid tank because he was getting beaten up by a bully.
Plants include: Java moss, Java fern, jungle valisneria, corkscrew valisneria, pygmy chain sword, bacopa, several types of crytptocoryne species, hygrophila, echinodorus sp., aponogenton and a few I'm not sure of- I bought most of these as a package and they were not labeled. If anyone can identify some of the plants from the pictures, please email me! Thanks!
Here is the empty tank, sitting in the stand in the hall.
This is the bottom layer of black gravel, with First Layer laterite mixed in. It is about one third of the total amount of gravel in the tank. The laterite was added at the amount recommended on the package (55 oz.).
This is the tank with the rest of the gravel added- about 2-3" of black aquarium gravel. I've also added the two pieces of driftwood and the larger piece of rock (on the left behind the bigger piece of driftwood). We ended up using pieces of slate that we had on hand and screwing the driftwood to them in order to keep it from floating. I had soaked the pieces, weighted down, in a barrel of water, but they still wanted to float!
This is a picture of the full, finished tank with the rainbow at the upper right and the two orange tigers in the center right.
This is another full view of the tank, with 2 of the otos on the front glass, left, the rainbow, upper right, and the molly, C. moorii and orange tigers, lower right.
This is a close-up of the cabomba planted at the back of the tank, behind the larger driftwood piece.
Another close-up of the larger driftwood piece, with a banana plant, Java fern, amazon sword and water sprite. One of the orange tigers is at the upper right.
Ok, it is now June and I have had some interesting times with this tank since it has been set up. First there was the blue-green algae! That slime covered everything! It was just taking over- gravel, driftwood, plants! I finally got that cleared up, only to have a brown algae break out! I put in 3 Siamese Algae Eaters and they helped get that under control. Then it was a green hair algae- and that stuff was nasty! It grew on the glass, on the rocks, on the driftwood, on the plants! Neither my little crew of algae eating fish (now 3 otos, 3 SAEs and 1 bristlenose pleco) nor I could keep up with it. I'd scrape and pull and clean and trim, get the tank looking decent again and withitn 2 or 3 days, it would be a mess again! I finally decided to take the (very good!) advice of some of the experts on the Aquatic Plants Digest and added a second DIY yeast CO2 generator to get the amount of CO2 in the tank up to a decent level, stopped adding the iron rich fertilizer to the water column and began dosing up the nitrates in the water column. Well, it worked! Should have known- those people know what they are doing! Thanks especially to Tom Barr, whose constant repetition of the above advice DID finally sink in! And here is the result- the arrangement of the plants is still not perfect, but the algae is gone and things are growing quite well!
In December, 2001, I added a pressurized CO2 system. I have a tank and regulator which were purchased from a local homebrew supply store, a Clappard needle valve, CO2 resistant tubing and a ceramic bubble wand diffuser. It was a bit of a challenge getting the rate set, but at this point the pH is a steady 6.8, which puts by CO2 (based on the pH-KH table) at around 25 ppm. The plants love it- they have grown quite a bit and are bubbling oxygen all day long.