Evolution of a Fry Tank

[COM]

I decided that I'm bored and I want to 'blog' about my ten gallon tank project.

I purchased a ten gallon tank several months ago to house and grow out fry. After returning from a business trip, I found a then-unidentifiable fry in a big Amazon Sword. I reasoned that if I found one, there must be others. Since then, I have learned that there were no others and that the mystery fry is a female Swordtail. Her parents are Marigold Swords, but this fish is an Albino. (I'm told that is common in Swords).

Here's what the tank looked like originally:


And the original occupant, Nemette:


After Nemette moved in with the adult swords, the tank briefly served as a very overcrowded nursery for some assorted snakeskin and other fancy guppies, roughly five dozen. They have since moved on to a 20 gallon long tank to continue their grow out.

So, after completely nuking the tank yesterday with half a bottle of bleach and my garden hose, I've set it up again.

I also decided to ditch the old filter, a Fluval Internal, and upgrade to a Penguin. I purchased a Penguin 200 yesterday, then thought better of it and exchanged it today for a Penguin 150. I have fitted a foam block over the intake to prevent the sand that I picked for a substrate from getting sucked in and ruining the impeller. So the equipment setup is: Penguin 150, Stealth Heater, Coralife lighting fixture. I've got a great little airpump (from Wal-Mart for $6 with a check valve) that I could run on this tank, but I don't think that it will be necessary.

I also changed out some of the media on my 29 gallon and cut up some gross filter pads and cotton wadding from the well-established filter. I stuck this in a media bag and put it in the primary cartridge area (rear) on the Penguin and put a clean Penguin cartridge in the secondary position (forward) so that the water flow will carry bacteria from the media bag into the cartridge. After about 8 to 10 weeks I'll ditch the media bag, move the now dirty cartridge to the primary position and put a clean one in the secondary.

Here's the basic tank layout:


So far the tank contains seven Cardinal Tetras and five Orange Bumble Bee Shrimp, some rocks, and a few plants including Rotala Rotundifola, Hemianthus Callitrichoides (Dwarf Baby Tears), and an Anubias Nana. I will be adding a few more plants over the next few weeks to fill it out.

Here's a close look at some of the inhabitants. You can see at least three of the shrimp in this shot. They're cool:


I decided to go topless. Therefore, I need legs for the light fixture that is pictured in the top shot. It's a pretty nice setup - 28 watt 50/50 and actinic, so that's 2.8 watts per gallon which I think will be okay for these plants. I will not be doing CO2 as I don't believe in it. We'll see how it goes... Anyway, the legs for the light fixture should be in tomorrow morning's UPS along with some other toys I ordered from Big Al's.

I have some driftwood going for boil number two on the stove. I'll let it cool overnight in a bucket of water and see if it is still leaching tannins like mad. If not, I'll get that in tomorrow, get out the ol' tripod, and snap some better quality pics.

Wish me luck.

[COM]

The lighting legs came and I added some driftwood. I'm not loving the driftwood. I want something thinner, lighter colored, and more spindly.

Here is a shot of the tank. I have too much ambient light in the room to get really good pictures today. I'll shoot some more tonight. Also, I am going to try to get a remote control for the camera because the vibration causes by my trigger finger is enough to blur the super zoomed photos at this exposure speed.



Here's a fairly good close-up on one of the Orange Bumble Bee Shrimp:


Cool, huh?

[Good Wolf]

Those are cool shrimp. They are a lot more fun to look at then ghost shrimp.

Your making me want to pick up a 10g just to see what I can do with it. I can't do much of anything with my 5g frog tank. At least it feels that way.

[COM]

Today I added some more fish to the tank. I picked up 8 Glowlight Tetras, Hemigrammus erythrozonus, so I think my stock is now complete.

Also, I set up the lunar light that I ordered a few days ago. I'm looking forward to seeing these fish glow in the moonlight.

I noticed that the cardinals don't seem to love flake foods. I have been feeding dried daphnia and Cyclop-eeze. They do seem to like that.

[COM]

It's been a few days since I last updated.

The plants are doing well overall. The rotala rotundifolia is doing great. The HC (I can't remember how to spell that out at the moment) is doing great. The anubias nana is notso-hotso. To me, that makes no sense as the high-light plants are thriving and the (I think) low-light plant isn't.d

All of the fish are still alive and they are schooling very actively, though at the bottom of the tank. Odd.

I rarely see any of the shrimp. Either they hide well or they are dead or eaten.

I am getting a whitish algae-like crap on the front of this tank. This is a new thing for me. What do you all think?

[Good Wolf]

Did you check inside your filter for the shrimp? They make their way in there even with the sponge on the intake. Don't ask me how, but they do.

I recently got 24 cherry shrimp and I see one or two now and then. I'm thinking they are fish food but I'm not discounting the possibility that they are either hiding in my plants or in hog heaven inside the filter.

I guess I'll take them apart when I do the water changes tomorrow.

[HTML.Coder]

Originally Posted by COM

The lighting legs came and I added some driftwood. I'm not loving the driftwood. I want something thinner, lighter colored, and more spindly.

Here is a shot of the tank. I have too much ambient light in the room to get really good pictures today. I'll shoot some more tonight. Also, I am going to try to get a remote control for the camera because the vibration causes by my trigger finger is enough to blur the super zoomed photos at this exposure speed.



Here's a fairly good close-up on one of the Orange Bumble Bee Shrimp:


Cool, huh?

yeah, it is, and that last pic (the huge one) is pretty big!

[COM]

Update:

As warned, this tank has grown a lot of algae due to the super duper lighting. So, I've decided to add a lot more plants to try to seize the nutrients as an algae preventer. Plus they look cool.

I added Bacopa, Pink Telenthera, Pennywort, and a plant that was labeled as Dwarf Hairgrass. It kinda looks like green grass with some teeny wheat mixed in. Can anybody ID it?

I also transferred my Dwarf Blue Gourami from my 20XH that is now a guppy conundrum.

Here's a shot of it. I will try to shoot it again in the darkness, but you can get a sense of the layout.



Any thoughts?

[Sea-Agg2009]

Looks like dwarf hairgrass to me, Eleocharis acicularis. There is a link here to it.

[gil_ong]

oh. i like that dwarf hairgrass.

[COM]

That's exactly what it is! Thanks!

[Johnny-J5]

tank looks great man! This making me want to start another tank for my bedroom...lol

[crazyfishlady]

What kind of substrate is that? I'm going to be transforming my 46 into a planted tank soon and I can't seem to find the right type of sand. I went to Home Depot yesterday and all they had was play sand, I don't think that's safe to use in the aquarium...I'm gonna try Menards today.

[emc7]

play sand is safe, but you have to rinse it for a long time. A lot of people recommend pool-filter sand because it has a larger, uniform size. That black stuff is really pretty, though.

[crazyfishlady]

Yeah, I was looking for the pool sand, they didn't carry it at home depot. I guess I'll try American Sales or another pool store.

[COM]

The sand is black sand from the aquarium shop. It cost about $4. I realize that I could have had a boatload more if I went to a pool or garden shop, but I didn't need it and I don't want to inventory sand.

The major downside to it is that it shows a lot of dirt.

[emc7]

That little tank is lovely. I'm tempted to get some black sand for my firemouths.