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Frosty's 10 Gallon Setup

76K views 243 replies 53 participants last post by  FrostyNYC 
#1 · (Edited)
Specs:
Tank: 10 Gallon All-Glass
Lighting: 40 Watt USA Satellite 6500k/10000k
Substrate: Eco-Complete
Hardscape: Zebra rock
Ferts/Dosing: EI w/dry ferts plus Flourish and Excel, but while emersed just misting with diluted Miracle-Gro and Flourish Excel
Filtration: Toms Mini-Canister (later changed over to an Aquaclear HOB)

Flora: HC & HM
Fauna: None so far

Set up this tank on February 25, 2008, so it's been a little under a month since I put it together. I planted an HC lawn in the front, and purchased some HM to use as sort of a "backup" if the HC failed, which I suspected it might. I planted HM to the front right and also in the background. I intend to plant heavily with stem plants in the two back corners once I fill this thing up with water, with HM acting as a midground and HC as a foreground. I planned to grow these two emersed for about 8 weeks, at which point I hoped to fill the tank.

Here's some pics. I'm running into a little problem, which I'll discuss in my next post.

Pic 1: Tank as of 3.9.08 (2 Weeks after startup)


Pic 2: Overhead shot as of 3.9.08 (2 Weeks after startup) (Added a little more HM to front-right and middle)


Pic 3: Overhead shot as of 2.25.08 (Date of Startup)
 
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#66 ·
It's been forever. I should post a full tank pic. Some little updates: I have lots of endlers now. I'm feeding Hikari First Bites and Hikari Micro Pellets. I highly recommend both foods. I also feed frozen daphnia and frozen brine shrimp, which I keep onhand at all times. I have 50+- red ramshorns now, which eat yellow squash, zuchini, and boston lettuce.

My valisneria are already throwing out runnings. I gave away 80+ plantlets a few months ago, and it looks like I have a val farm all over again.

I broke down and bought Cherry Shrimp on the swap and shop. I LOVE them. They make my tank so much more interesting. And one is already berried! Its strange that these shrimp are a tenth the size of amanos and yet their eggs are larger than amano eggs. I guess it makes sense, given that amanos have a primary stage where they're just little plankton things. Some please educate me with scientific terminology. Haha. But regardless, Im excited for baby RCS, and hopefully some survive and avoid my army of endlers.
 
#68 ·
No FTS, but here's some of my endlers. Black bar and peacocks. Some have swordtail traits (the feature, not the fish!), some have markings on their dorsal fin, some dont. Some have white markings, most dont. A lot of variation in this group. I was told that they were 100% endler with no guppy impurity. Anyone see any guppy in them? Mind you, these fish are TINY. I took the pics in a tic-tac container.

The first pic was taken with flash, the rest are with ambient light only. I should've used flash on all of them. The colors really pop.

 
#69 ·
So, its been a month and a half since I rescaped the tank. I did plant some HM on the right, as a few people suggested, to break up the monotony. And I purchased 20 red cherry shrimp off someone in the SnS. They shipped it in java moss, so I threw the little clump on the left side, and it's grown out into a monster amount of java moss. The HM also has been trimmed, because it was growing all over the place. It's still a huge mound.

Two weeks ago, I traded a dozen or so endler fry for a couple handfulls of red root floater, salvinia and duckweed. The shrimp and endler fry are enjoying all the root cover at the surface, so Im pleased. However, my red ramshorn snails (I must have 100 at this point), keep eating the red root floater. I actually removed like 20 snails to a glass jar, where they're chilling and being punished for snacking on my plants.

In addition to a full tank shot, here's a pic I just took of my tank in action. I circled endlers in red and a couple snails in yellow. It's hard to see anything because I'm using a poor camera right now and because everything is constantly moving in my tank. Forgive my poor FTS, as I didnt crop it and its not even centered or in balance.

I've actually not changed the water in this tank in 3 weeks, and I've only fertilized once this month. :( Full time work + grad school at night + friends/family takes a lot out of me. Im glad the tank has still prospered without my help.

One other thing! Several people mentioned they loved the manzanita branches in my tank. Well, so did my snails, apparently. They ate the branch down to hair-thin traces of wood, which then crumbled and broke into splinters. I kid you not. So, anyone who values their manzanita, and values red root floaters, stay away from red ramshorns.


 
#71 ·
My CO2 actually ran out and I was without CO2 for two weeks. Apparently, it's illegal to refill a CO2 tank in NYC (you have to buy pre-filled ones or swap your empty one for a filled one), so to refill my paintball canister I need to drive out of the city. This turned out to be a hassle, so I switched over to my trusty two-liter soda bottle and a glass/ceramic nano diffuser. When I refilled my paintball canister finally last week, I just hooked it up to the glass diffuser instead of the reactor. I havent noticed a really significant difference, perhaps because all the floating plant cover is keeping any CO2 bubbles from popping at the surface.

The nano diffuser is hidden in the HM.
 
#75 ·
Low and behold, a trim today revealed several baby RCS! Wooot. They are reproducing!

Im starting a 2.5 gallon RCS tank, as an aside. Its sitting right now with Ecocomplete, some rocks, driftwood, java moss, and a handful of my floating plants. Im waiting for the filter to come in the mail.

During the trim, I realized that the amount of duckweed in my tank has quadrupled in 2 weeks......... Hopefully I didnt open pandora's box with this duckweed stuff. It's already all over my sink and bathtub, let alone the tank surface.
 
#76 ·
Trimmed back the Rotala severely and gave out a large RAOK of floaters and rotala and red ramshorn snails.

I set up a 2.5 gallon tank with the java moss from this tank, plus some old driftwood I had laying around, and I played "Fish for Shrimp" for several days, catching all my RCS. There are still more in this tank, but I've got more than enough transferred over into my new 2.5g to start a colony over there too.

I'm excited to say that I placed a plant order with another hobbyist, and I'm expecting some Windelov, subwasertang, and spiky moss for my new 2.5 shrimp tank. And I got a small kleinerbar sword for this 10 gallon tank. I'd like to trim back the HM so that I can actually see my Rubin sword, and then put the kleiner bar sword on the left side. I'm sort of sad that I put my rubin so far to the back, since you can't see how beautiful it is all the way in the back corner. It's got probably 30 ruby red leaves at this point, really gorgeous, and not as big as I expected it to be. It must be staying short because of the small tank size.
 
#78 ·
I spent 6 hours driving from Boston to NYC last night, which is usually a 2.5 to 3 hour drive. So yes, very frosty up here. The weather is inclement, to say the least.

Tank is good. I'll post a full tank shot tomorrow. I've been haphazardly dosing EI, and since I stopped regular dosing, I noticed I'm getting algae on the glass. Plants can't outcompete when Im not dosing, apparently.

Also, I've been noticing some bright yellow ramshorn snails in my tank. I've been pulling these out and putting them into my new small tank. Although there really isn't a huge demand for ramshorn snails out there, perhaps I can get a couple of new colors breeding true. Other than the blues, browns, reds, and pinks... I'd never heard of yellow.
 
#83 ·
Some updates: I got my plant order from a hobbyist of another forum, and I was NOT pleased. The spiky moss I ordered was full of hair algae and clado, and I had to throw it away. The Subwassertang was significantly smaller in size than advertised, but I did managed to clean it of all the clado in it. I got some TINY Windelov and a half broken Kleiner Bar sword. I intended to put these all in my 2.5 gallon, but I placed them all in this tank to grow out a little and recover from their transport.

Big change: I took out the java moss and HM. Now there's actually room for fish to swim. The front right is very bare again, and Im not happy with it, but it gives me a spot to experiment with new plants.

I did not reduce photosize on the first pic, so that you can click on it and see it closer. (Caution: large file size)

An RCS breaking the waterline in an attempt at... evolution?


This tank is now an endler farm


Requisite full tank shot
 
#88 ·
Not too many changes or growth, even. I spent the last week and a half in Florida and the lights were drastically reduced and CO2 turned off. The floaters keep overgrowing and cutting off light too, even though I keep giving the excess Salvinia away. I think I'm gonna try putting a root tab under the sword to try to inspire some growth or reproduction from that thing.

Also, I dropped my Fuji digital camera on the floor, and now the shutter won't open. Anyone have a suggestion on where to send it for repairs? Blah.

PS - Zoo, I'll refrain from any sword-size comments. This is a family forum afterall.
 
#89 ·
PS - Zoo, I'll refrain from any sword-size comments. This is a family forum afterall.
lol

Nice tank! This is an honest question, is that the largest size the sword can get?

I also wanted to comment on the corkscrew val in the tank. I've never seen it used in almost any tank and it really seems like it helps the overall scale of the tank being that they are vals and the don't even reach the surface of the water!
Great job!
 
#90 ·
Fishboy87, thanks for the complements.

The sword at the back right is a rubin. From everything I've read and heard, they get huge. But mine has 20 to 30 leaves right now, they're a bright magenta/maroon, and the plant seems really healthy to me. I'm not sure why the leaves arent growing any taller. I've had the plant for over a year, and it hasn't outgrown the tank. It had maybe 5 leaves when I got it.

The vals are also really short. This variety of val never got really tall for me. The leaves get 12 inches long max, and usually stay shorter. It does spread runners like mad though, and is hard to keep contained. I mostly consider this tank a val-farm. I'm not sure why so few people use it. I'm a huge fan.

I'd like to try something else to bracket the vals on the right and left. I shouldnt have cut the rotala back so hard. Now that Im looking at the tank, I think its time to thin out the tenellus... it looks messy.
 
#93 ·
It looks great! It's come a very long way from the first photos I saw.
 
#95 ·
I made an impulse buy today. I've been dying for a dwarf cory species for months now (maybe years), and I didnt really care which of the three species I got. Well, a local petstore had hastitus and pygmaeus. I ended up getting 3 little pygmies. I love them! And then they disappeared into my plants. :( Occasionally they come out and school with my endlers, cause with the black-bars running across both the endlers and the cories, they look really similar. But then the cories disappear back into the plants. We'll see how that goes.

ThatFishPlace sells these guys for 99 cents each. It makes me want to buy 10 more. Who wants in on a NYC-based ThatFishPlace fish order?

Oh, I also picked up like 10 stems of Rotala wallichi for like $2.99. Not bad. (Since I got ripped off on the price of the pygmy cories)
 
#99 ·
Thanks for the compliment.

All three cories are swimming and schooling with the endlers as I type this. It's very cute. They're very, very confused.

I would love a school of like 10 pygmaeus in this ten gallon, with a couple bright red microrasbora for color. It'd be great. But for now, it looks like the cories are happy enough hanging out with their new same-size, same-color livebearer friends.
 
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