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Advice for unattended tank...

910 views 9 replies 3 participants last post by  Nlewis 
#1 ·
Sometime in the future I would like to set up a tank in the foyer of my church. What advice can you give for a tank that will be largely unattended through the week?
Obviously an auto feeder will be necessary, what about low maintenance fish or plant suggestions?
Thanks in advance!

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#2 ·
Size
Bigger tank = more room for mistakes. Higher volumes of water dilute problems that would otherwise be toxic in smaller tanks: pollutants, fish waste, algae, unanticipated spawning, etc. Everything is easier to deal with in a big tank. It's also not as big a deal if you forget to top a big tank off for a couple of weeks. +30 gallons is good for an unattended tank.

PLANTS
Lots of them! More plants=fewer water changes. Get hardy low-tech plants that like dirt (see below), like wisteria, hairgrass, and amazon swords.
If the tank is going to be unkempt for long periods of time, you want to make sure you pick plants that will not get tangled into a knot when no one's looking. That means no tall grassy-type plants like spirals and no emergently growing plants like lilies. For tall background plants, stick to stemmed plants that are easily trimmed, like ludwigia reopens.
Mosses might grow too fast to trim, depending on what your requirements are here.

DIRT
No need to worry about fertilizer dosing or pressurized carbon. As long as you cap well with sand are careful during water changes, there is no mess. With dirt, plants take care of themselves. Very very easy. My own dirted tank goes months without maintenance of any kind. I might do a water change 4 times a year, although that's also in large part thanks to:

UNDERSTOCKING
Take the number of fish you would normally put in this tank at home and cut that number in half. If you really want to go all out, cut the number in half again! With few enough fish and a jungle of plants, you can avoid water changes indefinitely.

TEMPERATE
Choose fish that can survive in room temperature water. If you can ditch a tank heater, it's just one more thing you don't have to worry about. White cloud minnows are great. I'm partial to native fish. Perhaps start out with a small school of fathead minnows and then work your way up to dwarf sunfish.

TECH
LED lights for sure. They sip electricity and will pretty much never require a bulb change.
Install an oversized canister filter just to make real extra sure you don't have to worry about water quality. Go light on the filter floss - if this tank isn't going to be attended regularly, you won't to make sure you won't end up with a flow problem from clogged floss.
 
#3 ·
So, something like a heavily planted 55gal with 3-4 pearl gourami, dirt substrate with a nice thick cap of black diamond and a Finnex or something over the top? That's kinda what I'm thinking...

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#5 ·
Go to the "Fertilizers and Water Parameters" subform of this site and tell me how many dirted tanks you see.

If this is a typical week, the answer will be zero. With dirt, you don't have to worry about fert levels. You don't have to dose anything. No micronutrients or macronutrients. No adjusting macros and micros depending on variable growth rate of different plant species. You don't have to have a pressurized tank of gas or a soda bottle filled with prison hooch.

The amount of maintenance saved in having a dirted tank in comparison to gravel+artificial CO2 tanks is very substantial.

I do not know where you get your "A dirted tank can take a turn for the worse" argument from. Certainly, a dirted tank is no more prone to catastrophe than a tank with artificially supplemented CO2 and ferts. Having nutrients almost exclusively in the water column rather than tucked safely below a substrate cap allows tank-consuming algae blooms to spring up literally overnight. Since transitioning to dirt, this has never once happened to me in any of my tanks.

"One more variable you would be unable to control" is really more like "One more variable you don't have to control". Dirt takes care of itself. The only downside is you can't grow pretty HC, but that doesn't seem to be the priority here.

So, something like a heavily planted 55gal with 3-4 pearl gourami, dirt substrate with a nice thick cap of black diamond and a Finnex or something over the top? That's kinda what I'm thinking...

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This sounds perfect. You would probably even have room for some otos or dwarf cories.
 
#6 ·
Of course! Can't forget the cleanup crew - I'm thinking some shrimp, some MTS and a bristlenose or two... I've never had corys, to be honest, but they look kinda fun so maybe some of those in place of the pleco...

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#7 ·
Haha yeah sorry I guess it was implied :p

I've heard that some plecos will sometimes disrupt substrate, which is of course an added concern with a dirted tank (a concession I must make to Nlewis!), but it's not always the case. Last time I kept a pleco in a planted tank it had a lot of fun ripping up my plants, but it depends what you plant and there are certainly many examples of plecos doing just fine among plants.

I love cories. They don't do anything for algae control, and in terms of cleanup they're really only good for picking up rejected food and making shrimp antsy. That said, nothing is cuter (as far as aquariums go) than a school of 6+ dwarf cories sweeping through the sand together. They are clumsy, dim, and adorable.





Like all fish, they school best if you only keep one species. Having a couple of giant scary pearl gouramis overhead will probably get them to keep close together even more!
 
#10 ·
You must be the only one on this forum with the magic dirt that doesn't leech ammonia. You are also the only person I've ever heard that had anaerobic conditions with plain old gravel.

Gravel tanks become a toxic wasteland? Please you must elaborate on this phenomenon. Gravel isn't ecologically stable, how much more stable can inert be?

Umm, it takes me about 15 seconds when I get home everyday to dump some dry ferts in my tank. My co2 tank lasts me 6 months so I'm trying to understand how you think this is a substantial chore.
 
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