5g Hex Planted Tank Journal

[FrostyNYC]

Looks great. I can't wait to see driftwood in there as your hardscape. The two shades of hornwort really compliment the hairgrass.

I've never kept anubias, but you may have to shade the anubias a little if there's too much light it. Keep an eye on it, since the WPG rule doesn't really work on nano tanks unfortunately.

[BiscuitSlayer]

Looking good Smalltank3! I hope your plants do well and you are able to sustain them without issue.

I would pay attention to Homer since he ran a similar setup and ran into issues. Homer is a good guy to listen to. If you are ever in the need for some nano sized wisteria for your tank, let me know. I think I could hook you up. You might like it depending on what you think of the water sprite. They look similar but the wisteria grows quite a bit slower under a decent amount of light.

Keep us updated!

[hughitt1]

Very nice tank

In the future though I wouldn't use fish to jump start cycling: it can be harmful for the fish, and it is not hard to cycle without the fish. Just move some substrate, a plant, or piece of filter over to the new tank. You can even add a little food and let it rot and give off ammonia to help feed the new bacteria colonies. If the two tanks share a similar filter, you could even switch filters, (or part of the filter if it is a multi-layered one).

Keep us updated!

[MARIMOBALL]

the tank looks great. You have enough light to grow anything. Wallmart now sells GE full spectrum 6500k CF spirals in 13w 20w and 24w, and they give off a nice color. you can have up to ten micro rasbora or celestial pearl danio and shrimp once the plants thrive and the tank is stable, but the betta would have to be moved.

[Smalltank3]

Wow, thanks everyone!

This tank is fully stable, it has been set up for about 9 months. I do plan in the future, if every thing goes fine in my 1g, that I will have shrimp in this tank with the Betta. However, I will have some ghost shrimp go in this tank to see how the Betta reacts before getting cherries, bee, or tiger shrimp.
The snails are everywhere, but that's okay I don't mind the snails at all.


Thanks,

Smalltank

[mikeb210]

This is great! I've been fighting with one of these tanks for a couple months now and its slowly taking shape. I'm glad to see someone else dealing with one and doing well. The tank looks great and I will definitely be watching this post. Keep up the great work!

[smalltank]

Your tank looks great; I like how natural it looks.

I have a 5 gallon hex too, and I've had success using 10 Watts CF (12 hrs a day) + some sun light, no CO2 and no aglae.

Here's a pic at 2 months.

[Homer_Simpson]

Originally Posted by BiscuitSlayer

...I would pay attention to Homer since he ran a similar setup and ran into issues. Homer is a good guy to listen to...

Thanks for the compliment BiscuitSlayer.

I set a tank like this up using the Natural Planted Tank concept. To be honest, I have struggled with this tank. I ended up with Green Dust Algae and my Betta fish got Fin and Tail Rot and got really sick in the tank. I was seriously considering tearing the tank down, but decided to throw in some cheap feeder ghost shrimp, and leave the tank as is to see if it balances itself out and improves with time. If you keep ghost shrimp, it is said that they need some iodine to survive. Many people have lost ghost shrimp when everything else including water quality was fine, so if anyone is thinking getting ghost shrimp,keep this in mind. I threw in a few grains of iodized salt in the tank to provided iodine for the Ghost Shrimp.

I have has a lot of sucess with Tom Barr's Low Light Tank method for my other 5 gallon, so if I were to ever tear the 5 gallon hex tank and start over, I would definitely go with Tom Barr's method. The 3 gallon nano at work that was set up using the Tom Barr method is also doing really well. For anyone looking at a possible successful way of using a 5 gallon hex tank, I would suggest looking into Tom's method.
http://www.barrreport.com/articles/4...2-methods.html

Another thing is that if you are playing with any kind of setup, consider getting cheap feeder fish or ghost shrimp to start just to see how the tank plays out. If the shrimp and feeder fish survive for a few months and plant growth is good, you should be able to safely add other precious fish like a betta.