Fish room set-up journal

[In.a.Box]

Love the 55g, is that just soil with wood all the way?

[ReluctantHippy]

Thank you. That's a cold water local (N. California) biotope tank. Soil/silt bottom capped in some areas with local river sand and gravel. Wood, plants, sand, and fish were all locally collected as well. It's currently housing a dozen or two mosquito fish along with two green sunfish.

[ReluctantHippy]

Can anyone give me a minimum pipe diameter to use with my pump? My pump has 2" inlet/outlets. Is reducing it down to a 1" return going to be a problem? What about a 1" inlet reduction?

I don't mind if flow rate suffers as long as I'm not going to kill my pump.

[ReluctantHippy]

The 60 is filled and lightly planted and the 100 has been patched and is now soaking some driftwood.



Grow out tank I've been grabbing plants from


My 40 looking neglected. I'll be doing a trim when I plant the 100 and clean it up then. That will also be when I open this tank up to the shared sump.


Still alot of tannins. I'll flush those out post cycle.

[ReluctantHippy]

Here's a video update - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRS_pikZiR8

Today I finally got the 100g filled and filtering after a long slow process of adding ~20g and waiting several days and repeating. Luckily only a single piece of my hardscape budged and only by an inch or two. Still lots of tannins but that's just a flush or two from being no problem at all. I'll be adding 50 very small white clouds to the tank later this week.

I added a true Siamese algae eater (siamensis, not algae shark, flying fox, chinese algae eater) to my 40g along with a half dozen odessa barbs. Not sure why but I rarely rarely see true Siamese algae eaters so I'm stoked on the find.

This isn't in stone but is what I'm thinking for the 100g

6-10 corys/loaches/botias not sure
6 celestial pearl danios
2 kuhli loach
1 rubber nose pleco
pair of american flag fish
10-20 amanos
6 ottos
6 odessa barbs (I'll move the ones in the 40 over likely)
10-20 rummynose tetras (still deciding on this one)
50 white clouds
3 roseline sharks aka redline barb
1 german blue ram
4 scarlet baddis
6 threadfin rainbows
2 peacock gudgeons
1 flame dwarf gourami

I'll try and grab stills later.

[ReluctantHippy]

Not the best pictures but it gives some idea of the layout.



Current inhabitants are 15 ghost shrimp, five leusistic (golden?) white clouds, 2 peacock gudgeons. I'm not sure what to place orders for next. I'm thinking an XL sword for the back right corner, Madagascar lace for the back middle, some glosso for the shadier portion of the open water and an XL (~20 plantlets) red wendtii to be split apart and distributed in the mid ground with the crypts already in place. For fish I can't decide where on the list to start. Here's the list of fish I plan to add earlier on:
Purple passion danios (3)
White clouds (20)
CPD (6-10)
Pygmy corys (6-10)
Dwarf flame gourami (1-2)
American flag fish (2-4)

The rest of my list will trickle in as I don't trust them nearly as much as those above, with the exception of the barbs and baddis.

[ReluctantHippy]

Slowly and steadily coming together. I've been having a terrible time keeping my temps up on the system. I'm running ~1100w of heater between the three tanks and sump and have been barely maintaining 74f. A couple of times I've tripped the GFIs at night drastically dropping temps as well. Today's task will be to insulate each tank in foam on three sides. Not the best picture but shows some progress:

[dewalltheway]

Originally Posted by ReluctantHippy

Did you get those LED lights from DealExtreme.com? Let me know if you did and if they grow your plants very well. I purchased 4 for my 125 I set up, but found the lights to not grow plants all that well and ended up putting my Dual CF light back in. They do provide a great shimmering effect within the aquarium if you have surface movement, but just not real good for plants.

[ReluctantHippy]

I purchased mine from VVME. They have a local warehouse and a 1 year guarantee which in my experience with cheaper Chinese LED wares is priceless.

They are doing a great job for me; those quoted in the picture above are only 10w units over ~10g cubes so I consider it low light and have planted up with mostly crypts in those tank, but they are growing out pennywort fine as well as some small swords.

I have very similar larger arrays over my 100g and they work great for plants - I built my panels for high light terrestrial plants and they worked wonders. I have tested the spectrum and they check out pretty well: (tested with an RGB biased camera)

3000k

6500k

[ReluctantHippy]

As obnoxious as it is here's a video update versus stills. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Azv2lqw6gTA

[manzpants92]

Killer set up

[ReluctantHippy]

Thank you. I'll try and get some stills up in the next few days.

[ReluctantHippy]

New Electric Catfish - I had been babying this guy for weeks at the shop and just had to take him home with me. I have plenty of larger tanks for him to transition to.



This is my other recent adoption from the shop. Great eater and no one wanted him. I call him my Half Dome Angelfish

[ReluctantHippy]

Video update of the 100g - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VplqU8X4RfI

[ReluctantHippy]

Rescaped the 40g a bit today. Tried to give it some of the depth it's lost in the past year. Touched up the 100g as well. Almost have a full carpet of glosso.




Video update:

fish room update. three tropical tanks and one local. - YouTube

fish room update. three tropical tanks and one local. - YouTube