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I have a nice challenge. Very tall, thin tank with light from the front

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1K views 9 replies 7 participants last post by  Acro 
#1 ·
Hi guys.

We built a new space in my dad's house and left a hole in a wall that I was hoping to turn into a tank.

This was before I knew a thing about keeping a proper planted tank. The set-up will be quite challenging and unlike most what I've seen people do successfully. That said I have an empty tank sitting in a very visible hole in the wall that keeps mocking me every time I go visit. So here's my scream for help, hope you can help overcome this challenge.

The tank is very tall and thin. 18 inches front, 8 inches deep and 30 inches tall. It's next to a glass door, so it gets a lot of window light (This is south and in the middle of an unforgiving desert, so we're talking there's over 200 days of sunshine a year). It doesn't get much direct sunlight (perhaps five of minutes a day in the very early morning tops.) The light comes from the front of the tank, not from the top, so all parts of the tank get more or less equal amounts of light.

The tank is covered by a concrete wall on 3 sides. Meaning it doesn't have room to put anything on the outside. It has a very sturdy wooden hollow base that can house about 1 cubic feet of equipment. It has about 1/2 inch separation from the back wall where I can run cables and air/water tubes. It does, however, has a lot of space above the aquarium.

My tap water is about 7.6 pH with a high kH of about 6 and I can't recall the gH but it was pretty high as well. So this has to be either an aquarium for high-ph species or must contain a decent amount of softeners. But I'm open to ideas.

I tried to set-it up with some amazon swords in simple sand substrate (again, this was before I knew a thing about fishkeeping) a decent water stone and one of these stingray submerged filters. The while thing was quickly overrun by algae and I tore the thing down in anger.


It's been sitting there, mocking me for the past few years. I say it's time for revenge.

I'm open to anything, I've considered everything from a goldfish to a cichlid tank; filling it halfway and using emergent plants to suck up the nutrients; turning it into a waterfall, overstocking it with plants to turn it into a shrimp tank, you name it.

The only requisite is that it has to be visually pleasant. It's the first thing people see walking into the living room.

I know there's a lot of great people who'd love to help me on this quest, thank you in advance!

Here's a scheme of what I currently have:
 
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#6 ·
Don't put angels in there.... 8 inches front to back with angels is a bad idea no matter how tall the tank is, I have a 6 inch angel nose to beginning of tail so sticking angels somewhere cramped like that is a bad idea, as far as a light is concerned make a led cannon the sunlight won't hurt much and you can also benefit from using floating plants along with low light plants:)
 
#10 ·
You could make a terrarium or paludarum, either of these can have a water feature, even a waterfall.

Try some vampire crabs, or poison frogs, or tree frogs. You could grow mosses, ferns, orchids, fungi and many other cool plants (note fungi is not a plant). :D
 
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