What? I suffer from a serious case of Multiple Tank Syndrome? Surely not!
Figured it was time to start a new tank.
The goods:
10gal Deep Blue Professional tank
Eheim 2213 w/ DIY spraybar
10w LED Flood Light (not yet installed)
Bits and pieces of manzanita from Tom Barr that I glued together and added some Christmas Moss to
Pool Filter Sand
A bunch of Crypts - most to be added later
Maybe some Anubias nana
Not going for beauty so much as I am viewing space for critters. Simple root feeders is all the tank will likely hold.
A shot I teased yesterday:
Here's a messy shot about a minute after flooding:
That's several clumps of rough-looking Petsmart C. wendtii in the back (hopefully it fills out and grows up) and two little sprigs of C. parva in the front. Have a bunch of C. beckettii, C. petchii and C. parva coming from Gordon roughly mid-week. Still have a bunch of moss to add.
I'm hopeful the C. wendtii will survive and provide some nice shrimp hidey holes. Added a few clay fert balls beneath their area so they'll hopefully snap back soon.
The plan is to house about 15 Corydoras habrosus because they're active bottom dwellers and maybe some C. pygmaeus for the action with various snails and some shrimp. Depending upon the number of critters, I may consider some Boraras brigittae later on down the road.
Haven't decided if the tank will be 100% tap, 100% RO or a mixture of the two. Guess I'll make the decision a few weeks from now when the initial 'cycle' is complete.
Can't wait to see how this new tank evolves. Once I take a break from making more Om Nom Nom shrimp food for you folks, I'll be starting yet another tank journal… for something a little different. Stay tuned for that.
If it was *just* these guys? Probably 5-6gal if it's really spread out. Ideally, no smaller than 20" x 10" base for 10-15.
Have a mix of them with C. pygmaeus in my 75 and they seem to spend most of their time in one small area of the tank. When I had them in a 20L, they explored about half the tank. In this one, they enjoy checking out the entire joint.
Haha 20" by 10" almost fits the dimensions of our DBP long tank.
I'd have a custom tank built just for these guys and moss TBH. MY better half loves cories more than anything and is sad all the fish store cories are weak stock :/.
I am doing this exact set up! So glad I ran into this thread.
What did you do with the heater?
Do you plan to fully plant the tank? I haven't added fish yet, and I might not cause I put alot of plants in there and there isn't much open space left.
Thinking of getting a fugeray as well, so sleek and sexy! The 13W CFL I have on there now is not providing good spread and there are dark spots in the tank. I was just looking on ebay at pretty much the LED lights you had, how heavy was that floodlight? I like open top, so I'd need to mount it somehow.
Heater was only in the tank to help with the 'cycling' process. Warmer temps really helped amp up bacterial growth.
It's fully planted as it is. Tons upon tons of crypts and moss. They just need to grow in (the crypts). If you mean the entirety of the substrate? Not planning on filling the front couple inches of the tank with plants, as Cories need room to explore and play around in the sand.
Fugeray is definitely a nice light fixture. Too much for a low-tech 10gal, though, without raising it or wrapping a bunch of window screen around it.
Depending upon the plants you have, darker areas in the tank may work perfectly. Especially with Cories, as they enjoy darker areas to relax.
The LED flood weighs a couple pounds. Light weight enough to attach it to just about anything or even to rest on top of some glass if you don't go open-top.
I really like these little cories and your enitre setup. How well do you think the C. habrosus and c. hastatus would do together in a nice size school in a 75 gallon?
It really depends upon the other critters you plan to house with them. These little guys (and gals) are tiny, so it's easy to stress them out or to see them get eaten.
I'm liking this evolution somewhatshocked! These little "Natural" set ups can really look very cool, and I'm impressed! The driftwood looks wonderful, and as long as you continue to get nice crypt growth, this tank will look outstanding.
Thanks! I (and by "I"? I mean "we" - even though I do all the work) just decided simple was best. Have trimmed the moss a couple times and obviously need to work on it again this weekend.
Looking forward to watching the Crypts grow and spread this year.
Really enjoying all the open space for Cory observation. They're so much more fun in small tanks like this. The C. habrosus I've got in my 220 at work just seem to disappear into the abyss of moss.
You should see all the snails come out during feeding time. Probably 200 Pond Snails (I for real selectively breed them, much to the shock of most on here) and 100ish MTS of various sizes. Only a handful of Ramshorns in this tank, though.
I got some MTS from Msjinkdz and they bred and were fine for a while then died. Besides algae wafers and the like is there any special way I need to feed them if I get more MTS? I love MTS they are so cute!
They actually hatched! There are 12 of them surviving. So far only one of them has croaked. Peacefully existing in my various shrimp tanks at the moment. Hoping to move a few back into the 10gal when they're older and my various other tanks.
The small amount of manzanita in this tank STILL has my pH at 6 (or just below), KH between 1 and 2 and GH around 7-8.
Tap that goes in at the moment/depending upon the day is pH 7.5-8, KH of 5-6, GH 12-14.
This is craziness.
May be insane for me to say it but I wish the buffering would hurry up and, you know, quit it. Ideal params would be 6.5-7ish pH, KH 2-3, GH 7-8. That's where things usually settle for me in most of my non-buffering tanks. Guess we'll what happens over the next several months.
MTS will eat just about anything. Literally - just about anything. Everything from algae to shrimp foods to decaying fish and shrimp - even other snails that have died. They eat it all.
PH 6.4-6.8 usually. Ammonia, nitrite and nitrate are at 0. My tank has lots of plants in it. I need to get one of those gh/kh test kits I forgot last time I was at the pet store :/
Yep - sometimes it's necessary to supplement invertebrates like that.
Do you have algae wafers or something you can use to make sure they're getting enough food? (once you test for hardness, that is) Has to be done carefully, so you don't experience a population explosion.
Thanks! It's the best I've done yet with a couple dollars worth of manzanita scrap.
It's working out really well for keeping shrimplets hidden from Cories, too, so it's a design idea I'm going to have to continue using in community tanks.
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