jasonpatterson 3 gallon

		The Planted Tank Forum > Your Tanks
Viewing Profile

User	jasonpatterson
Size	3 gallon
Date Started	4-1-2011
Lighting	5W DIY LED, 6500K Cree XP-G x 3
Equipment	Aquaclear 10 powerhead with sponge on intake for water flow, no heater, air stone.
CO2	DIY, diffused through powerhead
Substrate	1/2" creek bed soil, dried, sifted, and baked, then pulverized into dust before wetting. Topped with 3/4" fine gravel (3-5mm size.)
Parameters
Fertilization	None
Plants	Good question, bought from LFS with atrocious labeling. There is some ludwigia (right side) and some sort of grassy plant. Not sure what the cabbagey looking plant in the middle is.
Inhabitants	Red cherry shrimp and 2 bumblebee nerites.
Comments	I wanted to make this tank fully enclosed to cat proof it and give it some kid resistance as well, so the light wound up being the biggest challenge. It's a homemade fixture/heatsink mounted inside the lid of the cookie jar, which I drilled and notched. Due to the size of the heatsink required, the light didn't quite turn out as planned. The light fixture had to be altered by cutting the lower portion into fins rather than the original 'can light' look I was going for. It now runs extremely cool and the light spreads across the tank better. I also get strips of wavy light on my desk. :-)
Profile Views	1096


VictorJ Algae Grower	How is the maintenance on this?


jasonpatterson Wannabe Guru	So far there really hasn't been any. I do 25% water changes once a week, but it's more out of habit than anything else, the tests come back fairly clean when I check. No algae at all so far (kinda weird) and the plants are doing fantastically.


Abs Junior Member	wanna try it too! it looks cool!


jasonpatterson Wannabe Guru	The ludwigia is turning out to be a bit tall for the tank, it's growing right up to the light and shadowing everything else. Luckily you can't kill the stuff so I'm just cutting it back viciously about every 2 weeks. I don't want to jinx myself, but I haven't seen ANY algae in this thing yet. 5-11-11


Abs Junior Member	ya know i wanna see your ludwigia please post a picture and again i love your nano!!!


Abs Junior Member	i already started one nano similar to yours. i will post it soon. it is 5 gal. cookie jar with plants like ludwigia and wisteria as background and echinodorus as midground and bacopa as foreground. inhabitants are betta and 3 netrite snails and 2 malaysian trumpet snail.

jasonpatterson

Wannabe Guru

I'll try to get some more pictures of this up soon. It had a rough 4 days while we were out of town. The cat turned off the power strip for the light/pump so when I returned it was all cloudy and some green spot algae had started on the plants' lower leaves. The cloudiness is gone now and the nerites are slowly cleaning up the green spot. All the guppy fry are gone now as well as all but the 2 sneakiest ghost shrimp. I'm trying to get it down to just cherries and snails but they're too wily for me. The plants are still going strong; the grass is spreading nicely and I'm still chopping down the ludwigia regularly. It's starting to look a bit funny really, I may just pull up the old stems and replant the tops next time.

simplesue

Algae Grower

Love it. I had to make cat-proof water gardens too. I used that same lid on a fish bowl. I made them for the beauty of aquatic plants and to keep snails. Eventually the snails over populated mine, probably because I feed them too generously, and I ended up using a little 3 gal. http://www.amazon.com/United-Pet-Group-Whisper-Filter/dp/B001D71580, but got rid of the filter part and only used the wee little air pump with a split tube going into both of my two glass water gardens with a bubble stone on the ends. The water stays clean for weeks just from the bubbles. I was pleasantly surprised. So if you get tired of partial water changes as I finally did all you have to do is prop the lid up a bit to prevent the air tube from crushing.


Abs Junior Member	hi there the cookie jar i bought was a little big about 10 gal. and i decided to use cabomba as background and echinodorus as foreground with a pennywort attached to a driftwood. inhabitants are 6 red eye tetra and 1 betta

jasonpatterson

Wannabe Guru

Things are pretty much as they were when this all started. The green spot algae never completely went away, but it has been knocked back substantially. I need to remember to take a picture of this thing when it's wild and wooly; I only ever seem to get that idea when I've just trimmed everything. The ludwigia readily grows to the top of the tank, and the lobelia has gotten to that point once now as well. The grassy plant is spreading nicely, and there are about a dozen baby shrimp in the jar now as well.


Abs Junior Member	Can i see your lobelia!!!! I'm sure it looks GREAT! Please post a picture!

All times are GMT. The time now is 10:26 PM.