So, one of my guppies had some babies, so i decided to setup a fry tank for them. I must say there is a lot of really cool small plastic tanks today!!! When i was younger the best you could get was the classic Tetra ones with the screened plastic top and little clear plastic window ontop to open...
So many choices... I decided to go with the aqueon mini bow 5 gallon. It looks just like my 36 gallon bow...
The light it came with is a 15 watt incandescent screw in bulb. I didnt even put it in. At the store they had a 10 watt screw in compact flourescent for $11, but i read that walmart had the same bulb in their aquarium section for $4. Sure enough walmart had it, and i must say that 10 watt bulb is very bright and is a nice color.
I was gonna buy eco complete, but every store was out of it, so i settled with Caribsea Floramax in Midnight. I layed down about 1.5"-2" of this. Any more and i think it wouldnt look right.
Found a really nice small piece of driftwood at the store. Put an Anubias Nana on it. Added a few other plants. And put in a few fish i'm giving to a friend, to help cycle it....
Being i set this up for fry i put a Sponge filter / prefilter over the intake. The little pump/filter it came with is odd. It sits inside the tank on a special ridge. It definatly blocks a little light, but its ok for now. I dont think it takes much to filter a 5 gallon tank...
About the only thing the tank does not come with is a heater. I had an extra tetra 50 watt heater i stuck in it.
One thing that surprised me is the top is already precut for a HOB filter, yet it has this funny filter. And theres a spot you can notch out for a heater.
One thing i do plan to do in a few days is to take the carbon out of the filter thats currently in there. I figure i'd give it a couple days to get the initial crap outa the tap water... I'm guessing i can just cut the filter and pour the carbon out? Doesnt look like any room for any bio media, but the sponge on the intake should do the trick hopefully.
Oh and one last note. I'm sure this is true about all these plastic mini aquariums. Have you ever taken something like a mcdonalds napkin and wiped the gauge cluster cover in your car? I made that mistake when i was younger and it will scratch the crap out of the clear plastic. These aquariums are like that. It already came with a few very minor scratches and i put a few more trying to clean it... I guess micro fiber is the way to go with these things.
Oh, one last thing. The hood has the light filter/reflector assembly screwed into it, and if you were to remove it, it would give you the fill width of the hood to put something like a small t5 in there. Theres more then enough room, and i know home depot sells 12" T5 type lights for under cabinets for dirt cheap. Should be really easy to retrofit... but i must say the 10 watt screw in cfl is plenty bright... Anyway heres the pics. They came out of, but nothing does justice like seeing things in real life.
