You need to come up with your own maintenance regimen just so you can call it Quint Essentials.

gorgeous, gorgeous tank!

Good one Phil although it would be more like bare essentials.

Thanks all for the compliments. It is getting. Kind of jungly need to do some spacing out a bit. Start trimming and moving some things forward to fill in the front some.

Been a while since Ive been on the forums. Super busy as of late. Just a quick update no pics right now, maybe later.

The 10g is doing well. I ended up putting in 5 chili rasboras with the betta/false amanos/snails. Betta did fine for a couple of weeks then noticed I was down to 4 and then 3 rasboras and they were hiding in fear of fatso so moved them to the 40b.

The 40b after having major issues with GSA I started treating with phosphates. This got rid of alot of it and the OTOs/shrimp/snails seemed to eat most of the rest of it. Ofcourse then I got a green soup explosion along with hard stringy green algae (like green human hair) both of which I am still combating. A glass door was letting in too much light onto the tank during the summer months. The cherry shrimp have bread into the wild form for the most part and the false amanos are huge now (about 1.5-2"). My false juliis which started out with 6 now have a population of 9. The CPDs have teamed up with the ember tetras and are the center pieces, very active and out in the open with good color.

Some of the plants took a hit with the GSA and then green soup, most are still doing ok. Hoping to get it cleared up soon.

Well tank is looking much better. These videos were from beginning of the week. Today when I got home it was almost back to normal except for some of the string algae and that darn GSA. Still working on it.

Not the best videos, I would like to get a better cell phone soon that ups the camera quality. This is just the 40B, no vids of the 10G.


Couple of the latest juvenile false juliis and the Kraken

Couple of CPD males doing the dance

One more video for now. This one from today. Looking better but still ways to go. Going to forgo videos after a while because may have my old nikon 40D up and running soon. Its older tech but takes pretty good photos and is much easier to focus and capture then using the cell phone.

Pretty sure those olive drab shrimp are from the chocolate emeralds and CRS crossing. I would say about half my shrimp are wild colors now, a few medium quality left, and several painted red if you will (all females I think). Cant really cull them because the CPDs and Ember tetras take out most of the babies so just happy they are reproducing enough to maintain a population going.

Very nice community tank! Hows the betta fish and shrimps getting along? Im thinking of doing the same thing but Im afraid that the betta will feed on the shrimps lol. I see that you have plenty of hiding spaces such as plants and decoration for shrimps to hide

My betta is in my 10g. He shares that with about 5 golden pencilfish, a few false amanos, some snails.



The betta originally did OK with the red RCS however I tried introducing some chocolate emeralds and he took after them like they were betta pellets. No idea why. I eventually moved all the small shrimp to the 40B and left the false amanos in his tank as he totally ignores them. Thanks

I see, thank you for sharing your story. I guess Ill just stick with my original plan with betta only

Just remember all bettas have there own personality. My other betta I originally had in the 40B which is no longer with us was probably the most docile fish Id scene in a while. That one never touched any of the shrimp or other fish but would try to fight with any other betta obviously. Just be mindful when putting other stuff in with them.

Now the one female I had for a while was a serious monster, she would beat up any male she was with and continually chased the other fish and would hunt all small shrimp except for the false amanos. She is now living at a coworkers house.

Good luck.

Added a couple plants, got rid of the few carpeting ones that werent doing anything. Trimmed one of my moss monsters back alot. Kind of felt like I was killing off a bunch of unscene babies (juliis, shrimp, maybe others dont know) but it had to get done.

I need to trim a few leaves off the anubus and buce due to the GBA. The shrimp and OTOs seem to like it though. I know it needs to go. Wish we had some way of controlling it because it actually looks nice IMHO. I just know its bad for the plants.



One of my nerites cleaning the glass below the substrate. The sand really slows it down lol

Not much to update. Thinking of rehoming my golden pencilfish. After they got home and colors formed found out I have 4 males and 1 female. Weird little guys. The males fight all day for the most part then at night they all sleep in a little group together. They need a bigger tank then the 10G they are in. May look at getting a either a longer tank (little bigger) or taking them back just dont like taking them back but probably better. Maybe they will get to live in the plant tank or something.



and the 40B

Found out the 100W heater wasnt enough or it is malfunctioning. Went to do a water change and it felt cold and the temp ended up being 71F, keep it at 76F usually except summer when it gets up to 80F. Got a new heater 150W, hopefully that will do the trick. Everyone seemed fine, still active. CPDs had a little darker color but not sure if that was temp or something else. Presume temp. Bunch of fish but most were hiding or foraging in the plants when I took pic.

Nice tanks . What type of floaters do you have in that 10 ? Mine never get roots like that....lol

@Leeatl they are just dwarf water lettuce. For some reason in that tank they grow like crazy. I usually take out half every thursday or friday water change, this last thursday I took out about 3/4 of them. By this thursday they will probably cover twice as much area as they do now.

As for the big roots I think a big part is the lower flow in that tank, the roots are kind of fragile. I keep the flow down because of the betta. Its a AQ50 but turned down with alot of stuff in the filter box that I clean only once in a great while. The golden pencilfish dont mind the low flow either.

Bump: I really should have painted the back of the 10 black to hide all that stuff.

Thanks , all I have are Salvinia and Duckweed and they don't get roots near like that....lol