[Sashimi Turtle]

Hey y'all. I'm Turtle. I've been keeping fish since I was a kid, and my first tank I really remember experimenting with was an old acrylic 15 or 20 gallon with an air pump driven undergravel filter in the 90s. I remember going on one of those family summer vacations and coming back and seeing my fish tank completely green thru my bed room window and being devastated when I found every last one of my fish dead. There had been a storm while we were gone and the breaker for that side if the house had tripped. My parents wouldn't immediately take me to the pet store to get more fish(be be fair they were probably more concerned about the freezer full of now rancid meat in the garage), so I took matters into my own hands and went to the pond thru the woods. One of my favorite tanks was my pond tank full of minnows and small bream and lilly pads from the pond.

I've been into the saltwater side of the hobby for about 5 years now and I have a Reefer 250 newly set up as a reef tank.

All that background to lead up to one of my favorite freshwater setups I've done. My Innovative Marine 20g peninsula dropoff. Whew that's a mouth full.

 

[Sashimi Turtle]

Let's list all my equipment I currently am using...

The stand is sort of a custom build. It was originally a 36"×24"×36" for a 36"×24" rimless 90g reef I had. It ended up warping(yep leveled the stand and used a leveling mat under the tank) the bottom pane cracked and dumped about 40g of salt water onto my 40 year old heart pine floors. I got a warranty replacement stand and tank that I had running for about 3 years until I recently, and slightly downsized into the much nicer Red Sea tank. The stand was cut, reinforced and put back together in about 20"×24"×36" measurements (it's been a few years I'd have to measure again) to fit the IM tank with a little lip to fit some knick knacks around the edge.

The light is a Nanobox Duo +m. It's made for saltwater and is heavy in blue, but the white channel is still pretty strong. It's got cool and warm whites as well as royal blue, aqua blue, lime and UV LEDs. So far, it's growing plants VERY well and I have no algae to speak of. It's fully controllable for time and intensity on each individual channel.

Flow is accomplished by an Innovative Marine desktop size DC return pump. I have it on the lowest setting and seems to not blast my tetras around too bad.

The heater is currently a very cheap preset Top Fin from the wally world.

Filtration is done by a inTank media basket with that simple white and blue filter mesh cut into squares to fit the basket. No chemical filtration at this time.

 

[Sashimi Turtle]

Ok so what's living in the tank...

For fish I currently have ember tetras, harlequin rasboras and some Von Rio flame tetras, and one panda gara. Plants are just some java fern I've had going in one tank or another for over 10 years and one anubias barteri(I think, its for sure anubias)

 

[somewhatshocked]

Glad to see you've started a tank journal. Gonna be fun to follow along!

 

[jonasmalik]

I will be happy to follow up with the journal


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Sashimi Turtle]

Made some changes to the tank. First off I removed all the plants, scooped up the rocks and siphoned up the detritus that was left behind. That was gross.

I had made a trip to the LFS yesterday. Picked up some Fluval Stratum soil, a few plants that I've probably forgotten what they are and one of those Fluval CO2 systems. I've read mixed reviews on the CO2 from Fluval, but I figured it would get me started until I figure things out.

I pulled all the rocks and added new soil last night and let the plants float as I couldn't see in the tank. This morning I planted everything. I broke up all the java fern, it ended up being about a dozen individual plants, and I put most in another tank to continue growing until I trade them. I trimmed up the anubias and attached it to a piece of driftwood. I moved over one small Amazon sword, and the rest are what I bought. One is called rotala vietnam... I remember that one, it's the tall wispy reddish one. The tall green one is bocopa or something and I can't remember what the shorter red one is.