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55l medium tech

M

Matthias

New Member
Joined
1 Feb 2019
Messages
15
Location
London
I’ve had various different tanks for about 30 years now, mostly quite low-key planted tanks and a bit of tanganyika. My last tank was a low tech overgrown Fluval Nano which ran for about 10 years with an ever expanding population of Endlers and cherry shrimp. This time around it’s time for something a bit more high end - which means I’m getting to grips with Aquasoil, CO2, more state of the art ferts etc and wanted to post this by way of asking a few questions I’ve had along the way.

My ideal tank would be something from the first Amano book that I recently rediscovered in my parent’s house - I love the look of this, so effortless and natural.

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Anyway this is the tank:
  • Dennerle Scapers Tank 55l - 45 x 36 x 34 cm. I love the rounded corners on this tank and the glass lid (I have a 3 year old so an open tank seemed like a bad idea)
  • 2 Stage CO2 system with in line diffuser from CO2 Supermarket, starts 2 hours before the light and an extra hour in the morning (the tank gets a lot of morning sunshine), about 1 bubble/sec
  • Twinstar LED V3 with dimmer set to step 5 of 7, on from 2pm - 10pm
  • 50% water change every weekend with London Tap water - pretty hard presumably with lots of NO3 (I don’t test water parameters)
  • Fertiliser 5ml of TNC complete with the weekly water change
  • Oase Filtosmart Thermo 100 set to 21
Just after setup
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After replacing the sagitaria few weeks ago

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And right now
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I’m only keeping about 10x red cherry shrimps, 2x Amanos and 5x Nerite snails for now. The original plan was to add some Tanichthys micagemmae, but I haven’t been able to find any in London and am half considering keeping it algae-eater only, let’s see…

In terms of plants you’ll probably recognise most of the plants in the pictures. I’m keeping Ludwigia Glandulosa, Limnophila aromatica and Lagenandra meeboldii for the first time and love them. Everything seems to be growing well so far apart from Micranthemum Cuba which collapsed so quickly I almost took it personal. The last strands are hanging in there in between the Elocharis, not sure if there’s any way to revive them.

I’ve got a mix of floaters: Salvinia, Limnobium and Phyllantus all growing vigorously and looking happy and green.

The tank is about 2.5 metres from a large east facing window and gets quite a lot of natural light. This means it’s dimly lit with daylight for the first half of the day. With the longer days I’m sure this is adding to my algae problem.

I’ve set the tank up in early January after about 3 weeks dark start. For the first 1.5 months I could hardly spot any algae and was starting to feel smug.All that changed around the time I removed a carpet of saggitaria which was starting to obscure the foreground. Ever since then I’m getting lots of Diatomes gradually turning to fuzzy green algae. I’ve added shrimps and most recently Nerite snails - it’s really satisfying watching them cut through the algae fuzz but wonder if I can reduce the algae any other way?? Would adding fertiliser over the course of the week rather than at water change give me more or less stability? Or add another top-up dose mid week?

I could reduce the light (had taken it up one notch along the way) or let the floaters grow out more, but don’t want to overshadow my stem plants.

Any thougths and advice is much appreciated!
 
I decided to take the lighting down a notch to 4/7 - I think on reflection it did fare better at lower light. The algae situation definitely needs addressing. One thing I’m less clear on is if it would help to spread out the tnc complete doses over the week. Right now I’m adding the recommended 1ml/10l with the weekly water change. Looking at the floaters today I’m less confident I’ve got the dosing right - do they look deficient to you?
 

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Hi, it just so happens I have recently acquired the same Dennerle tank as you. I am into the first week of my Dark start so your experiences are going to be very helpful to me. Can I ask where you bought your cabinet, it looks just what I, err and the wife of course, would love.
 
Welcome and nice tank. You seem to have most bases covered. The M Cuba are difficult to grow. They need high light and CO2 blowing directly on it. Your hard water may be as issue as well. Good that you replaced the foreground with something more resilient.
 
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Rasborakel said:
Hi, it just so happens I have recently acquired the same Dennerle tank as you. I am into the first week of my Dark start so your experiences are going to be very helpful to me. Can I ask where you bought your cabinet, it looks just what I, err and the wife of course, would love.
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I don’t have a direct comparison but I did think the dark start helped. I didn’t have any algae issues (at least not for the first few weeks) and no melting. Only downside was that it occupied a windowless bathroom for a few weeks to make sure it’s actually dark as the final location gets a lot of daylight.

I actually built the cabinet myself - pretty simple construction with edge banded plywood, all cut to size at my local timber merchant (which really took the hard work out of it), joined with screws and finished with osmo top oil. I’d recommend giving it a go if you enjoy DIY’ing.
 
I managed to shake off my algae problems - a combination of lowered light and nerite snails did the job. 😅The tank is getting a little overgrown but I’m enjoying it. Elocharis is spreading nicely - only trouble is figuring out how to untangle if from the sagittaria runners.

In other news I finally managed to get hold of some Tanichthys micagemmae (the smaller cousin of the white cloud mountain minnow) online from Abyss aquatics. They’re more timid than I imagined but if you sit with them for a while they come out of the plants and seem to constantly sparr with each other. Pretty entertaining for a shoaling fish - maybe I hadn’t given them enough credit as a former cichlid snob.IMG_9359.jpegIMG_9372.jpeg
 
Matthias said:
The tank is getting a little overgrown but I’m enjoying it.
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That's the most important thing!
For me it's nice to see small fish hiding in the plants just coming out occasionally, makes them more interesting when they do, I'm sure before long though they will recognize you as a food source (not personally). That tank looks perfect for those fish (and shrimp) with those plants, I like it a lot.
When you do get round to trimming/thinning out I would just do one species at a time, it would be less stressful for the fish and the tank in general.
 
I’ve thinned out the carpet plants in the foreground - 3 different carpeting plants all weaving through each other was getting a bit hard to manage so unfortunately the sagittaria had to go. Nice to see more of the Lagenandra meeboldii and the vietnamese white clouds, both of which are coming into their own.

I haven’t seen any algae for a while so I’ll experiment with adding another dose or two of TNC complete mid week in an attempt to improve my duck weed index score - the Limnobium is looking a bit yellow right now.

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A little update on this tank. Looking back at the earlier photos it strikes me how much Is tank has changed - and how much the Lagenandra has taken over. Fine by me - it seems to be getting better with age and the colours on the leaves are coming out a lot more now.

Significant developments (lol) in this tank include removing the outlet on the neo flow - it’s meant to work a bit like an adjustable lilypipe but in reality it was just diverting half of the current straight back to the inlet. Not convinced by this piece of kit to be honest. The outlet also floats straight off if you include the skimmer. Anyway that’s my excuse for the surface film you see in the pics. Guess my dreams of becoming an aquascaping influencer are still safely out of reach.

I’ve also switched from TNC complete to Tropica specialised and the difference is noticeable - the helanthium quadricostatus in the foreground used to have quite a few glassy dead leaves, not anymore. Everything else seems to have a bit more oomph too.

I may need to treat myself to a little nano at christmas because there’s too many plants I’d like to try and this one is starting to feel full.

If you spot anything you’d improve, please comment. IMG_0598.jpegIMG_0611.jpegIMG_0599.jpegIMG_0600.jpeg
 
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I have two nice 30cm sections of Lagenandra Meeboldi Red to give away for postage (from London). Had to clear out the tank a bit and struggling to throw them in the bin, keeping them floating in the tank for now.

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If there’s a better thread to post free plants please let me know 🙏
 
Great job. I'm loving those Vietnamese cardinal minnows. I have not seen them before. Glorious with those super red tails and then the really solid black lateral line. Nice.
 
hamfist said:
Great job. I'm loving those Vietnamese cardinal minnows. I have not seen them before. Glorious with those super red tails and then the really solid black lateral line. Nice.
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Thank you. They've taken a while to colour up but it was worth the wait. They're probably not a million miles from the regular white clouds in terms of appearance and behaviour - maybe a bit more shy - but their size seemed to fit this mini tank a bit better.
 
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