65 Liter 60x30x42 'no name'

[Albert Hofman]

After weeks looking around on this forum I decided to start a journal.
Here it comes 🙂 I apologize in advance for my grammar 😉

Tank Specs:
Tank: Wave Riviera 65 Liter | 60cm lenght x 30cm width x 42cm high
Cabinet: KULLEN (IKEA)(cheap🙂)
Filter: Wave Black Box 100 Biologic filter (520l/h)
Heater: 100w Hydor
Lighting: LED 8500 Kelvin
Substrate: JBL Aquabasis plus, black gravel
Ferts: JBL Ferropol (weekly after water change), JBL Ferropol 24 (daily)
CO2: Seachem Excel
Hardscape: Don’t know the name of the rock I used (someone does?), wood

Flora:
Eleocharis Parvula
Microsorum Pteropus ‘Narrow’
Micranthemum ‘Monte Carlo’
Taxiphyllum Barbieri
Anubias
Salvinia natans
Limnophila sessiliflora (I think)

Fauna:
2x tiger tetra
9x shrimp (2 blue, 2 yellow, 5 red/cherry)
4x panda corydora
5x ember tetra (amandea)
1x guppy
2x mini ancistrus
6x Aplocheilichthys normani
2x snail
1x frog



Start

Last year March I bought my first second hand tank, this was an aqua 40. I bought it including +/- 50 guppies (endlers and normal guppies) I decided to give most of them away and buy a few other fishes. Below a picture how it looked like back then.


In November last year I moved from Amsterdam to Barcelona. I decided to sell everything and buy a new tank when I am in Barcelona. Before Christmas I bought this tank. And after Christmas I bought plants and started running.


Tank choice

Above you see the specs of this tank. I did a little bit of research for fish shops in my area and the tanks that they sold. I think I bought this tank to soon, because I really like the rimless tanks without top. And I couldn’t find them at the shops I went to. Later I found other shops that sold these kind of tanks including filter, heater and light for the same amount of money I bought this one. But yeah I stick with this one for no and make the best of it 🙂


Set up

Since the moving costed a bit of money I was a little bit on a budget. Therefor I decided to keep the rocks and gravel from my previous tank. I had 4 big rocks and after playing around with the rocks I came to the conclusion that I couldnt make a nice layout with them. They where too big and flat, so I smashed with a hammer on it to make smaller pieces. Below you can see some tests I made.

I really like wood in an aquarium with mosses growing on top. So next day I bought 2 pieces of wood. I staked them together to some sort of bridge.







When I was happy with the hardscape it was time for plants. I didn’t buy all the plants in once. I knew I wanted to have a little carpet and around the stones i wanted some grass. The area where the filter is and the rocks that are a bit larger in size I wanted to have plants that are bigger / more full in apearance.









Since I work at home I wanted the tank to be next to my desk. I don’t have that much of space in my ‘office’ so i decided to put the tank with the short side to the wall, I can watch the aquarium behind my desk and from when I enter the room. Did made it also a bit challenging to make the tank look nice from 3 sides.





Water

The tap water in Barcelona isn’t that great to use in an aquarium, there is a high dose of chlorine in the water. Luckily I have a little supermarket downstairs which sells big bottles of mineral water. They sell 8Liter bottles for 1 euro. I do my water changes weekly and I change 30-50% 2-4 bottles.



I still use Tetra Aqua safe to be sure the water will be safe.

After filling up I threw in Sera bio nitrivec to give it a start. The water stayed cloudy a bit longer then I expected.



In that period I got also some white hairy stuff in the water. After a search on this forum I found that it was normal if you use new wood.



Week 1

After a week I bought the first 5 shrimps and some more plants.
My girlfriend and I are a bit impatient so a few days later we bought the 2 mini ancistrus as well as 6 Aplocheilichthys normani.


Week 2

This week I bought some more plants and rearranged a bit with the anubias and microsorum. We bought 6 ember tetras. Unfortunately one of them was dead the next day. We got from the fishstore some floating plants.








Week 3

5 more shrimps added to the family. One shrimp from the previous group died in the filter 🙁. We bought also some extra monte carlo and hairgrass to help the carpet.


Week 4

This week I bought the Seachem Excel and started to dose. I will dose this weekly after the water change. Later this week my girlfriend came home with 2 tiger tetra’s.

The monte carlo is adjusting to the aquarium, a lot of the old leaves are melting away and new growth is coming.










Week 5

I did the weekly water change and cut some of the stems. A rock that was more or less below the driftwood was a bit big so I made it a bit smaller with my hammer. The space that I got I used for the stems that I cut away. I want to make it bushier around the filter.
For this week I made a little video of my tank. Everything looks and grows well.




Future plan

I will leave the tank for a bit to grow in well. I am not super happy with the rocks and might change it some point. The space that the filter unit is using I would like to have some day to fill with plants.

This is it for now! I am looking forward to the comments and I am open for suggestions to improve the tank.

 

[Joe Turner]

Looks great! You're right, that is Limnophila sessiliflora, an absolutely beautiful plant. Looking forward to seeing this grown in! A monte carlo carpet under the arch would be pretty awesome!

Cheers!

 

[Albert Hofman]

Hi Joe thanks! Do you think there would be enough light for the monte carlo if the Moss on the wood would grow bigger?


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[Albert Hofman]

Hi all, today I had a closer look at my tiger tetra's. And it looks one of them is a bit bigger at the belly. Is she pregnant? I added some pics. The top picture is the tetra with a bigger belly, below the other 'normal' one.

If she is pregnant, do I need to do something? Or can she stay in the aquarium with the other fishes?

http://[URL=http://s1004.photobucket.com/user/alberthofman/media/Aquarium/IMG_9176.jpg.html][ATTACH=full]99597[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]99597[/ATTACH]

[URL=http://s1004.photobucket.com/user/alberthofman/media/Aquarium/IMG_9188.jpg.html][ATTACH=full]99601[/ATTACH][/URL]

 

[Albert Hofman]

And the other one



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[parotet]

Hi Albert

Looking good... No idea about your Tiger Tetra, I'm sorry.

Regarding this:

Do you think there would be enough light for the monte carlo if the Moss on the wood would grow bigger?

It is difficult to answer as LED lights are a bit tricky and it is sometimes difficult to tell how much light you have without a PAR meter. Being your aquarium a kit, I would say you are in the low light area, which is not bad at all (check for example George Farmer low-tech layout in the journal section... absolutely marvelous). My experience with MonteCarlo is that it can grow quite well under shade areas. Trim the moss when it is growing too much (it will help to keep them in good shape ad promote new growth) and keep on trying. If you se new growth it is a good sign. This plant grows quite fast when things go well.

Jordi

 

[Albert Hofman]

Thanks for your reply! Yes I think it is low light. What I remember is that they are 8watts? Need to look it up though.
The moss is growing really well and I will try to trim it a bit back. In some spots it has long 'branches'. It is already growing (attaching) on the wood (I just put it in holes and cracks of the wood)
I will try to plant some Monte Carlo below the arch and see if it gets growing.

 

[Albert Hofman]

So, here is a new update. A lot happend/changed regarding my aquarium the past two months. I wasn't that happy with the layout. It didn't look that natural and i had the feeling something was missing. So I asked Parotet (Jordi) for some advice. And luckily he was/is so patient to give me a bunch of advice which really helped to do a re-scape. Also he send me a few different plant species.

Plant list:
Eleocharis Parvula
Microsorum Pteropus ‘Narrow’
Micranthemum ‘Monte Carlo’
Taxiphyllum Barbieri
Anubias
Salvinia natans
Limnophila sessiliflora
Rotala rotundifolia (2 types)
Micranthemum micranthemoides
Micranthemum umbrosum
Rotala bonsai
Hygrophila pinnatifida
Peacock moss
Fontanales antypiretica

Hardscape:
I changed the rocks for ryuoh stones and the wood for redmoor wood. Substrate/gravel is the same.

Some pictures during the rescape

few days after rescape



Even the rabbit seems to enjoy it





Pictures from last week:



Yesterday i added one more plant and a few more shrimps.
Pictures from today:

 

[Nelson]

Great tank.I'd be very happy with that 🙂.

 

[Albert Hofman]

Thanks Nelson! I am 🙂

 

[Lindy]

I love the rescape! It looks so natural with the mix of plants jumbled together. Brilliant.

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[Lindy]

Regarding the fish, I'm pretty sure these are tiger barbs. It is recommended they be kept in groups of 5+ and they get bigger than they are now too. Try Google and see what comes up about them.

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[Albert Hofman]

thanks idcgroomer!
I had actually some problems with the tiger barbs, they are really nice fish but towards my guppies and shrimp not that friendly. I lost a guppy and the other guppy got eaten on his tail. In the beginning i had more or less 10 shrimps and within weeks i didn't see any shrimp (i assume the tiger barbs ate them, in one of my earlier posts i thought one was pregnant because of the big belly but noticing being without shrimp that is probably the case). I gave the tiger barbs to a pet shop in my street. Now they are in a bigger tank and with more fishes like them.

 

[Albert Hofman]

Lately I see some shrimps that I didn't buy for sure (at least 4 of them). The ones I bought are blue tiger shrimp, red cherry shrimp and yellow shrimp. The ones I found you can see below. Are this young shrimp that didn't get color yet? Or other kind of shrimp? Would love to know!

 

[14548]

Hi, love your new setup and scape!

Tiger barbs are very agressiv fishes.

Your shrimplets are not coloured because it´s an mix of yellow+red cherry or blue so they are greyish. If you want to keep the color, you better keep just one species in the tank (red cherry OR blue OR Yellow).

Good luck 😉

 

[Albert Hofman]

Thanks Cookies! Yes I am glad that the tiger barbs are gone, the other fish are more relaxed and the shrimps are showing them self again.
Apparently it went well and they bred before it was to late. Quite nice to have some new ones anyway 🙂 And thanks for the explanation! I don't mind to have some shrimps mixed up.

 

[Nick16]

tiger barbs will eat your shrimp when they get larger.
Also, you should be dosing excel more than 1x a week. Perhaps smaller amounts but more often.
Keep the CO2 level stable all through the week. rather than one big spike after the W/C.

 

[Albert Hofman]

Thanks Nick! Yes I changed the way i dose. Excel i dose everyday 1 ml, potassium 2ml and envy also 2ml. The plants seem to do better then before. Should i dose more or is this more or less fine for this amount of plants?

 

[sciencefiction]

The ones I bought are blue tiger shrimp, red cherry shrimp and yellow shrimp. The ones I found you can see below. Are this young shrimp that didn't get color yet? Or other kind of shrimp? Would love to know!

Did you by any chance put red cherry with yellow cherry in one tank? (both neocaridina species). When these crossbreed, they produce brown shrimp, i.e. the wild colour of all neocaridina shrimp from which the colours we keep in aquarims are bred from.

You can cross red cherry with blue cherry and get a mixture of red, purple, blue shrimp but a a cross of red and yellow reverts back to wild brown colour. They are actually cool looking at your prictures 🙂

 

[MossMan]

Love it, and your obviously very proud - made clear by all the pictures! thanks for sharing the tank with us!