James' 4ft Rainbow Refuge

[MrHidley]

Hi all,

A relative was going to bin this tank, so I took it on. Didn't want to spend too much money so built the stand out of concrete blocks and plywood. The sides and back were painted black apart from one chunk of the back pane for some reason, so I decided to paint that bit myself rather than spending ages stripping the paint off. Plan is to have a decent load of rainbows in this, I kept them once before when i wasn't in the planted hobby and they were great.

Tank - No name 4ft around 240L
Stand - Aerated Concrete Blocks and Plywood
CO2 - DIY set-up with 2kg fire extinguisher. Inline UP Aqua diffuser.
Heater - Hydor Inline 300w
Filter - Hydor Professional 350 paired with a Hydor koralia for extra flow
Lights - 120cm Chihiros A-Series
Substrate - Around 18 Litres of Tropica Aquarium Soil + Unipac Tana Sand
Hardscape - Seiryu Stone from Aquarium Gardens + Manzanita Wood from my personal stock(I import and sell this)
Plants - anubias nana petite, blyxa japonica, staurogyne repens, micranthemum monte carlo, bucephalandras 'chilli', 'wavy leaf', 'mini needle leaf', 'brownie purple', 'arrogant blue', Flame Moss, crypt parva, fissidens fontanus, riccardia chamedryfolia

Very excited for this one to grow out.

 

[salava8]

I like it 🙂

 

[Nelson]

I like it 🙂

Me too 🙂.

 

[Stu Worrall]

That looks really nice, will be a great tank

 

[Greenfinger2]

Hi MrHidley, Cool Scape

 

[tim]

Lovely scape James, look forward to watching its progress.

 

[MrHidley]

Thanks for all the kind words guys, I'm still a complete noob at this and i'm learning every day.

 

[MrHidley]

Small Update. Tank has been planted for around 4 weeks, all is growing out very nicely. I've always been scared of using such a bright light in the past, but this seems to be going really well. The brightness really seemed to help the S.Repens recover after they lost their emersed leaves. I've added 8 Praecox Rainbows, planning more and probably other species of Rainbowfish. There are also 15 Amanos and a ton of Ramshorn Snails. I also got an Eheim Skim 350 as the brightness of the light was causing a surface film algae.

 

[MrHidley]

Picked up some more Rainbows from my local LFS today, two differant species.

The first are Madagascar Rainbowfish



The second were sold to my as Dwarf Australian Rainbowfish, but i'm not so sure, any rainbow experts about?



I'd still like to add a few more species to finish off the tank, but that will have to wait a few weeks now.

 

[CooKieS]

Lovely tank!

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

Dwarf Australian Rainbowfish, but i'm not so sure, any rainbow experts about?

<"Melanotaenia maccullochi?">.

cheers Darrel

 

[MrHidley]

Hi all,<"Melanotaenia maccullochi?">.

cheers Darrel

I did wonder, but the stripes only seem to go accross the middle of the body, where as maccullochi seem to cover the entire fish. I suppose they could be a hybrid of maccullochi and something else as they clearly share some traits.

 

[MrHidley]

Long overdue update.

Tank is doing really well, about 5 months since planting. The Blyxa got really thick, but unfortunately when i thinned it out it really struggled to grow back, so there's been a bit of a re-jig. There is still some Blyxa, but the back ground is now dominated by a lot of Java Fern. I've also planted some limnophila aromatica in the corner. Once the new plants have settled in i'll take some new pictures. I've added a couple of melanotaenia parkinsoni which are absolutely stunning fish. The plan was to add another 8 fish in total, but turns out rainbow prices have gone up significantly, almost £10 a fish now, so i'll wait a bit until i free up some cash. I'd really like to add some Melanotaenia Lacustris and also some Bosemani eventually.

I'll post some pictures in a few weeks.

 

[G H Nelson]

Very nice indeed!....😉

 

[MrHidley]

So, I broke and bought the last 4 (planned) rainbows for the tank. I'm super happy with how this tank has turned out, and I plan to keep it running for as long as possible.

Here is a FTS



and here are some close ups of the fish, i really need to buy a set of lenses as it's frustrating to only have an 18-55.







And lastly here's a video of the tank i made, yes I have a lot of ramshorns.

 

[Mannic05]

Really nice tank, looks like real healthy plant growth. And awesome fish really rainbows.

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