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5 Gallon Desk Tank

10K views 73 replies 10 participants last post by  JDM 
#1 ·
Hi guys!
I just started a new aquarium after about 4 years away from the hobby. I'd have liked to do something around 40g but neither space nor money permit. So after doing a bit of research I settled on a 16x8x8 5 gallon heavily planted tank with scarlet badis.

Current plants:
1x anubias nana
10 stalks of bacopa
various tufts of dwarf hairgrass
some rotala

I'm not sure exactly what type the rotala and bacopa are, the rotala is red if that helps...

Intended stocking list:
2-3 Scarlet Badis
2-3 Otocinclus
a few shrimp

The tank was started about a week ago. I filled it up and tested it for about a day, then drained it, planted it, and refilled it with filtered drinking water. A couple days later once the plants had started to perk up a little bit I picked up a few ghost shrimp to keep the cycle progressing. I am currently just letting the tank mature before adding anymore livestock.I may look at adding the Scarlet Badis in about two weeks.

Let me tell a little about my setup:
The filter is built into the back right corner of the tank. It is just an acrylic partition I siliconed in. Water overflows into the top, and trickles through the different chambers by gravity. The first chamber holds three sheets of filter pad for mechanical filtration, next chamber is full of cut up drinking straws for biological filtration. I was going to use the pot scrubbers but oddly I couldn't find any. Finally the water ends up in the last chamber that holds the heater and return pump. The return gets piped out the side about 1" above the substrate. The pump I'm using is an eheim compact 300, which I had to turn down a bit as the flow was way too high.

Heater is a Marina 10W submersible. I think this is a little underpowered. The tank generally hovers around 76 degrees when the heater is supposed to regulate to 78.

For lights I made myself a DIY led fixture. It is currently just set across the top of the tank as I haven't finished the canopy yet. I'm using 15 1W Epistar diodes, 9x 6500K white, 4x 450nm blue, and 2x 660nm red. I'm pretty satisfied with the color and intensity, it was pretty easy to put together too. The diodes will just be attached to the heatsink with thermal adhesive, and the heatsink is big and sturdy enough to be most of the structure of the canopy. The diodes don't get as warm as I expected, I'm only seeing about a 20 degree temp rise from ambient at the most, and this should decrease after the thermal adhesive is applied.

For substrate I chose flourite black sand. I've always used play sand before but wanted to try something fancier and figured a smaller tank would be a good chance. I'm pretty happy with it so far. It's finer than I expected which should be good for the plants. It can be a little prone to clouding, but now that I have the shrimp sifting through the finer stuff is moving down, which is nice. It currently looks a little grayer than I had hoped, but I think once I get the light raised up a few inches and the plants grow in enough to make more shade I'll get the look I want.

For fertilizer I was planning to use flourish comprehensive and flourish excel. I'm not too interested in doing CO2 for this tank, but I'm open to the option if my lighting levels end up needing it.

I think that's all for setup, let me know if there is any other info I can provide.


I had a few questions about plant care, don't really remember some of the specifics for this part. The bacopa, rotala, and hairgrass were in pretty bad shape from the fish store. should I prune the damaged leaves? or let the plant repair itself? do I just pinch them off? I've read that to encourage thick growth you should trim the tops off plants, but on mine this is where the healthiest growth is, what to do? The bacopa seems to be trying really hard to grow, but all the new leaves curl about a day after opening, not sure what this is. The hairgrass has lots of very healthy looking bright green shoots, but also lots of old dead brown ones, do I just let these decay?

Ok I think that's everything. All feedback is much appreciated. Pictures are incoming!
 
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#29 ·
I have always had great luck with otos, such a sweet fish. I haven't found any females, I haven't really looked. I know they can be hard to find. I'm not really looking for fish yet though, I don't think the tank is ready yet. When I do I'll probably look online. I'm not too impressed with my local store.
 
#30 ·
Looking good.

If you put a group of the Badis in and try to squeeze the oto's, even though they are small, you might be pushing it. Probably put one species in, let the tank settle for a few weeks before considering the second... more plants would be beneficial first. Perhaps once your stems have been split again, which might not take long.

Jeff.
 
#31 ·
Oh don't worry! I'll definitely put them in one species at a time. Which comes first probably depends on how much algae I'm seeing once I feel then tank is ready for fish. Yeah the stalks are already splitting, they should have grown into healthy new shoots within a few days.
 
#32 ·
Do yourself a favour, if you start seeing algae, either reduce your light period or reduce the number of white LEDs firing. It would suck if your dedicated algae eaters didn't like your variety of algae and it got out of hand.

Jeff
 
#33 ·
Yeah this is something I'll be sure to keep a close eye on. Lack of diverse algae eaters is one of my biggest concerns for this tank. In the past I've always used a combination of shrimp, otos, siamese algae eaters (real ones), and plecostomus for algae control and that worked real well. Speaking of lighting I need to remember to get a timer for my light...
 
#37 ·
Good news and bad news.

I came home from class yesterday to only 4 shrimp left in the tank. Found them dead in the filter. I had noticed a couple days before that the biggest shrimp had gone missing. Water test showed about .5ppm nitrite and 5ppm nitrate. I think the big one died (somewhere), and started to foul the water. the other shrimp probably got sicka nd started to float, and then got skimmed of the top and died. So I fished out the casualties and did a pac. Remaining shrimps perked up immediately and are still looking decent today.

On the bright side, I read somewhere online that the brown tinge on my bacopa leaves could be nitrogen deficiency. Immediately following the shrimp loss the bacopa perked up, turned a darker green, and began to grow even faster. It's growing about .25" to .5" per day, and the new growth is very dense. Each node has fresh leaves sprouting at all times and many nodes are dropping roots (picture attached). I'm going to snip and replant all the rooting nodes to continue increasing my density. The dead hair grass is finally thinning out, which helps the look of the tank a lot. The anubias is growing slowly, just chillin looking great with its big healthy leaves. I'm still not happy with how the leaves catch debris though, need to get some otos in here! The rotala is not improving. The tops do have fresh new growth, which is a beautiful bright pink color, but most of the stems are very ratty. I think they are getting too much flow and they delicate leaves are just getting damaged. I'm going to try moving it and adding something like spiral val in it's place. If anyone has a plant they think I'd like I'd love to hear it!

I'm going out of town for 5 days at the end of next week. I would like to have a new set of shrimp in the tank and feeling well established by the time I leave so that everything can stay healthy while I'm gone. I think I'd like to try ordering online this time. Does anyone have any online shops they really like? I was looking at: Bob's Tropical Plants - Home and Invertebrates by Msjinkzd | Specializing in invertebrates and micro fish from around the world.
 

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#40 ·
Update

Hi guys, figured it was time for another update!

Tank is still coming down from it's nitrite spike. Remaining ghost shrimp are doing ok, no more losses and water parameters are improving. I've blocked some of the light as raising the fixture didn't seem to do enough. The new light levels seem much better and put me at about 2.3W/G. I think I'll probably rewire it with a few less diodes soon. I've continued to lightly dose seachem flourish every few days (3-4).

I moved the rotala out of the flow of the filter outlet, so we will see how it looks in a little while. I think if it doesn't improve I'm going to take it out and try something else. Possibly cabomba, as I like the finer leaf structure. The bacopa is still giving me a hard time. The tops grow extremely fast, older growth wilts and eventually develops holes/tears. Generally after the new leaves are a couple days old and have a few newer leaves growing above them they start to wilt, no idea why. The anubias nana is alright, I think it's generally pretty healthy as it's growing a bit and the leaves look ok. Some of the leaves have little brown spots on them, but I think this is just diatoms. There is one leaf on the left that has developed a white tip, I'm not sure what this is or if I need to do anything. You can see both the supposed diatoms and the white tip in the picture. The hair grass is still growing like mad and just looks better and better. Each time I do a water change I tease out the new growth and replant it, so you can see it all over the front of the tank now. The old dead blades continue to thin out.

I noticed that my PH is drifting between about 6.9 and 7.2, is this ok? Part of it is probably just me slightly misreading the colors each time, but it does seem to vary a bit.

Thanks for showing me the wet spot strand, their selection is impressive!
 

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#41 ·
Looking good.

The pH shifts as the CO2 decreases over the day and increases over night... so if you test at the same time every day it might be always the same... colours aren't the most accurate method either.

Jeff.
 
#43 ·
So it's finals week for me, but I've continued working on my tank because fish > finals. My water quality problems are all but gone, Ammonia and Nitrites at zero, with Nitrates steady at 5ppm without water changes. The remaining shrimp are more active and have better appetite. I'm not going to be adding any more creatures until I get back from a 5-day vacation on the 28th. If everything looks good then I'll get the cherries.

I think I have an idea whats going on with my plants. The Anubias and hair grass are both very healthy with good color and growth. The rotala and bacopa have fresh growth but old leaves all whither. I think the stem plants were in such bad condition from the lfs (no roots at all) that they were having trouble absorbing fresh nutrients and resorted to reabsorbing the old leaves. Now that some of them have roots they are starting to perk up and keep their leaves. The other possibility was that the water I've been using is lacking trace elements/etc. So just in case this was contributing to the problem, I added 2 cups of tap water this morning. It bumped my pH up from 7 to 7.5. I knew it was hard, but wow, I wasn't expecting so much change. Probably won't be doing that again.

The hair grass is continuing to spread, fresh blades are popping up all over the front of the aquarium (yay). I can't wait for it to fill in!
 
#45 ·
I'm back from vacation! And last night I finally found out what happened to all my ghost shrimp. There were two left, the big one and the little one. The little one was looking a little whitish, so I was watching him hoping to see him molt. Once he started the big one grabbed him, killed him, and ate him. Asshole shrimp. I had been finding bits of shrimp in the tank whenever one went missing, I assumed they were bits of dead shrimp, but I think they may have been the shed skeletons of shrimp that tried to molt. There isn't really much to do with one mean ghost shrimp, I haven't ever flushed a live fish before, but this guy left me no choice. Down he went. Did a water test and water change as part of my after vacation maintenance, everything is looking good.

Today I went exploring in the area looking for better aquarium stores. The first one I went to was salt only, but they recommended another store about a mile away. I checked it out, thinking they might be okay. WOW, this place is amazing. It's called Wet Pets in Arroyo Grande. The fish were incredible healthy, everyone had great color and vigor. I was blown away by the quality of the livestock. They had a tank filled with corries that were all swimming together and playing in the current, rummy noses all had brilliant red noses, and this place had the biggest most healthy looking rams I have ever seen. On top of it all their prices were really pretty cheap. And not just cheap with respect to the quality of the fish, they were just cheap. The rest of their products were very fairly priced as well, none of the ridiculous markup you see at most lfs. There was a beautiful new 60g tank and stand, $60 for the tank and the stand was cheap too (can't remember exactly how much). If I had more space for tanks this would have been a very expensive discovery =p. I asked them for 10 red cherry shrimp and a bunch of spiral val. They told me that they did have cherries, but that they were running low so I would probably receive juveniles. My what great honesty. At that point though I didn't even care, the livestock was all so healthy. Nonetheless, they fished around in the tank looking for the best specimens and even gave me two pregnant females. When I got home and unbagged the val I realized that it was actually five smaller bunches and not the single bunch it was sold as, bonus! I can't recommend this place enough, they were so nice and friendly too, really a perfect example of what an lfs should be. If you're in the area you should give them a try.

The new shrimp are doing great in the tank. Much more peaceful than the ghosts, and they have wonderful color.
 
#46 ·
I forgot to mention, I've been continuing to revise my stocking plan. While I have always had great luck with otos, I do agree with the people that have been saying the tank is a bit small for them. After I add my main shrimp species if the plants are staying clean enough I'll probably leave out the otos. I think the snails and shrimp are doing a decent enough job cleaning anyway.

While I was at my newly discovered lfs, I also got to look at their tank of sparkling gouramis. I had never seen these in person and they were way more colorful than I expected. What a pretty fish! I may get these instead of the scarlet badis, as everyone I've talked to has said that the badis can be really picky eaters. I just don't want to deal with picky fish right now.
 
#48 ·
I can't get my Scarlet Badis to eat anything but Live foods. They won't touch anything that doesn't move. I have had them for awhile now and have come to the conclusion they just won't take prepared foods (well atleast not mine.)
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#51 ·
I've been debating what to do with the water level in the filter. I originally did intend for it to be a trickle filter, but that is giving me two problems. First, evaporation has been a real pain in the ass. I'm losing water faster than I expected and the fact that the change in water level is only in the filter amplifies the problem. I lose probably a half inch of water out of the filter per day and have to refill daily to keep it functioning properly. The second problem is that since the overflow is waterfall style shrimp are able to get into the filter and are exposed to air when it's run as a trickle. The first part is an inconvenience but not really something I can change, I may consider cutting a piece of clear acrylic to fit right on the top of the aquarium to minimize evaporation. Anyone have any info on how much this limits oxygen exchange? The second part of the problem was definitely my fault, a waterfall overflow was a stupid idea. I thought the height of the water over the edge of the overflow would just be a tiny sheet and everything would just leave it alone. Surface tension causes the water to rise a fair bit before it will actually overflow. I'm definitely going to modify the top to be slotted. I'll let you all know how things go.
 
#52 ·
I doubt that it makes much difference. My tank has a glass top that seals close, everything seems to still breath OK but I have almost no evaporation, not enough to notice anyway.

The slots would fix your issue as would raising the water high enough to overcome the surface tension issue, and then a bit more to accommodate the evaporation.

Jeff.
 
#53 ·
So a few days ago my tank was starting to grow a lot of soft looking algaes, as well as some of the dark green stuff on the leaves. I was at the lfs and they had some very healthy looking otos, vigorous and obviously eating well. I bought a pair and they got right to work. They've been eating non-stop for a few days now. About two days after getting them I saw a slight bump in ammonia, maybe .1ppm, but after that my parameters are back to perfect. Barely even any measurable nitrate.

Yesterday I noticed that my PH has been creeping up and was at about 7.5. I got some distilled water from the grocery store and mixed some in with my regular water for todays 40% change (so about .5g distilled and 1.5g of the regular). Immediately after the change the PH was about 6.8, a bigger change than I had expected. Is it bad to have such a sudden change even when its a change toward what is best for the fish?
 
#55 ·
Ok I have a couple questions. First a reminder of my current maintenance schedule, and tank info. My tap water is extremely hard, as far as I'm concerned it's unusable. For water I use "filtered drinking water" from albertson's. I do not know the hardness of this water, but it's pH is 6.6 directly out of the bottle, and 6.2 after sitting in the test tube for 30 min with occasional shaking. Using only this water the tank stabilizes at right about 7.0. The tank is just over one month old, and currently houses: 10 cherry shrimp, 2 otos, some malaysian trumpet snails, anubias nana, bacopa, spiral val, and dwarf hair grass. All plants and livestock seem extremely healthy. I dose flourish .5ml per 5g every three days, and .5ml flourish excel daily. I currently feed one small piece (nowhere near a whole disk) of hikari sinking wafer daily. ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate are all 0.

First I wanted to ask about replacing evaporated water. It's my understanding that I should replace evaporated water with distilled water so as not to constantly add "stuff" into the tank. Water changes should still be done with the regular filtered drinking water as that has been creating a reasonable pH for my fish. Is this right?

Second, I am starting to have some green water. I actually haven't had this problem before and am not sure what to do. Do I decrease my photo period? Should I blackout for a few days? Big water Change? Maybe reduce fertilizing? If I do reduce fertilizing should I keep dosing excel?

As usual I appreciate all the help. I'll try to get some pictures up once the water is clearer ;-)
 
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