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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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#56 ·
If its were me I'd drop the excel, reduce flourish (I assume comprehensive) to once a week, reduce the light but I don't know what your photoperiod is. I checked your LEDs... is that a 15 W equivalent or actually a 15W LED fixture? If its a 15W fixture that is WAY too much light for a 5gallon. assuming that the light is of the right spectrum you could get away with a 1 or 2 Watt setup. For reference, I run an 8 Watt for a 37 gallon tank and get good growth on all but the most light needy.

Jeff.
 
#57 ·
OK, so: I reduced my fixture to 11 electrical watts, and the LEDs aren't super efficient there is a fair amount of heat being dissipated. Of that 11, most of the intensity comes from the 7 electrical watts of white 6500k, the rest is red and blue. My photoperiod has been 8 hours/day but was reduced to 6 a few days ago. I have reduced my fertilizing to once per week (yes its comprehensive). I have also reduced feeding to every other day. Why do you recommend stopping the excel? It seems to me that carbon is my limiting factor for plant growth, and excel is known to be an effective algaecide. Just gotta know why =)

I did a 50% water change yesterday. While I was at it I added a 45 degree piece of pvc to my filter output to redirect it toward the front of the tank. The result is a gentle current along the front of the glass, and the output is no longer battering the tall plants along the back. The otos have been enjoying playing in the current. They are doing extremely well, round bellies, excellent vigor. I found a few baby cherry shrimp in the tank the other day, yay! Water test today still shows zero ammonia nitrite and nitrate.

Ill update again about the green water. Once it clears I'll be adding in the scarlet badis as the lfs has them in stock now.
 
#59 ·
I still think that your light is very high.... you may need the excel. Lower light would not need it and it might serve you well to at least temporarily block some of the light getting into the tank if only to slow down all the photosynthetic processes. You might try a blackout period to see if you can kill off the green.

I would suggest to test your water for hardness unless you know what the bottled water is, I'll bet that you could use a few more degrees. What is very hard in reference to your tap water, do you know the numbers? Unusable is relative, I start with 23dGH and use it. I couldn't keep oto's at that level though.

Oh, you asked about adding to top off. If you are using bottled water and changing water every week you really don't need to worry about having any stuff buildup in the water. That would be an issue if you never changed water.

Jeff.
 
#60 ·
Yes light is very high, If I could redo the build I would use less. It might even have been a good idea to switch to the regular 5mm diodes for such a small tank. Fortunately the tank is clearing. I have been running the lights 4 hours a day and fertilizing once a week for a while now, and over the last few days a lot of the green has receded. After the next time I go grocery shopping and pick up some water I'll do some maintenance and post pictures.

The lfs got two male scarlet badis in about a week ago. I picked up two and am pretty happy with them. At first they were very shy and I barely saw them, but after a few days they got some confidence and now they act like they own the tank. They have formed territories on opposite sides of the tank, and part from occasional chasing they leave one another alone. They are very picky eaters. I haven't really seen them eat anything other than baby cherry shrimp (which they seem to really like). Two sets of cherry shrimp had hatched just a few days before I got the badis. After adding them, all the babies disappeared and I thought some of the adults did too. Eventually during feeding one day I happened to count all the shrimp out at once. I guess they had just been hiding more after the addition of the badis. The shrimplets are big enough to spot pretty easily now, and at least 3 are now too big to be badis food, hooray.

Ph is a little higher than I'd like for the otos at 7.6. I'll be adding some distilled water in an attempt to continue tweaking it. Ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate are all still at 0. Is it odd to have so little nitrate? does this mean the plants aren't getting enough?

I'll try to post pictures soon!
 
#61 ·
Looking forward to pics.

With the light being so bright I might expect that the plants are just using what nitrate does show up as they would run out of ammonia pretty quickly. If it is always at zero you could try adding some and see if it gets used as well, it couldn't hurt as long as you don't go overboard with it.

Who was your parts source for the lights,and stuff? I've been mulling over building rather than buying as I think the next fixture size may be too much light for me. I might build what I want rather than just use what I can get.

Jeff.
 
#62 · (Edited)
The heatsink was from heatsinksusa. I bought the diodes and drivers from a vendor on ebay named joy-deal. Transaction was smooth enough, he sells in lots of ten diodes but let me mix and match the colors. The drivers are simple but seem to work just fine. If I were to do another build I'd probably use a driver that could accept an input from a microcontroller like these: The Triple - Dimming LED Driver. This same site is a good place to get the thermal adhesive I used, they also have the proper optics for 1 and 3 watt leds.
 
#64 ·
Picture time! Water has cleared up nicely and everything is healthy! Only thing I'm not happy with is pH, which is slightly higher than I'd like. Shrimp continue to breed and each time a few grow big enough to be safe from the badis. I'm attaching a bunch of pictures, enjoy!

For any members who are curious about my lighting levels, I have finally achieved water clarity through a short (4 hour) photoperiod and infrequent fertilizing. JDM is entirely correct about my lighting being too strong for this tank, I should have used less. I also probably should be running CO2 with this much light, it's an upgrade I'll consider in the future.
 

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#65 ·
Brightness aside, the overall look of the tank makes it seem to be much larger than 5 gallons, small leafed plants create an altered sense of scale. That will be one advantage of higher light over low light here, the leaves will stay smaller rather than larger as they seem to do in low light.

4 hours... Too bad for the viewing period.

Jeff
 
#66 ·
Been a while now, so I think it is update time.

I started the tank at school, but am in a different location for my summer job. So at the beginning of summer I had to move the tank home where my parents would care for it. Moving the tank was stressful. It was so healthy and I really didn't want to upset the balance I had achieved. I was worried that with such thin glass (5 gallon tank) it might even be damaged during the four hour car ride. I was also concerned about temperature and filtration during the four hours it would be without power.

I made a base for the tank out of a thick piece of plywood to keep the tank from bending or flexing during the drive. To this board I glued four wooden blocks to hold the tank in place and keep it from shifting during the drive. Then I saran wrapped the top to prevent splashing and bubble wrapped the whole thing. After cutting some air holes in the top I started to drain the tank so I could get it to the car. I live on the fourth floor so it needed to be light :|. I drained it down to within about a half inch of the sand and the fish were obviously stressed. It wasn't too heavy and I got it loaded into the car with no problem. Once it was all tucked in I filled it up to about halfway and drove home.

Unloading was no problem and it filled back up and was clear by the next morning. Unfortunately all the shifting had uprooted a lot of the plants. All my nice slopes in the substrate had leveled out and the anubias (which had apparently developed an enormous root mass) had lifted out of the substrate considerably. I lit it sit and settle for a couple days, and then took the chance to do some maintenance. Most of the plants that had uprooted were stems of bacopa, and they had already started to drop roots from some of the nodes, so I split them up and replanted all the new cuttings. My bacopa stems are quite thick now. I have considerably more plant mass than when I started. I tried to tuck the anubias back down between its rocks but the root growth was too extensive for me to do much. I just left it alone and I expect the bottom to fill out a bit over time.

I had noticed while I let the uprooted plants float that the other plants looked healthier and the fish were more adventurous. I really like the look of the floating plants and I think it added a lot to the tank. I also remember from when I was still tuning my photoperiod that the plants grew much better with a longer period, I just had to turn it down to keep algae under control. I think I am going to try some frog bit in the tank and see if I can increase my period a bit as they fill in and decrease the intensity of the light.

A few days after moving home I noticed that the larger of my two scarlet badis had a split in his tail. He was still acting healthy but definitely had an injury. Over the next few days it developed into some sort of tail rot. It is a light purple fuzzy spot. Now I'm going to document how I handled it and what I think was happening, but I want to say upfront that I DO NOT have much experience treating sick fish. I looked around online for a bit and I think I got a pretty good idea of what was going on. As best as I can tell the fish was injured sometime during the move. In combination with the stress, this caused the wound to develop a bacterial infection. From what I have read, a bacterial infection is not particularly visible (maybe some inflammation/ rawness). The purple fuzz was probably a secondary opportunistic fungal infection that took root due to the fish already weakened immune system. From my reading it seems that most organisms don't really have much trouble with fungi unless they are already weakened somehow. As far as I can tell, the best way to treat this was to use an antibiotic to treat the bacterial infection, and then let the fungal portion run its course. Some of what I read suggested that the after the bacteria is treated the fungus can even assist in the removal of dead/damaged flesh, and will then die off as the fish heals. I selected tetracycline as my medication and followed the instructions for dosing. The dosing completed about 48 hours ago and the injury looks slightly less fungus-y. I think this is to be expected, since the antibiotic treats the less visible bacterial infection. The fish has already survived about two weeks since I first noticed the injury, and is still eating and otherwise acting healthy. I take this to be a pretty good sign, in my experience most injured fish do not last anywhere near this long. I will keep you all updated on the treatment. At this point I think I have done about as much as is reasonable for the fish and will let nature take its course. If it doesn't work out, I've recently found a great new lfs that I think may be able to get me some female badis.

As something of an aside, the two big rocks are starting to show a very attractive coating of dark green algae. I was hoping it would grow in this way, I think that allowing it to grow on the rocks (which I like the look of anyway) will help prevent it growing elsewhere (like all over my anubias leaves GRR!)

Oh and other than the badis all the other fish are healthy as can be.
 
#67 ·
Love your tank. Novice looking for help.

Hi. I think your tank looks fantastic. My two young daughters want a "pet" so I'm planning to get our first fish tank but want to stick to a 5 gallon and avoid a large investment in case it doesn't work out for us.

The tank I'm planning to buy is the Fluval Spec V Aquarium Kit. Besides what the tank comes with do you recommend anything else such as a heater, air pump, etc. Any plant recommendations, I'm assuming lowlight due to the leds in the Fluval. What about substrate, gravel? And finally fish. I love how you have fish, shrimp and snails all in that little tank. What kinds to get that can survive in a small tank without a large time investment. Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance.
 
#68 ·
In my opinion, starting with a spec v is probably not your best bet. Small tanks tend to be disproportionately expensive, and small water volumes (like 5g) are hard to maintain. They can destabilize quickly. I have decent experience keeping fish and I still think this was a hard tank to manage. In addition, a 5g tank is too small for almost all fish. To be entirely honest, the fish in my 5g probably don't have enough space, a 10g would suit them better.

I would start with a 20g (regular or long) tank with standard florescent hood, basic heater, and aqua clear hob filter and play sand for substrate. You could probably do this for about $150, though the actual cost depends a lot on exactly where you buy everything. This setup will be easier to maintain, and really open up your options for fish. A lot of people new to the hobby don't realize this, but fish actually need a decent amount of space.

My favorite beginner plants are jungle vallisneria, anubias barteri, java moss, and java fern. All are hearty and easy to keep.

As for livestock, you have tons of options with a 20g. Cherry shrimp are cheap and easy, this is the shrimp I have in my 5g. They are excellent scavengers and do a great job keeping the tank clean. The snails in my tank are malaysian trumpet snails. These too are easy to keep and are also scavengers. They are one of the few freshwater creatures in the hobby that burrow, this gently and slowly agitates the top layer of the substrate which is great for plant health. For fish I recommend you look around to see what you and your daughters like. The variety is enormous but if you have any specific questions about species feel free to post here and if it's something I have personal experience with I'll chime in!

Good luck, let us know if you have any questions :-D
 
#73 ·
While I was away at my summer internship the other badis died. Same story, some sort of rot and died a little after.

Got home and the tank looked kind of bad. Nothing was sick specifically, but the otos looked kinda tired, not many shrimp left and too many snails. Some algae growing on the glass and all the plants looked sort of wilted. Ammonia and Nitrite were both 0, but nitrate was 30 which is super high for this tank. pH was up to 8.0 from 6.5.

I got my API GH and KH test kit in the mail just the other day so I figured I would give it a try and see what turned up. GH was 0 degrees and KH was 9 degrees. We have well water here, and while I didn't remember the parameters exactly I have had a lfs test the well water before and it was decent for fish. So I tested the kitchen sink (where we get our water changes from) and got the same thing, 0 degrees GH and 14 degrees KH. Wierd. So I took samples from all over the house including the hose and our RO drinking water. Tested them all, the hose was the only one that matched what I expected the well water to be, 13 degrees GH 11 degrees KH. Apparently all the rest of the house is on a water softener. Argh.

So I wanted the icky softened water out. Did a big 75% water change consisting of 50% well water and 50% RO. Fish and shrimp perked up almost immediately. I'll continue doing water changes every few days with 50/50 well and RO. This should bring my GH to 6.5 degrees and KH to 5.5 degrees.
 
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