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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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#4 ·
Hi Jeffrey

I'm not going to be much help because I'm still in complete novice mode myself, but I wanted to say...

WOW!! What a fantastic looking tank! You've done a brilliant job.

:BIGcool:
 
#5 ·
Nice looking setup.

I like the light array. That's a lot of light for a small tank, you've got 9 watts of 6500k for 5 gallons. I have 8 watts for 37 gallons and my plants do well. You may have to watch that you keep the light period a little shorter and get some shade with some floating plants so the fish have somewhere to get out of the light... most like some shade. Did you set up the LED array for switching of the coloured lights?... it doesn't look like it.

As much as your heater may be a bit too small, you don't want the tank sitting at 78F, for the fish you've selected closer to 75F is better anyway.

More plants. I thought that the plant list would have filled out the tank more so I am surprised that it doesn't look fuller in the pics. If you double up the stems you can avoid needing to do the cycle and give the shrimp and otos more leaf area to graze.

The bacopa caroliniana and rotala wallichii are cool. I just got my first bacopa last week. It looks like it is best to let it go until it hits the surface... it might even grow out of the water... but you can cut it anywhere and replant it.... particularly if there are already roots as they help hold it in the substrate. I don't know much about the rotala but the same applies as it is a stem.

On the curling leaves, your mentioned using filtered water. Do you know the parameters? hardness and pH? The water may be very soft or if it is distilled or reverse osmosis there is no hardness. This can adversely affect the plants as I think the minimum is around 5dGH.

I don't think that you need both excel and comprehensive, comp alone should be fine.

As for CO2, your fish load may compensate. Your filter with the output near the bottom, likely won't disturb the surface enough to worry about CO2 off gassing either.

All in all that is one nice job you've done there. I'm looking forward to seeing it once everything is up and running.

BTW, welcome to the forum, great first post!

Jeff.
 
#6 ·
Yes, there is a lot of light. In the past I have always had too little light, mostly by being cheap. This time I wanted to be sure I did it right. It's possible I have too much light now, but raising the light and shade from plants should help to mitigate it some. If that isn't enough I can always just bypass a few of the white diodes to drop the intensity a bit.

That's kinda what I figured for the heater, I'm just concerned that the slight fluctuations are bad for the fish. I really don't know much about how fish react to small but constant temp variation, but it seems to me that this would be somewhat natural.

The plants are definitely a bit sparse still. I'm considering pruning them, and then cutting them in half and replanting. This way they are deeper and get a little less light, as well as being more dense. I think this is ok to do with stemmed plants? I'd like more feedback on pruning if anyone can comment =)

The tap water around here is very hard. The lfs tells me it can be as hard as 400tds with PH around 8.4. I know not to use only distilled water. It was my understanding that the filtered drinking water was from a similar local source but would be a bit better than tap water. This seems to be the case. I have an API master test kit and have been testing daily, though I cannot currently measure hardness. The tap water measured at about 8.4, my filtered drinking water was around 7.4 on the first day and has been slowly declining. I think it is around 6.8 now but I can check tonight. I think this is because the buffering capacity of the water does not change, but organic processes are releasing acids into the water. Is this accurate at all?

Unfortunately I cannot use floating plants, they would get skimmed right of the top by the filter. Could I maybe grow something like lilies that would reach up to the surface and then make some shade?

My thought process on the CO2/excel was that with as much light as I have I should supplement some form of carbon. While my surface is not too disturbed, I think the super clear surface (courtesy of the skimmer), combined with the wet/dry filter would offgas quite a bit. On the other hand, it probably also does an excellent job of keeping the plants from depleting the water of natural levels of CO2.

Anyone have recommendations for plants I might like to add?
 
#7 ·
Yes, there is a lot of light. In the past I have always had too little light, mostly by being cheap. This time I wanted to be sure I did it right. It's possible I have too much light now, but raising the light and shade from plants should help to mitigate it some. If that isn't enough I can always just bypass a few of the white diodes to drop the intensity a bit.
It looks like they are in series so just bypassing a bulb will increase the voltage to the rest, they will burn out faster as a result. Is there a voltage control on the power supply?

That's kinda what I figured for the heater, I'm just concerned that the slight fluctuations are bad for the fish. I really don't know much about how fish react to small but constant temp variation, but it seems to me that this would be somewhat natural.
Up and down over the course of the day shouldn't be a problem as long as it stays in the range the fish are best in.

The plants are definitely a bit sparse still. I'm considering pruning them, and then cutting them in half and replanting. This way they are deeper and get a little less light, as well as being more dense. I think this is ok to do with stemmed plants? I'd like more feedback on pruning if anyone can comment =)
That's pretty much it. The best thing about splitting them is that the one plant growing now becomes two plants growing which almost doubles the ammonia consumption... cheaper than buying more.

The tap water around here is very hard. The lfs tells me it can be as hard as 400tds with PH around 8.4. I know not to use only distilled water. It was my understanding that the filtered drinking water was from a similar local source but would be a bit better than tap water. This seems to be the case. I have an API master test kit and have been testing daily, though I cannot currently measure hardness. The tap water measured at about 8.4, my filtered drinking water was around 7.4 on the first day and has been slowly declining. I think it is around 6.8 now but I can check tonight. I think this is because the buffering capacity of the water does not change, but organic processes are releasing acids into the water. Is this accurate at all?
Yes, more or less.

Unfortunately I cannot use floating plants, they would get skimmed right of the top by the filter. Could I maybe grow something like lilies that would reach up to the surface and then make some shade?
I assume that the water flow down through the filter is not going to be a vortex... you say wet dry, is it planned to be a waterfall affair or is the surface of the water going to be above the lip of the filter wall and the pump is going to suck the water through? I think that the higher surface level would best for a few reasons. Waterfall will make noise and off gas CO2. No waterfall lets you not worry about floating plants as they could float around in there too. Also, if a fish gets in there, it's not the end of the world for the fish and higher water level just means more water to help buffer the whole system. At five gallons you want every ounce in there that you can get.

Any lilies that I have looked at have leaves that I thought were too large for my 37 gallon, I think they would be over powering in a 5 gallon.

My thought process on the CO2/excel was that with as much light as I have I should supplement some form of carbon. While my surface is not too disturbed, I think the super clear surface (courtesy of the skimmer), combined with the wet/dry filter would offgas quite a bit. On the other hand, it probably also does an excellent job of keeping the plants from depleting the water of natural levels of CO2.
I don't understand the bolded statement.

If your water is so hard and the KH is a high component of this, then there may be enough carbon without supplementation as the plants may take up the carbon from the CaCO3 in the water as well as the CO2. I wouldn't recommend a liquid supplement, some chemical ending in "hyde" as a preservative or something... reminds me of formaldehyde and anything related shouldn't be in a tank with live stuff.

Anyone have recommendations for plants I might like to add?
With the light levels you have, most plants should do very well, in fact you might want to stay away from the lower light plants as they might be overdriven. I've heard that crypts don't do well in too much light. I'm a lower light LED guy so I can't help with high light plants much.

Oh, some sort of dwarf sword , chain sword or similar.

Jeff.
 
#8 ·
The leds are driven by a constant current driver, if I remove a few diodes the driver will drop the total voltage so that each led are driven at the same power and current as before.

The filter is currently set up as a waterfall. The water flows down through the chambers and is pumped out the bottom. The amount of water sets the level in the filter, while the level in the tank is fixed at the top of the partition. The waterfall is very quiet as it just trickles about .5" down the side before hitting the first media. I definitely could just raise the water in the filter until it was even with the rest of the tank to eliminate the skimmer and wet/dry portion. I may do this if having floating plants would be such a benefit to the tank, though I do really like the pristine surface I get from the skimmer.

My understanding of the interaction between carbon and plants in water is shaky at best, I need to read more about this. But my thinking was that if the plants were using lots of CO2, a turbulent surface would help to replenish the CO2. I guess this could only work if plants were using so much CO2 that levels were lower than I want anyway. But that's hypothetical. If I start having CO2 issues i can make some changes/ worry about specifics.
 
#9 ·
Oh. A turbulent surface removes CO2... I don't think that the plants can use enough that there would be any draw out of the air that the turbulence would let replenish. I did find that my KH lowered by as much as 25% due to plant activity in the tank which I first thought was due to the plants using calcium... which was just guess work at the time, it was the carbon from the abundant CaCO3. This effect has reduced now that I have lots of fish producing CO2.

Cool power regulator. So you could put switches on the LEDs to control them in banks if you wanted to vary the intensity. Was this a kit or something you sourced parts for?

Jeff.
 
#10 ·
The parts were sourced independently, not sold as a kit. The driver is intended for LEDs though, I think drivers of that type are pretty standard.

I also got the parts for the hood cut today. Some of them are a bit off, I just was dumb and forgot to update some measurements. I'll clean them up with the dremel and hopefully have new pictures soon! Perhaps if I get along to it I'll do some work on the plants too.
 
#11 ·
Sorry for the hijack...


You both seem to know your LED's. This is something I've been interested in. The furthest I've ever messed with them was splicing several strips together and using a charger from a toothbrush or something as a regulator. ( Go ahead and laugh but the tank looked pretty good! :) )


Is there a good source of info, like a tutorial, on how to do something like you've done here? I'm about to redo the hood I built and I'm currently running 2 T12's and a T8. It's kinda crowded as you can imagine. (29 gallon)
 
#12 ·
LEDs

No problem!

I'd love to help out with some LEDs. While I have limited experience with what light is best for an aquarium, I'm an electrical engineering grad student and would be more than happy to advise on any electrical stuff ;-)

One of the things I really like about LEDs are that they are so small. It's easy to mix and match to get just the right color and spectrum, this sounds like it could be really nice for your crowded hood. Maybe if you start a build thread it would be easier for us to comment? I think the place to start is by deciding how DIY you want your fixture to be. I'm pretty sure I could walk you through a scratch assembly if you wanted to do it yourself, and I'd be happy to do so!
 
#13 ·
Also LED related, maybe this will help you get some context.

My fixture is 15W. It is far brighter than I expected, too bright too look at. Even pointed into the tank, the glow will light the entire room. I'm pretty sure the light is burning the plants (is burning the right term for aquatic plants?). The bacopa is sending out new leaves like crazy, but after a day or two they start to curl/discolor. I'm going to trim the stalks and replant them lower, and also going to raise the light. We will see if that helps, but I think I'll probably end up removing a couple diodes. Fortunately, with a custom setup like this removing the diodes is very easy, it is sort of a shame to have wasted diodes, but these were $1 ea anyway. I'm just surprised/impressed with how easy it was to get SO much light.
 
#14 ·
Yeah there's not much info about LED's and planted tanks. I'm currently running 2wpg. (60w)


I built the hood using 1x4's. I tore apart the light hoods and put the ballasts on the outside, back of the hood. The entire top opens up but I added a double hinge so you can only open the front 5 inches for feeding, water changes, etc.

Anyways the lights are sitting too close to the water and I need to completely redo the hood. So I might as well take a little extra time and learn how to build an LED set up.
 
#15 ·
Ok well when you get going feel free to point me toward your thread or message me, I'll help in anyway you need ;-) Decide what light you want then build the fixture to match. I'm currently running 9white, 4 blue, and two red, I think 8white, 3 blue, and a red would be about perfect (still very much on the strong side).
 
#16 ·
Haha I was going to build this based off an LED set up. So I'm not exactly sure what I'll be doing yet. I'm literally an LED retard. You throwing out 8 white, 3 blue, etc. I don't even know where to begin. Is there a good site with a walk through on how to build a custom LED set up like you have? (Trying to make it easier so you, yourself, wouldn't have to type out everything you did)
 
#17 · (Edited)
I'm very happy to share my info, this stuff is fun, and I like being able to give back to the community so soon.

The diodes were selected as follows: White provides the bulk of the visible brightness and "veiwing light". They emit a decent spread of wavelengths with a nice spike in the blue range that the plants really like. I supplemented this with 450nm blue because this is supposed to encourage thick bushy plant growth and because I prefer a darker light. The red was added because there is another spike in what the plants respond to in this range and because I didn't want the tank to look too blue. I think the red is less important for the plant health, but the diversity can't hurt and it should make any red colors in the tank look better.

I actually had a very hard time finding led info for freshwater planted. All the reefers seem to be recommending using only the highest quality diodes, planted tanks just don't need light of that quality or intensity. The hydroponics guys have done a fair bit of research here and have decent info. Most of my information came from charts of the light absorption of the different chlorophylls and other pigments, combined with searching for LEDs that could produce similar light. That's a really technical way to do things though. If you know absolutely nothing about LEDs and want to both build your own fixture and understand what you are doing, I would start by just googling LEDs and reading up. Don't bother looking for aquarium specific info, just get a basic understanding of the diodes operation. Then when you go to build your fixture you'll understand what to look for. Also read up about how light works, wavelength, par, lux, wattage, color temperature, etc. Again I'm more than happy to answer any questions that come up during your research!

Edit: I feel like I should add that I like to get really technical and specific when I build (oops my engineer is showing). LEDs don't have to be complicated if you don't want them to be. You could make an educated guess at what lights to buy and with just a little help still build a top notch light.
 
#19 ·
A couple of quick comments.

If the whites are in the 6,000k to 7,000k range you don't need the blue or red, that sounds like saltwater coral influences. The blue in freshwater is for a "moonlight" look on it's own and is typically only 0.1watt or less per bulb.

With 1watt bulbs they can be spaced in pairs 4 to 6 inches apart depending on how much light you need. I have a fixture that is 24" over a 30" tank 22" deep that has 8 1watt bulbs and it is good light for all but the most light needy plants. The reason for the short fixture is that it is a manufactured unit and they don't make a 30" size, although it has sliders to adjust to fit up to a 36" tank I offset the fixture to provide a dark end for my java ferns and crypts so it worked out very well.

These LEDs provide something around 1,800 lux at that depth. The plant light range is about 500 to over 2,000 lux and the closer to the surface the higher that value is which is why floaters do so well. Without doing the math on your DIY fixture I am pretty sure that you are WAY over 2,000 lux due both to the close spacing of your LEDs and the shallowness of your tank.

If you happen to have a lux meter, perhaps even one you could borrow (I used to have one but have no idea where it went) you could check this out. Some of this depends on the focal lens on the bulb but most are focused very tight... particularly when compared against a tube.

The only reasons I didn't look into DIY were timing, Christmas, lack of plant knowledge and these were on sale in boxing week.

Jeff.
 
#24 ·
JDM what you say agrees with my research. I wish I had more info about how my light selection will actually work for plants but I just don't have that experience yet. Hopefully over the next few months I can document my experience and get some really good info for freshwater planted. I'll do my best to give regular updates! Yes the whites in my setup are 6500k and the red/blue is not necessary. Once the intensity gets under control I think they will provide a better overall light than white alone could, but we will see. And as I said before, it's partially just because I like the color. I do know that typical white leds contain almost no red light, I don't know if my plants will actually care. Perhaps further down the road I can selectively turn off my extra colors and see how it affects growth, could be a fun experiment. My intensity is definitely very very high. I've had trouble with under-lit tanks before but I totally underestimated just how bright these 1W leds are.

Tank update: I was having some cloudy water problems. The water had sort of a whitish milky tint to it. I think this was just a bacteria bloom from it being a new tank. It seems to be clearing now. My ghost shrimp are growing like crazy. I didn't know animals could grow so fast! When I got them, most were around 1/2". Now about half are 1" and one is at least 1.25"! I didn't get a chance to work on the tank last night, but today I should be able to do my pruning and hopefully get my light raised up a little. Anyone have suggestions for where to read up on how to prune plants? I don't want to damage mine...
 
#25 ·
Stems are a matter of cutting and sticking into the substrate. I was thinking that there might be some interesting tricks but there really aren't... there is almost no way to get it wrong or to do it better. The nodes are where the leaves sprout from and, as you have probably already seen, roots as well. If there are roots at a node you can cut a bit below that point and plant it, the already established roots will help to hold it in place. Removing the leaves from this node seems to make little difference but leaving them on if there are no roots yet helps to hold it in the substrate, but otherwise it makes little difference if there are no existing roots as they develop pretty quickly anyway. I'm letting my bacopa grow so I have not directly pruned and planted these yet but I have tons of other plants so I don't need the fast propagation.

One thing that I did play with was cutting above and below a node. That node then produces both leaves and roots simultaneously. You could cut the stems into many nodes, leave them floating and just plant them as they develop new stem pieces... this would really kickstart the proliferation of plants in a tank but I don't know how successful that might be for all stems, Dwarf Hygrophila and red ludwigia definitely work. Other varieties might do better with a few more nodes left on the stem.

Sidenote, the roots don't do much more than hold the plant in place. Leaving most stems floating works as they take almost all of their nutrients from the water... which is why they are such a great addition to any tank.

Jeff.
 
#27 ·
Did a heavy trimming last night. Removed all dead or damaged leaves and cut most stalks in half for replanting. I combed out the hair grass a bit, and tugged out new runners for replanting. Also vacuumed out all the plant matter I stirred up.

The anubias seems pretty happy, but the leaves collect fine debris really well. I'm a little worried about the debris collection, but am counting on the otos to take care of this. The shrimp don't keep the leaves as clean as I had hoped. The bacopa is growing extremely fast and has fresh leaves sprouting for almost ever node. The rotala looks like shit but is slowly getting color back and is making a few new shoots. From looking at the rotala last night it seems to be growing its roots much more slowly than the other plants, I expect this is why it is taking longer to perk up. It also gets a fair bit of water flow across it, does this matter? It's not getting blasted but it's definitely in one of the more turbulent parts of the tank. The hair grass is doing very well. All tufts are showing thick green growth and spreading fast.

Intensity aside, I'm really happy with my lighting. The color is beautiful. The surface has a light purple shimmer and the tank just glows. Now that the silt has settled, the substrate is developing a deep black color. Some of the glossier pieces reflect the colors of the leds in bright red, blue, and purple flashes.

I tested my water today, ammonia .25ppm, nitrite 0 - .25ppm (maybe like .1ppm), still no nitrate. I've done a lot of water changes the last week, I'm planning to reduce the amount considerably from now on while things settle out and mature. Still no signs of algae.

I wanted to talk about stock a bit. I'm still feeling pretty good about the choice of scarlet badis. I think they are a perfect size and temperament for this tank. I'm a little concerned about the otos though. I absolutely love them in planted tanks, such a useful fish, but I'm worried that I won't be able to keep them in a big enough group. Is there a particularly small type of oto that I could maybe fit four or five of? I'll be feeding them in addition to using them for algae control, so I'm mostly worried about overstocking. I think between the plants and the filter this tank has a better ability to process fish waste than most 5 gallon tanks, but I'm still concerned. Let me know what you guys think.

Pictures are post pruning. The last picture shows a snail riding another snail, yee haw!
 

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