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!
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!