What does your aquarium look like?

Ive only got a rocky planted 15L atm but next week I will be getting a 3ft tank with custom metal stand. Then I will finally be able to venture into keeping/breeding tropical shrimp. Its going to be well stocked with plants 100%.

 

dusty, dead bugs, spider webs.. its a night light.

 

I have a huge globe, but I haven't used it as of yet. I think I might buy some tropical fish for it.

 

my 50 gallon;
















maybe later I'll post some of the fresh water tank.

 

I have a 3ft tropical aquarium.
It has a darkish backdrop with two large features. Rock wall on the left and a big castle from centre to right. This castle is inhabited by the matriarch of the tank, my beautiful red tail shark, Stürm. Then I have 3 green tetras, 1 guppy, 5 black widow Tetras and 2 disgusting catfish that are now really big and ugly. :d

Dark gravel, two big lights, nice noisy filter that produces a lot of oxygen and my heater.

Our shark is about 3 years old now, maybe even more. We had a tetra die last week and we've had them just as long so they all might expire soon.

I also tried not so long ago a small rainbow shark to see how it would go but it never really had a chance, it did not grow at all and went missing some time ago never to be found.

 

All of my tanks are empty now. I sold all of the bigger ones and now have only 4 30g tanks left in the basement. But my other tanks were various sizes all the way up to 360 gallons. If any of you guys are just starting out and have any questions....feel free to shoot me a message. There are plenty of ways to kill fish but keeping them alive and healthy is not complicated at all if done right.

 

my tank use to be home to a red-knee spider but I sold him.

 

When we first started an aquarium, it did take a while and a lot of money. I think we became overwhelmed with the information and chemical levels the water needed to be. It seemed we were continuously adding chemicals and testing the water and hoping it turned the right color, but all our water did was cloud over and all our fish die.

Once we bought out big tank now we just set it up, left it running for a week, no testing just cycled it. Now we change the water every few months, I don't bother testing the water anymore, it seemed the less we tried the better it worked. Lol.

 

Got rid of all my tanks 30 years ago...

 

That is exactly true. Less is more! There is only one chemical you should ever have to put into your tank and that is SeaChem Prime for adding new water, etc. All of the rest of the other stuff causes a lot more problems than they solve. There are other ways of solving issues than chemicals.

 

Yeah it was all the stree zymes and stuff as additives. I mean when we do 1/3 water change we add PH powder, stress zyme, Aqua clear (removes immediate cloudiness) some water conditioner and a small amount of a blue chemical that removes ich. We got ich once possible from the water we were using so ever since we cycle this through too. But that's all for months. I don't really understand the nitrate levels etc. all I care about is the ammonium. If my ammonia testing is fine then so are my fish.

 

When I raised South American Cichlids I rarely even changed water and never used chemicals... There was enough of that african bog wood that slowly turned the water amber but remained crystal clear. Live plants and peat filters. The fish were very healthy, happy and more brilliantly colored that any you would see in the books/magazines or any store.... Basically the same water you would find in central/south America.

 

Yeah...don't put all that stuff in there. There are a few other SeaChem products that can be used but I only used Prime. As far as Ich...you can get it from a number of sources but the way to get rid of it is to turn your tank temp up to 80 degrees. This will lower the oxygen level in the water so add more air. Ich has a reproduction cycle and the best way to describe it may be to just say that the "eggs" can't hatch in 80 degree water. So water changes every other day...being sure to focus heavily on cleaning the gravel....are a good idea. You don't actually kill the Ich but its life cycle isn't long and once it dies and the new generation isn't reinfecting the water...the problem is solved. Should be 2-3 weeks. You can also include SeaChem ParaGuard in the treatment too. But people should double check just to make sure their fish can handle 80 degrees. Most should be fine.

Another thing....sometimes fish will look like they have Ich but they don't. Most people know to treat their water for chlorine or let it sit for a day or two to let the chlorine break down before adding it to the tank. But some water has chloramines also and they won't break down just by sitting like chlorine. Some products treat chlorine but not chloramines. The stuff on the fish that looks like Ich are actually burn marks from the chloramines. Solution? Again...SeaChem Prime. It takes care of both.

 

A few updates;

I decided to give corals a try and put together a new light setup using a 165 watt dimmable LED unit I got on Amazon.



It is full spectrum as well as having full actinic blue leds. The blue is what makes corals and anemones fluoresce and is the spectrum the use most for photosynthesis.



I also special ordered a mini display/refugium that is mounted atop the main tank. It holds about 5.5 gallons and is the refuge for my amphipod & pod populations, macro algae as well as a couple of fish.



I'm using a Finnex Stingray LED for lighting



water is pumped up from the main display at about 200+ gph and drains via an overflow back into the display at the opposite end.


this is how the whole setup looks, (excuse the glare from the window)



here is one of the guys living up there, a clown goby;



and the other one is a ruby red dragonett;

 

and here are a few pics of the 50 gallon main tank and it's critters;

 

and a couple more




















the same guys but with only the blue lights on

 

almost done...

some zoas and a mushroom under normal lights



under the actinic blue



sadly a phone camera doesn't do them justice.

 

For quite some time I have thought that many filtration configurations are backwards, often placing the biological filtration section before the chemical section.
In that configuration it puts a greater burden on the biological capabilities and in the end produces more nitrate as the end result of the nitrification process.

By doing as much chemical filtration as possible first, via chemical media and skimming, we reduce the amount of organic substances presented to the biological portion and the net end result is a lower nitrate level.


So in order to achieve that as much as possible I am going to re-configure my set-up as follows.



(red arrows show water flow)
so the water flows from the display through socks and is further filtered for particulates via a mag 5 fitted with a micron sleeve from the magnum 350.
then up through a foam block and a layer of Matrix carbon. That is a separate container inside of the main sump container.

Then it is pumped to the skimmer and reactors, all of which have the effluent going into the secondary sump.
The effluent from the skimmer will flow in from the bottom and the effluent from the reactors will enter through the top via a drip set-up filtering through a layer of pumice blocks.

From there it returns back to the main sump's return pump section.

I am hoping this will help reduce nitrate levels (even though they are undetectable, the amount of red hair algae in the refugium tells me different)
and improve the overall efficiency of the system.

Everything I need is actually already in place, all that I need to do is get another 1" bulkhead and drill a few holes, glue some PVC and done.

 

one other thing is that I had originally set up the second sump container for my 30 gallon, but never got around to setting it up.
I can easily tie it into the sump and join it to the complete system.


it is in the room used as an office and my desk/computer is right in between the two;






the chiller sits under the desk where the computer is shown on top, the second sump is under where the 30 gallon would go.
The only thing out of the whole mess that can be seen is the skimmer, but that is because it's six feet tall....LOL

all the plumbing will run around/under the desk with the only area visible being where the skimmer is located.

I'm very seriously considering setting it up and trying an octopus in the 30 gallon.

 

Well it took a couple of days, but I got it switched around.
Made a few changes. Have the Mag 5 still pulling through the micron sleeve, but it is also feeding the skimmer. took the Sicce 300gph pump and made a DIY carbon "canister" from 2" PVC and have the water being pulled through that and then sent to the GFO and Purigen reactors. I haven't routed the effluent from the reactors to the second sump yet. Had a few mishaps along the way.


So as you can see from my illustration I have a display refugium on top of the main display. Well on Sunday I began working on everything and needed to redo the return plumbing as it had a restriction that was getting clogged with stomatella snails, so I had turned it off before going to bed, don't need another flood at 2 am.
Worked Sunday night until around 9:30 I realized I was about 2' short of 1" hose....., so I clean up and go to bed.

Get up Monday morning, notice the refugium is a little "chilly" so I turn the pump that feeds it on and it all flows and drains nicely so I go to make coffee and stuff. I walk back into the room to the sound of water splashing!!!

Snails plugged the drain again and about 3-4 gallons of water have overflowed the refugium!!!!!!!

So I mop up and get everything squared away and all the plumbing fixed up, new drain set-up for the refugium, clean the outside of the tank so it has that polished look/feel and I'm done.



BUT WAIT! There's more.........

So I'm checking things out and still not happy with the amount of splashing from the drain into the socks, so I shut the drain valve and stick my head under the stand to fix it.......

then about 45 seconds later I start getting a shower of salt water all over my head and back!!!!!!!!

I forgot to turn off the return pump....DOH!!!!!!!!

So, after another round of cleaning, mopping and cursing I am about 90% done and just a few tweaks to fine tune stuff.

Thank goodness the room the tank is in is the only one with tile instead of carpet.

I managed to segregate the chemical portions from the biological portions with water being processed by the chemical filtration first then on to bio.
Was able to add another heater to the second sump so that will help alleviate the burden of keeping the tank warm with only one heater.
Also gained about 12 gallons of water capacity for the system, so that's good.



still being lazy with the pics.......sorry.