I thought I would start something called Tank Spotlight where we share pictures and descriptions about a particular tank we have. To kick things off, this is a tank that has been running in a corner of our house since mid December 2019.
Tank and what we use(d):
Aqueon 15G Column Deluxe Kit with the Stand Ebony Cabinet
Heater that came with tank (since removed)
Hang on back filter (custom media)
Eco complete substrate
CO2 tank in the bottom cabinet and glass diffuser (added afterwards)
CO2 drop checker
Stocking
1 Leopard Danio
4 male guppies (from the club)
6 dwarf rasboras (I think phoenix rasboras)
A bunch of red cherry shrimp
A bunch of light colored Ram's horn snails
Plants
Staurogyne repens in the front (from PetSmart)
Cardinal plants on the left (from PetSmart)
2 cryptocoryne (think wendtii from PetSmart)
1 anubias
1 sword plant near the right
1 Java fern
2 alternanthera reineckii hidden on the right
Bacopa caroliniana in the back
Ammania Gracilis in the back with the bacopa
Hornwort (since removed)
Vallisneria added later in back right
Cabomba caroliniana added behind the rock
Cryptocoryne Nurii added under the log and on the right in front of the ammania gracilis
The fish and plants haven't changed too much, but how we have taken care of it has.
Hardware
Starting off with the tank, I would not recommend paying full price for this tank. I have seen the original price for it and it is quite expensive. We were lucky to snag this tank at a PetCo that was going out of business, so we got it for a really great deal. I was surprised to find that the lights on it are quite sufficient. They are on a timer for 10 hours. The heater was only used for a little bit at the start since the water I initially added along with the house in December was quite cold. The only other thing I use from the kit is the hang on back filter. This was to get the beneficial bacteria started with used media from my other tank. I was initially thinking of removing the filter afterwards so any baby shrimp don’t get sucked up in the filter, but I have decided to keep it for the main reason of spreading the CO2 around the tank.
Inhabitants
Initially I added some small shrimp with the fish and was hoping they would breed. After a couple weeks I could not find any shrimp. I assumed that they were either eaten by the fish or got sucked into the filter. After a few months I saw some baby shrimp and then backed up a bit and saw there were a whole bunch of shrimp in there! The snails are hitchhikers, not entirely sure from where. The initial plan was to grow some in there and take them out and feed them to a puffer fish to eventually get rid of them. However, this tank has had 0, that is right ZERO algae issues (knock on wood). I attribute this primarily to the snails with support from the shrimp The snails basically wipe down the glass and plants. Some find snails to be a nuisance. I have grown to find them interesting and very helpful in saving time in maintaining the tank.
Feeding/Maintenance
Since some of the fish are so small, I feed a mixture of daphnia and flake food for baby fish along with the smallest fish pellets I can find.
This tank, like all my others does not get regular water changes. I only do water top offs. I have been doing water tests to make sure I don't over dose with nutrients.
I fertilize 1-2 times a week and so far, this tank has turned from looking bare and dying plants
in the front, to something very vibrant and fun.
Plants
There are a number of plants in the tank. They all look to be doing quite well and over time, I have found a few interesting things, mainly with the addition of CO2. This tank is now considered “high tech” but it didn't start that way. The main reason I added CO2 and fertilizer was because the s. repens were not doing well. The leaves started to have holes, they were fairly small and basically the repens looked like they were not going to make it.
Since adding the CO2, the s. repens have bounced back tremendously. Not only that, all the plants started to grow. The crypts look completely different from how they started, as seen in some of the pictures, and from how they look in my other tanks. The alternanthera reineckii took awhile to start up but now are so dense and vibrant red, way different than in the tank I cut them from.
I ended up taking out the hornwort because it was growing too fast and taking up too much space at the top of the tank, although the shrimp liked the extra crawling space.
I know I do have an s. repens growing out from the filter intake, but it looks like it is doing well, so I will see what happens.
If you would like to have your tank displayed on the site, please send an email with your text and pictures to the club. If you have videos, I would recommend uploading it to YouTube. If you want the video just on our site, you can unlist the video on YouTube and we can embed it in the blog post. The tank does not need to be fancy or look spectacular, just a tank that you like and enjoy and want to share (I just started out with my best looking one, I may share my other troublesome tanks in the future).