Ecce's Community Tank

Community Tank - Day 25

2007-05-26T19:36:00.000Z

The CO2 ladder is running well but muppet here has had the lights on for 12 hours a day - the plants do need light but too much does this to the tank - a build up of algae! Not exactly harmfull to the fishies but not a pretty sight (I think you'll agree).

10 minutes later the tank was looking respectable again and I'm glad to say all fishies are present and accounted for :) The lights are now on between 8 and 10 hours a day so this should not happen again (fingers crossed). I'll take another sample of water to the lfs tomorrow and if all is well will get 5 more Glo-light Tetras and 6 Black Phantom Tetras.

Am on holiday now so might have more time to take some pictures of the fish and plants.

Community Tank - Day 12

2007-05-13T17:28:00.000Z

Well, its not been a good week in the tank! None of the Cardinal Tetras lasted the week and both myself and lfs don't understand it - the water was fine so we could just put it down to stress. Its never nice to lose fish, even small ones I'd not had time to 'bond' with but even though I do my best to recreate their surroundings I guess its not like home.

Tony (the lfs owner) had ordered some reflectors for my lamps and I nipped over to pick them up today along with 5 more Glo-light Tetras and 6 Black Phantom Tetras. Hopefully all will be well this week (water readings were the same as last week).

The above pic was taken after doing a quick move round of plants, now I just need them to 'grow in' a little before thinking of more plants - the C02 ladder is in full flow now and seems to be helping growth.

Now the new lamps and reflectors are installed I'll try to take a few detailed pics of the tank next week (need to polish the glass first lol). After building up the Tetra community I'll make my decision as to the bigger fish I want to set off the tank.

Community Tank - day 5

2007-05-07T17:15:00.000Z

Not the best shot showing the 2 caves. I made these a couple of years ago for the Cichlid tank from broken slate stuck together with silicon. Each cave is about 6 inches square and covered with gravel so just the entrance is shown (I may still play around with their positioning). I also semi buried two stacks of slate to try and make the caves more natural looking.

Then it was off to my LFS (Local fish Shop) and a look at their plants. I purchased a selection of front, middle and back plants and just roughly dropped them in the tank, I'll spend the next week moving them around until I find a layout I like then I'll remove the padding in the baskets and bury them with gravel (until the next time I decide to move them). The 'main' plant is an Anubis Nana and Java Fern rooted onto some bogwood

Since I've not tested the water in any of my tanks for over 2 years I didn't trust my kits so took a sample of water along with me and was glad to see that the tank was still mature so no need to cycle it again. With that news I got 5 Cardinal Tetras and 5 Glo-Light Tetras, will post some piccies when they are out of the bag (am finding it difficult to find decent pics of the fish on the web and although blowing my own trumpet am sure I'll be posting better than I could find). If they do well over the next week I'll start stocking up with them over the coming weeks.

Community Tank - day 1

2007-05-07T15:52:00.000Z

Sadly my community tank of 4 years is no more so I moved the 2 remaining fish into another tank and rather than waste the mature water/substrate began a 3 day 'in tank' wash of the gravel.

There was no point in posting a picture during this time as it was just, well, just a brown mess. After 2 filter changes things cleared up sufficiently to enable me to start the Co2 ladder then I left things for a further week whilst I thought about how I'd like the tank to look in the months to come.

The picture above is how the tank looked on the 3rd May. I've decided on a planted tank (hence the C02 ladder) with a couple of caves, maybe 2 shoals of tetras (up to 100 in total) and (most likely) a pair of discus as the 'specimen' incumbants.

The Tank

Juwel Vision 180 Fish Tank and Stand
Eheim Professional II 2126 Thermo Filter
Hagen C02 Plant system
Gravel substrate
Standard internal filter (for polishing water)