test

I went away for a few days and when I returned I the light timer had broke and was not turning off at its normal time. The result was the algae was out of control. To counter act the outbreak I started over dousing Excel (liquid Co2) and replaced the timer. I also added a new circulation pump to move the water better. I spent about an hour scraping the algae off the glass and filter. In a week or so it should be back to normal. The only problem is my beta does not like the new pump because he does not swim very fast and it blows him around. This is my 75g tank. I had to remove the wood which was inside because it was starting to break down and cloudy up the water. I kinda don't like the look of the tank because it does not look natural which is what I enjoy about fish tanks. I am not 100% sure what I am going to do in the future to fix the look of it. Another thing I am going to do for this 75g is build my 30 tank into a sump for it. It will most likely cost me around 100$ for the sump build including the pump.

75 gallon into a saltwater tank?

So one thing I have found with 55 hexback tank is there is a of bunch busy work having to be done. I am constantly trimming the plants back and cleaning the glass of algae. My plans to make the 75g into another planted tank have change slightly. I am thinking I really want to make the 75g into a saltwater tank. Eventually will hope to make it into a reef tank. Since I took down the 30g planted tank because it got snails from some of the new plants I think I can make it into a sump for the 75g. The 30g DIY sump should be big enough to filter the water but I am not sure I will be able to fit a protein skimmer inside as well as the bio balls. I am still doing the calculations to make 100% sure sump will be big enough to filter the water effectively. I might end up buying a 40-50g tank on craigslist for cheap and making that in to the sump. What ever I choose it will take months to get up enough money to buy the thing I will need.

Plans for my 75 gallon

I have gotten the idea to convert my 75g fresh water tank into a planted tank, but before this can happen I will have to find a new home for my common pleco. My plan is to heavily plant the 75g which has only plastic plants and some drift wood I found in the St. Johns River. Everyone who is in the fish hobby knows what it’s like to get an idea for a new tank setup. Once you have the idea it is impossible get it out of your heard. The plan right now is to build a low tech setup to start with and convert to high tech over time. I also want to try and do a dirt substrate for the first time. To convert this tank over will take a bunch of work because I will have to remove all the sand substrate out and put in the dirt and then put the sand back in. I think I might try and go with a gravel substrate instead of the sand. Right now it’s in the planning stage. The first thing I am going to need will be the center piece of the new setup. I plan on finding a big spider piece of drift wood for the center piece. Once I have the dirt and drift wood the only thing I will be missing is the lights. I think I will be going with T5 lights instead of LED because of the cost.

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Beautiful tank full of Cardinal tetras

  

One day I would like to have a tank with this many tetras because they are so beautiful when they school in large groups.  I just enjoy how when one moves they all start to move in unison.  My 55 gallon planted tank has mostly tetras but I don't have any Cardinal tetras yet.  Maybe one day I will be lucky enough to own a tank like this.

"Cardinal tetras," © 2007 Lisa Brewster, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

My 75 gallon fresh water

In this picture you can see my 75 gallon fresh water tank. Since this is the first time I have posted anything about this tank I will give you a profile of the fish I keep in here. I have bala sharks, giant dianos, tiger barbs, a 12 inch common pleco, algae eaters and a blue crayfish. The common pleco is a waste machine creating so much waste it is starting to cloud the tank and no matter how much water changes I do I can never clean it completely up. I have been looking into other ways of clearing up the water but so far all I have hit are dead ends. The problem I am having is anything strong enough to vacuum up the pleco waste also gets the sand and in some cases the sand is lighter than the waste and I only get sand. Another problem I was having with this tank is the plants are all plastic but the light was starting to grow algae on the plastic leaves. To counter act this problem I purchased 7 algae eaters from petco because they were on sale hoping they would deal with the brown algae on the leaves. It has been less than 24 hours and I can already see a huge difference in the amount of algae on the leaves. The next thing I am going to do for this tank is to try and find a new home for the pleco to help reduce the amount of waste in the tank. After I rehome the pleco I am going to start to convert this tank over to a live planted tank. I am going to start small with just a few swords to help clear up the water quality and then slowly convert it into a heavily planted high tech tank.

This work by Austin Webb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.