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.

Map of Jacksonville's hidden gems.

View Jacksonville Hidden Locales - UNF students in a larger map

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.

Snail problem getting out of control.

So in the last full picture of my tank you can see a few snails clinging to things inside the tank but now they have taken over. When I awoke this morning I found about 25-30 just on the glass. After doing a little research I found out the best kinds of fish who enjoy eating the snails are, fresh water puffers, and clown Loaches. The problem with the puffer is he is very aggressive and won’t work with my peaceful Tetra’s. The problem with the loaches besides from them being $11 a piece they are very fragile fish which will die very quickly if the tank is not fully cycled. So I can’t add the loaches because the tank is not fully cycled but the longer I wait the most the snails reproduce. This tank needs to hurry up and cycles to I can add those fish and get the ball rolling on the extermination of those snails. I will add a picture as soon I have the time to show how the snail population.

So I had a awoke to a huge problem yesterday with my planted tank. I thought the tank was completely cycled but I must had added to many fish for the bio cycle to handed it. The result was a large ammonia spike killing off about half of the fish in the tank. Since I thought it was already cycled I was at a lost as to what had happened to the fish. I tested the water later in the day and found the ammonia was higher than it should be and the nitrate was not even reading. I preformed a large water change, about 50%,and put in my sponge filter from my 75 gallon. I also added a double dose of prime and beneficial bacteria by API. Another problem I am dealing with is the snail population it getting out of control. I was planning on purchasing some clown loaches to deal with the problem but they don't do well in a non-cycled tank. I am going to have to wait to add any more fish until this tank cycles. My LFS(local fish store)has clown loaches until the 20th so I hope my tank cycles quick since the loaches are half priced. To put in my sponge filter I had to replant one of my amazon sword plants and move one of my java ferns. I have still not found a new place for my java fern and it is just floating in the tank wanting for a new spot.

Takashi Amano is a Japanese man who given me a bunch of inspiration with the planted aquariums I own. I enjoy watching the passion and dedication Takashi Amano puts into his work. Some of the aquariums Takashi Amano has designed are breath taking. He is truly a master artist and craftsmen. The Sumida Aquariums are world renowned. These two aquariums featured in the video are his crowning achievement.

The video consists of a contest held in Hannover, Germany in 2011. The contest centers around aquascaping of aquariums. Every tank is the same size and no one is allowed to use Co2 or fertilizers of any kind. The contestants are not permitted to use any fish because it is believed to take away from the beauty of the aquascape. I would love to visit this contest one year to learn from the masters in he field of planted aquariums. I hope one day to have a few tanks as beautiful as some of theses.

Welcome to my tropical fish paradise.  Here I will show off my many fish tanks and tropical fish.  I will also show step by steps to popular aquarium builds and DIY things.

 Here is a picture of my heavily high tech planted tank.  In the back ground you can see the injected O2 and C02.

Every plant in this tank is life and growing. I have two massive 6500k grow lights which sit atop the tank.

 

 

Here you can see the inject C02 moving back in forth on here.  The longer the C02 is in contact with the water the better it will absorb into the water.

 

Here is a short video of the CO2 in action.

• Here is one of my 7 algae eaters.  They are called Otocinclu catfish.

In this picture you can see a few of my different types of tetras.  

 

 

Here is my latest project I just started a few months ago.  I am waiting for the plants to fill in before I start stocking my fish.

This is my 75g show tank in my living room of my house.  It has 4 bala sharks, 7 tiger barbs, 1 blue crayfish, 1 large 12'' pleco, and 4 giant dianios,

Here is my 12'' pleco

 

Here is bane my blue crayfish.