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.