Our 54 Ltr

Hi all,

Just thought id post our tank to see what any of you thought. Its my first atempt. Thinking about a larger tank in the future. The majority of questions i have had since taking up this hobbie have been answered indirectly by a lot of you so i thought i id show you the result. It gives us a lot of pleasure in our house and our kids love it. If any one enjoys looking at it even half as much as us thats good enough for me ! Thanks a lot for all the info and help.

A 54 ltr tank with an external filter and in it live:

3 peppered Corys ( get eggs all the time, but never any fry)
7 Rasboras
2 ottos
2 chameleon shrimp (a male and a female) the male feeds from our hands and the female seems to be carring a lot of eggs at the momment!

Would love to add some cherry shrimp if the moss grows, but not sure if this would take me to over a good stock level for the size of tank. Feel free to comment .

Had the tank running for about a year but have just had a bit of a move around in order to try and grow some moss. As you can see by my mesh attempts. I add C02 but only from a cheap tetra diffuser unit. Carry out 30% water changes every two weeks and give it a vac. Add API leaf zone once a week as per instructions on the bottle. Its is lit for 8 hours a day with a 2 hour gap inbetween by one plant light. cant remember which one! sorry.

Tried my best to plant what i thought were low light plants. Due to the one strip light i have in the hood. Had algie probs at the start but just kept adding plants and cleaning as best as poss whilst trying to cut down on the light, once all the plants got est, and i started stagging the lighting. things settled down. still get a bit, but prune the leafs if it gets to much. Mostly i just try to resist the temtation to keep trying new things and changing everthing!



Matty.

looks bigger than my tank in the pics and mines 64 litre

hi, nice tank. i don't think that shrimp add to the bio load of a tank, so you could get some cherries.

its difficult to get a small tank to look good. well done.

Tank looks great!

I think the tank looks really good! The only suggestion I have is get rid of the blue rocks on the right side and replace them with the ones like you have on the left side. It looks like your going for a natural look and you have accomplished that but the blue rocks kinda spoil the look your going for!

lol thanks for all your kind comments the blue rocks are my atempt at growing java moss under the the netting!

I am going for a natral look as well.

Just made myself a DIY C02 fermented system. thing are looking better all the time, chuffed to bits it works first time and my indicator has just turned gren after a day running the system. .

i love this forum. Good advice.

What plants do you have?

Oh I see now, I thought they were just plain blue rocks but now I see the netting. You'll have to post another picture wants the java moss grows out.

Hello,

Sorry been away for a while, here are some updated pics of our tank since i added a DIY yeast C02 system.... My plants have gone crazy. Got a bit fed up with looking at blue netting so i just tied my java moss down with some fishing line. Seems to be doing fine, but grows on the slow side.

must admit i was a bit put off with the whole c02 thing but it was very easy to set up and seems to have made our plants look fantastic. PH droped from 7.5 to about 6.8. very quickly, and my indicator turned green in a day. My fish seem fine and happy. Must add a thanks again for all the top advice found here.

Thought i would drop in a pic of one of our Chameleon Shrimp - the one here is the male, (my boy calls him ZORGBURG!) he has just develped this huge claw.


I am not sure what all the names are for all my plants, but feel free to enlighten me! Had a look on the net and this is what i think i have.

impressive for a 50L !

Scrotius said:

impressive for a 50L !

Click to expand...

Thank mate...

You should enter this in the TOTM contest. I would deffinately vote for it!

Very nice tank!

But if you ever find fish missing, it;s because the chameleon shrimp ate them when it was bored/hungry. They are notorious for taking out small fish, I've had a customer complain on took out 10 neons in just 3 days before (own fault for ignoring my advice).

That's probably because he wasn't feeding the shrimp any sinking pellets or anything, but still, watch out.

three-fingers said:

Very nice tank!

But if you ever find fish missing, it;s because the chameleon shrimp ate them when it was bored/hungry. They are notorious for taking out small fish, I've had a customer complain on took out 10 neons in just 3 days before (own fault for ignoring my advice).

That's probably because he wasn't feeding the shrimp any sinking pellets or anything, but still, watch out.

Click to expand...

Thanks again folks,

We cant wait to get a bigger tank!

You are bang about the chameleon shrimp. They have had 3 of my new neons . The other two have hardly any tails left, but i suspect the Rasboras are involved.
strange thing is that the shrimp leave all the other fish alone even our ottos. Maybe the noens bright colours attract the them.
i dont often get bad advice from from our local shop.....

May well consider taking them back and getting some cherry shrimp instead.