M C Escher Tank

50 Gallon in the Fall

I moved so the 50 gallon had to be taken apart and here we are 8 months after I set it up in our new place. New characters like the dark fern in seen in the center, much more rotala this time around, the clovers I've had for two years and only now really took off. In fact they only really took off when I bought some of the pearl grass (micranthemoides) and I think it didn't like the competition and sprung to life spreading across the tank bottom. Bottom most picture is one of my favorite plants, potamogeton gayi, I don't know why but i love the tall wispy look and the color variation from new to old leaves.

New 5.35 Gallon

This new tank setup will be a moody/dark/cool tank for low light things. In this lurky little tank there is a thick layer of onyx black fluorite for the substrate which you can check out here. Today is day 1, so the water is going to have to sort itself out, but I don't think it will take too long because I filled 3/4 of it with water from my other tank, so its got rich start to begin with. Floating in a container up top is some christmas moss and the plants at the bottom are Anubias Barteri.

Aquatic Moss

A comprehensive site on aquatic mosses. Check it out.

Chemical Brothers Fish Video

Lock n' Lock Canister Filter

Because everyone knows that an eheim canister filter, as nice as they are, is nothing more than a Lock n' Lock with a submersable pump.

20 Gallon Plant Tank

Recently I've stopped using the Red Sea Co2 pump because it would do a lousy job of spitting out the Co2 in small enough sized bubbles. Instead now the Co2 bubbles are released into the tank through one of these (only the one I have is plastic and made by Eheim). These don't really work so well with a make shift sugar +yeast method of making c02 because the pressure is never consistent like it would be if you had an actual compressed co2 tank. So I bought a regular cheap little pump/miniature 5 gallon filter for 15$ and put the diffuser underneath it, so now the bubbles collect in the filter and spit out much smaller and all over the tank.

Mike also adopted this method and it's working out for him, he skipped the diffuser part and hooks up his tank directly into the filter and it does the trick as well.

That + the Poor Man's Dupla Drops have been keeping everything in my tank growing really well.

Also, Mike had borrowed back his Siamese Algae Eater and it turns out he was keeping the algae in my tank in check, because since he left a lot of light hair algae was growing everywhere. He's back in my tank now and in 2 days he cleaned it all up again...

And the Clown Loach I have has been doing a really good job controlling the baby snail population, and now the plants aren't being chewed up anymore.

Now, I have 3 Leopard Danios, 14 Cardinal Tetras, 1 Kuli Loach, 1 Clown Loach, 5 Amano Shrimp (maybe, hard to count), 1 Siamese Algae Eater, and 1 Peacock Gudgeon

Also, I'm using 3 T5 Light fixtures now which brings me up to 84 Watts, 4.2W/Gallon.

I think now that its finally at peace, I'm going to start trying some new things out and see what happens.

Cichlid Tank Update Oct.2007