Tropical Fish Forums

[KhiaraFish]

That looks awesome, I love your driftwood!
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Please, oh Please can someone help me!?

My fish mugged me and stole my wallet!

[Caton]

Jealous.
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[unissuh]

[unissuh]

Update for this month, had some issues with tapwater going funny, but everything is running smoothly again after switching to rainwater.

Microdevario tank:

Cyperus helferi growing a bit too tall...need to cut the leaves or get rid of the bigger plants.

Fry tank 1 (tiny fry <1 week old):


Fry closer up, 2mm in length!


Fry tank 2 (older fry):


Chocolate gourami tank (not much different, couple of new leaves only):


New year project - building T5HE light with some decent reflectors:



About half way through so far.
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Fishing in the Rivers of Light

[jsuereth]

Wow, I really like how you've done the microdevario tank. Do you run sponge filters on all these tanks?

I put sponge pre-filters on my HOBs after picking up my shrimp and I've been really happy with the filtration, but the sponge tends to 'clog' quickly limiting flow. With the size sponge I see on your tanks, does this happen often or is it not as much of a problem with a staight-up sponge filter?

[unissuh]

Glad you like it.

There are classic sponge filters on the fry tanks, they don't seem to clog very fast at all. They're actually the smallest size sponge filters I could find (both are the same size, just different perspective), the tanks are just not very big at all. I think I've rinsed 'em out twice in about 4 months. I do a 50% change and vac almost every day in these tanks due to size - perhaps this has to do with the low amount of "crap".

Theres a Fluval Edge sponge prefilter tacked onto my AC70 intake in the Microdevario tank (I think theres a picture earlier on in this thread), this gets clogged a bit faster. To be honest I'm a bit lazy about cleaning this, the filter is way oversized for the tank and has a high enough flow rate that a partially clogged sponge brings it back down to "normal". If I ran the filter without the sponge or flow control it'd do something like ~25-30x tank volume an hour, think whirlpool. I like having the media capacity though.
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Fishing in the Rivers of Light

[rales12]

The microdevario tank is looking awesome, unissuh!

The lights you have on it... are they just normal desk lamps? I want to do something different for my little tank and am looking for some inspiration.
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- Rachel

[unissuh]

They're clip on lamps, similar to desk lamps I guess. Unfortunately I don't think the company has a catalog online - they're called Mort Bay and the lamp model is called "ecoclip".

Desklamps do work and I have used them before, just make sure you swap out the bulbs for compact fluorescent lamps of an appropriate wattage if they don't already have 'em as I think these work the best. Can also find these in much more attractive styles than lights manufactured for aquarium use...
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Fishing in the Rivers of Light

[unissuh]

Took a few pictures of a few tanks today:


Narrow leaf java is growing a bit too big now, might have to remove it. Not sure whats changed but its suddenly sprouting 35 cm+ leaves.


Not much change here, can't seem to convince the chocs to be less shy.


New acquisitions; in my quarantine bucket currently. Hopefully should get along with the chocs, otherwise have to figure something else out.


Desk tank, broad-leaf Helanthium doesn't seem to be as low light tolerant as my narrow-leaf one but the rest is going well.
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Fishing in the Rivers of Light

[diademhill]

Valients don't get along with chocolates