# My semi-new 55g - and hi!



## sthomas (Feb 8, 2006)

Here is my first (and for a good long while longer, only,) planted tank. It has a prominent location in the small dining room in an open floorplan apartment. My goal was something to have something that was visually appealing, and to use plant and fish species from (roughly) a single geographic region, that weren't a challenge to keep healthy and flourishing. The tank has had plants and fish for almost four months now, though the tank stood filled and circulating for four months prior to the planting (see below).










Equipment: A custom-built cherry wood cabinet and canopy, holding a 55g acrylic Tru-vu with black background and a built-in overflow. Overflow has a Durso standpipe with inlet covered by mesh screen, and goes to a Tru-vu DelRay Model 150 wet/dry filter with basic Tru-vu provided bioball media. Water is circulated with an Eheim 1250, and heater is a Visitherm. A second small pump circulates water out to an AquaMedic reactor that mixes CO2 from a pressurized system fed by an Azoo regulator with solenoid from 5lb canister that is a tank exchange from AirGas. Lighting is a CoralLife reflector mounted on the canopy top that takes 30" Compact Fluorescent bulbs, currently using a single 96w 6700k CoralLife. Substrate is AquaSoil Amazonia, and there's 2 pieces of dark driftwood arranged together to look like a single piece.

Livestock: Amazon swords, Hornwort, Vallisneria (yes, corkscrew which isn't exactly S. American!). 1 royal blue discus, 1 red discus, 24 cardinal tetras, 3 blue rams, 3 panda corydoras, and 2 otocinclus.

Care: Daily feedings of frozen bloodworms, freeze dried tubifex, or omega flakes (the discus do eat the flakes, lucky ain't I?). I do weekly water changes of 5-10 gallons, whatever I am in the mood for. I dose with Pfertz around 10 squirts of each per day about 4-5 days a week, and I dose in the evening or morning with the lights off. Lights come on at 10am and go off at 6pm on a timer. pH remains stable at about 5.8, and temperature is 76F. I haven't tested the rest recently, so I won't post any other water conditions. I have a Vortex diatom filter that I am willing to throw on it once a month - that's as often as I can deal with the setup and cleaning effort for that filter. I do that because I like to brush the dust that settles onto the sword leaves and hornwort needles, which ends up in the water column and settles onto the plants again. The diatom will clear the water quickly and get a lot of the dust coming up from the AquaSoil out. I haven't had any algae until this week when I ran out of CO2, and it's had 3 days now without CO2.










History: this was a Lake Tanganyikan cichlid tank until I had to move, when I decided to go planted. In the conversion I pulled all the rocks and sand, and downgraded the pump size in the conversion because the former pump was significantly more powerful and created strong currents. I read all about how it would be impossible to maintain a decent level of CO2 with a wet/dry filter, but I figured I'd take a chance

Put in the AquaSoil and let the water sit, which turned out to be for four months due to job commitments that sent me around the country a few times  The lighting I already had in place, but was using 10k bulbs for the africans because I thought it looked much better. I would probably like to use both a 6700k and a 10k bulb because I like the coloring when those are combined, but since they are 96w I need more experience before I can handle that much light  I got the driftwood on a trip to AquaForest. After four months of circulating the water, I changed much of it and got a feel for how much/fast the AquaSoil buffering would affect the water (I'm in SF Bay Area, high pH calcerous water out of the tap).

I added about 9 Amazon Swords at the outset and gave them some time to settle in. They shot up almost immediately and 4 of them hit the water surface and began shading the rest of them. I removed some of the amazons, and added Vallisneria and Hornwort. All of the plants grow at phenomenal rates and I'm constantly pruning everything. I'm attempting to grow the removed amazons in pots outside, hoping they will grow up out of the water and be interesting decor.










Anyway, I always wanted a nice planted tank with driftwood and a bazillion neons or cardinals, because I think they look fantastic when they school. With the addition of the discus, the cardinals are more tightly schooled, which has a nice effect.

I have lots of little plans to make improvements to the equipment, and I am going to put a webcam on it for timelapse photos to record plant growth cause I'm kinda geeky like that.


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## trenac (Jul 16, 2004)

Your tank looks really nice, clean & healthy. The Discus are beautiful. I also like seeing Discus & cardinals/neons paired together.


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## ZakkWylde (Nov 15, 2007)

Awesome looking setup, nice colored discus also.


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## Javaman (Nov 19, 2007)

wow that looks good


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## DaFishMan (Dec 4, 2005)

Stunning tank and fish !

I'd also say gratz for moving from African cichlids, over to the SA side 
If I get a larger tank I'm going to hunt this 'AquaSoil Amazonia' down.


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## toxic69 (Nov 7, 2007)

nice looking tank and nice looking discus also ,are you going to be adding any more or just have the two?


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## sthomas (Feb 8, 2006)

I am considering adding a couple more discus, but when I started this setup I wanted to focus more on the cardinals and didn't really intend to put discus in at all. Right now the blue discus is asserting dominance and is keeping the cardinals on the move, which is nice. Before adding the discus the cardinals were loosely schooling, but now they are pretty tight at all times, and I like the effect.

Whenever I get back up to SF I'll look in on some shops which may lead to more discus purchases  Work has kept me frantic for a couple of weeks now, so I don't know when that will happen.

I did do some pruning and rearranging, so I hope to get some more pics taken soon. I also got a much better lens for shooting with the light conditions (a 50mm fixed f/1.8 Nikkor), which I hope to take advantage of when I can find the time.

One plant that I wanted to add since the beginning is Stargrass, but I haven't seen any since I started planting...


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