My Mini Species Tank

The photos are not so great.. The tank is on the kitchen counter & contains a variety of small tetras & guppies & the like

Is that the little Aqua-El tank?

Nice little set-up.

I really like it. Nano Tanks are great things for the smaller species, especially if you're like me & have so many ideas & wishes but very little room left.

The picture proves there's always room for ONE more...

What fish do you have in there? Is the wood I can see at the back on the LEFT real or part of a picture background?

Cheers guys, it is an Aqua El that I 'bought for my wife'

The bread bin had to be hoiked off the kitchen counter to get it in

The background is plain black card & the plants and wood are real, I have one large and one small piece of Mopani wood in it.
One thing to do if getting one is replace the internal filter that comes with the tank - it's appauling... I replaced it with an eheim aquaball filter which is suitable for up to 120 litres & its the business.

Species:

Guppy
Betta
Galaxy Rasbora
Golden Tetra
Neon Tetra
Rummy Nose Tetra
Glowlight Tetra
Julie Cory
Pygmy Cory
3 Line Rasbora

Cheers,
Patrick

Just goes to prove it's not the size it's what you do with it. :wink:

Nice choice of fish too. 8)

smashing tank. well done. i have my goldfish tank on the counter in the kitchen as well. just goes to show you can find places for them.

Luvly nano tank. you planning on breeding the galaxy rasbora.

Cheers guys,
Nothing like sneaking in a little tank somewhere alright.

Not many places left for sneaking in tanks though, need a bigger house and soon!

Re: The galaxy rasbora, to be honest Im not really interested in breeding them & the eggs wouldnt stand a chance in the current tank..

If someone was interested in breeding them, I would happily trade them for a few rummy nose or such just to do my bit to help out the species.

I'm so glad to hear that I'm not the only forum member that buys an AquaEl 'for my wife'. :wink:

I'm so glad to hear that I'm not the only forum member that buys an AquaEl 'for my wife'. :wink:

I, er, got the two foot Aqua-El tank for our first tank.
I have to say is a bloody good little tank.
Not a fan of the trickle filter but it seems to work and I have it running with a Fluval 2+ internal.

Excellent use of space nice collection of tetras too, they can really be appreciated in a smaller tank.


Daragh

I got her the 2 foot one too. I actually like the filter. It is spacious, easily servicable & VERY low turnover which is ideal for plants. The evaporation rate can be quite high at times due to the vents directly above the filter so you need to keep it topped up in order to prevent the return overflow causing too much disturbance & driving off precious CO2). The only thing I can say I really don't like about the filter is that you need to have a big bank of plants all the way up to the surface in order to hide it. But it's not as bad looking as having a regular internal in there. Especially if that would be an Eheim. Those filters are lovely, easily the best internal on the market due to the large capacity but all that is completely ruined by that horrid green colour.

I made 2 changes to ours. I removed the long section on the filter uplift. We have a sand bottom which is very fine & very easily disturbed. With the uptake now higher up, the sand doesn't go near it. It also plays less havoc to the planting arrangements when the lid is opened & the intake swings forward. I also moved the heater to the main part of the tank hidden horizontally @ the back for the same reason & because it looked awfull (darn great silver thing dangling down). Besides which, if I left the heater in it's original place I wouldn't be able to open the lid as the bogwood is all in the way.

Richard

I think it looks cool. :wink:

Richard,
I tried to keep real plants in the 2 footer for a while but gave up because the light wasn't good enough.
How did you get around this?

I agree the trickle is very easy for maintenance but the evap from my tank is something else. Defo losing a litre a week.
I was going to just cut it out altogether but I might rethink if you can grow real plants in there somehow?

When I notice that there's evaporation I top it up to a level where the light clips start to break the surface.

As far as planting goes, I've a soil substrate (the Tetra pond stuff) & I just learned which plants will & won't grow in this particular tank.

I've had no luck with small Echinodorus (wouldn't try a large one anyway), Bacopa caroliniana or monnieri, Cardamine lyrata & Mayaca fluviatilis.

What is growing well in there is Hygrophilla polysperma (prolific), Ludwigea repens, Cryptocoryne wendtii, Heteranthera zosetfolia, Anubias barteri var nana & Java fern (ordinary & wendtii).

Unfortunately there's no luck trying to plant the back corners right next to the filter box. There's just not enough light getting there. I planted a load of Hygrophilla cuttings there to try & get something to grow up & hide the back glass (I removed the moulded background as tetras kept getting stuck behind it, even when I cut a section out of it), it all grew towards the front. I'm gonna have to stick a couple of artificial (eek) plants in there.

Just another point, remember to soak the soil well before putting the sand on top. Ideally for a couple of weeks. You can do this in the tank with a full water change at the end of the period (to remove any nitrates etc). If you can't do this in the tank & rehouse the fish temporarily then you'll have to resort to a bucket.

I've sand over the top of mine but the one I used is way too fine, I've bought several bags of fine gravel (best I've seen) from Glen in Fins 'n' Things & will be changing it over at some point.

I don't add fertiliser or CO2. I change 50% of the water every 6 months & add Tetra Easybalance weekly. Stocking levels are around 1 1/2" small fish / gal. I don't vacuum the substrate, I don't remove dying leaves unless it's major(a population of snails that the natural system keeps in check keep all the cleaning under control).

The tank has been running for nearly 2 years without any problems or water quality issues. Nitrate is never higher than 5ppm, Phosphate is zero & pH is 7 (I'd prefer 6.5 - 6.8 but my town water supply changed slightly).

Regards

Richard

Thats great info Richards, thanks a mill!

No problem. Anytime.