DeMonZ's tank

Well, I have been working on my first tank for nearly 2 months now. The first month was mainly research. It's a 55g planted with 128w of 6500k lighting. It did have sand for substrate until yesterday, when I reworked the entire thing using pea gravel.

The plants:

• Water Sprite
• (1) Java Fern
• (3) Crypt Wendtii Red
• (1) Anubia - Came out of "assorted" tank, so no idea which Anubia
• Narrow Leaf Sag
• (1) Marble Queen Radican
• (1) Kleiner Bar Sword

I had some java moss in it as well, but ditched it. After getting rid of it, I realized that I could have sold it/gave it away as it seems a bunch of folks are always looking for it. I thought it looked terrrible. Like a big ugly rats nest.

As for fish, I havent purchased any >yet<. But the plan is to have:

• 9 Cherry Barbs
• 3 Dwarf Rainbows
• 9 Tetras (Still undecide on which one. Maybe the Head and Taillight?)
• 2 German Blue or Bolivian Rams
• 5 Cory (undecided as of yet)

Of course, I may have to work into that list a few Otos to help with algae, but that's what I am looking to add at the present time.

Now for some pics.

Image 1:
This was my original layout. The driftwood was removed later on due to mold. Yeah, I know it would have went away eventually. But I didnt want to deal with it at this early stage of my new hobby.

Images 2 & 3:
In these you can see the (temporary) DIY Co2 diffuser. It worked great for three 2-liter bottles. But 3 wasnt enough for this size tank.

Image 4:
This is the way it looked before I reworked it yesterday. The cave in the mound was made from ceramic tile. I thought it was a neat idea and didnt look bad at all. I just didnt know how I was going to clean it out short of shoving a hose in the door and blowing out anything in there. It has an opening in the back as well. Also, pay no attention to the hideous diffuser. It will be gone in a month or so. I plan to reduce lighting and remove the Co2 once the plants are established. Also, you might have noticed the sag is really short. I had to trim it all down to remove algae covered blades. It will be out of the top of the tank again in no time.

Images 5 & 6:
Just took these this morning. I changed to a gravel substrate. I also removed all the hodgepodge rocks and replaced them with slate. The middle pile of slate has a cave and I added the pile on the left to try to balance things up a bit. The gravel is actually darker than it appears. My camera is cheap and has an auto whitening feature that cannot be turned off. As soon as we get some decent weather here, I intend to spraypaint some cardboard to use as a black background. That will definately make things look better. I, also, intend to add a piece of driftwood. Just not sure it will be the piece I had in it before.

Just took a new pic of my tank. I think it is progressing nicely. As you can tell, I have made a few changes here and there. The Water Sprite is history. New growth was always nice with this plant, but mine turned brown as it got a few days old. It got ugly so it got thrown out. The biggest change I made was switching over to pool filter sand. I like this stuff allot.

I moved other plants around a bit, added a smallish piece of driftwood and added a few more plants. Below is a pic of the tank. After which, is my "Plant Legend", if you will allow me to call it that. Just labels where and what all the plants are (horrible memory).

You might, if you look hard enough, spot some of the 9 Cherry Barbs that I picked up today. My first fishies! They lost most of their color on the ride home. I took 1.5 hours acclimating them to the tank before releasing them. I added a 1/2 cup of tank water into the bag (floated in tank) every 15 minutes. I guess it did the trick. They all seem happy anyway.

Here's the pics.