Suggestions for a 10 gallon tank

S

Signus

Aquarist, not Aquarius
Oct 17, 2004
275
0
16
Gainesville, Florida
Right now, I have a well-established 10-gallon tank with plain 5 mm gravel. I run a 28 w pc, which for a 10 gallon is low light according to many of the people on this website. I grow dwarf sag grass, temple plants, java fern, and java moss. I have 3 otto cats and two female cherry barbs (darn fish keep jumping out my uncovered top).

My main question is besides the regular flourish excel/CO2 injection and sparse feeding, what else should I do? Should I ever consider changing the gravel to Eco since I like the aesthetic value and then I don't need to dose for micro and macronutrients. Correct? Welp, thanks for any tips you can give me!

Btw, there is plenty of algae in the tank to feed the otto cats and I help them out when there isn't much with zucchini.
 
Signus, it'd be great to see a photo of your tank. I enjoy my 10 gal which causes me great headaches and great pleasure. 10 gals are so touchy.

Although I've never used Eco-complete, I'm certain you would still need a liquid fert for non-root plants. I welcome anyone to correct me on this. But my guess would be that your java moss, for example, won't benefit greatly from nutrients tied up in the substrate. I'm sure there is some leaching but a liquid fert is probably still recommended in small doses.

Also keep in mind that if you replace the substrate you're giong to put the tank through a mini-cycle. And you're not going to have an easy time of it with live plants and fish.

FWIW, here's a shot of my 10 gal as of 60 minutes ago (5:45 pm 5/13/05).
10galpano.jpg


My setup is similiar to yours excpet that the substrate is 50/50 Flourite and plain black gravel. There's a handful of larger gravel in there from a previous setup as well. Lighting is a 28W compact flourescent, which I would say is more medium light than low light. I dose and feed lightly with large water changes bi-weekly. Inhabitants include 3 glowlight tetras, 1 panda cory, 1 oto cat. The funky looking thing on the right is a DIY power reactor. All plants are growing well and algae is virtually undetectible. The only plant doing poorly is the microsorium which you can see in the center attached to the top of the drift wood. When I first installed this plant it immediately began to die on me. The edges and lace tips died quickly. But since then I've figured this tank out and the plant is now recovering... slowly. Time will tell if it ever attaches its self to the drift wood. For the moment even the java moss is outpacing it in terms of growth.
 
Signus

Why do anything? It sounds like everything is fine. I would think if it has been running for sometime the gravel is probably already pretty stocked with nutrients.
 
Basically, my tank looks like a temple and algae covered jungle. I just removed a lot of java moss today.

Since I have school to always take care of, I guess the problem would be keeping up with dosing CO2. How often do you replace the CO2 yeast mixture to keep it going at a desired rate?

I figured that a substrate change might help with keeping my hands away from fertilizers which in the past have lead to disasterous results, even when given in 1 mL amounts.

Edit: algae is fuzz and thread
 
I use a syringe to dose ferts and nutrients in my 10 gal. I find it hard to gestimate the right amount in the caps, altho they work fine for my 55 gal.
 
Took up usling 1 mL increments on a styringe about 3 months ago. Major problems with staghorn erupted even then due to too much iron. I made a gelatin/sugar yeast reactor that has been getting the plants to pearl like crazy. Hopefully this will work out.
 
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