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New 47 gallon column planted build

23K views 84 replies 9 participants last post by  ImBrovvn 
#1 ·
Hello everyone been a member for about 4 yrs or so but kinda disappeared for a while. Organa tank was a filterless fully planted build. That build is in my sig. Lng story short had that for couple years tore it down got ride of it and was tank less for a while. Got a new house and got new tanks. I have a 40 breeder that my son has an about 3"-4" eastern painted turtle and a couple cichlids in. Can't really do to many fish in there so wife wantwanted a tank on other side of couch. Got a great deal on column tank stand glass canopy. Today went out to aquarium center for there black Friday sale and stocked up some. I work night and I feel this post is all over the place. I have to take a hour and half nap and get up for work. I'll list my setup layer tonight when I have my head together. Just wanted to get this started because I've been saying I was gonna do one for a while and never did it. If anything take a look at my old build and you'll get a good idea of what I'm gonna do for this tank.
 
#30 ·
And so as I finished writing that last post I decide to go have a look see out the front window and there is my package. I take it inside and open it to see a nicely packed box. In insulated Styrofoam box stuffed with newspaper and the heat pack. When you order from Bob's you order single or 10 pack. I ordered 20 so I had 2 double bagged baggies with 11 shrimp in both. And labeled 11 shrimp on each. There was a few strands of Java moss for them to cling onto for the ride. I balled that up and stuck it in the tank as that's my only moss for now. I'm hoping it will grow from the little nickel size wod I put in.

As for the shrimp they are a mix of nice big shrimp and a few small ones to. I belive I counted 3 berries females which I'm excited for. Hopefully they will spawn soon enough. Quility there not the brightest red shrimp but I knew that. This is his lowest grade cheapest shrimp he has. They were only $1.50 each and actually slightly less since you get small discount when buying a 10 pack. So some have red some are clear but they only been in tank for about 20 minutes. But I van tell you alot more are red now then when I first took them out the package. I floated bags for about 20 minutes then proceeded to drip acclimate them for about 40 minutes. Scooped them and dropped them in and they started right away cleaning up the ornaments and plants. For the price I'm happy with the 21 shrimp I recived. Not crazy bright red but alot better then trying to find ghost shrimp in a tank. And of they get eaten wasnt that much of a loss.

Bobslantedtank does have all types of other shrimp. I mean they have Sakura shri.p that are about $4 a shrimp. And diffrent colors from blues yellows reds crystal reds and blacks. Tiger shrimp Amano freshwater thai micro crabs snails crayfish and lots of the smaller fish like green neon tetras. I can only find the regular neon tetra at all the stores near me. So Im sure I will be ordering from him again. I mean I order mid day Monday recived shipment email Tuesday and got shrimp on Wednesday
 
#36 ·
Bobstropicalplants.com does have all types of other shrimp. I mean they have Sakura shri.p that are about $4 a shrimp. And diffrent colors from blues yellows reds crystal reds and blacks. Tiger shrimp Amano freshwater thai micro crabs snails crayfish and lots of the smaller fish like green neon tetras. I can only find the regular neon tetra at all the stores near me. So Im sure I will be ordering from him again. I mean I order mid day Monday recived shipment email Tuesday and got shrimp on Wednesday
I just received an order from a different site and I want to compare my site to bobs. How much was the shipping and for what kind of shipping?
 
#31 ·
About an hour or so after settling in the tank they all pretty much cherried up except one. One of them.is still mostly clear with a line of red down the back. Again I'm a 100% fine with this because I know I'm gonna have an angel in the tank (will be last fish added and smallest I can find) and know these shrimp will be at risk. So I didn't opt for the super red shrimp. There big and very active they have been bouncing all over my tank since they been in here. Even seen bunch of them hop onto the intake of the filter and hop right off. So I think since it's so packed with media I obviously slowed down the flow enough that the shrimp are fine on it. I have some pics that I'm gonna post up in a few minutes.
 
#32 ·
Again these pics are only about 2 hours or so after getting into the tank and already having great color.

One of my berried females I belive I have 2 maybe 3


Here goes the back corner by the intake strainer. Here you can see one of the shrimp hoping off of it after picking at some of the plant stuck to it. And a few others


Here goes a couple hanging out on flounder this seems to be most popular spot. I think it's because the flow from the spray bar kinda shoots everything into that side.


Here goes one that decide to climb the Anarchis in the tank and check out the view


And here goes one that decided to got to the very top


Another shot of a few on flounder. Maybe it's the yellow


Couple just getting some banana action


And couple by the Ludwiga
 
#34 ·
Yea I think you where the one that told me about them. So thanks for that. I read some bad reviews on him after I placed the order but was looking at the dates and most bad ones where from few years ago. All the newer reviews from this year where all good so i decided to try him out. And I'm very happy with his service and stock. I to now will be backing him up and giving his name out for shrimp and other products. I will be ordering from him again.
 
#38 ·
So woke up this morning and ran out to take soon to school lights where all blue. Took a glance and yeah shrimp jumping all around. But after running around and picking back up my son and get home, I noticed 3 dead shrimp on the substrate. :-(

But doctoring I still have 17 and hopefully one of the berried females will pop soon. Figure its just a numbers game. I will probably do a big water change since I haven't done one yet. Probably around 40%-50% .

But my question is should I take out the dead shrimp or just leave them in their for them to eat?
 
#41 ·
Nope no co2. Just the 3"-4" of eco complete. Marineland light has a built in timer and I'm using the factory setting on it. The schedule is as follows

9 am blue only
10 am blue and white
8 pm blue only
10 pm all off

Again the blue pukes have blue, red, green led in them abd the whits are 6500k.

Was wondering if I needed co2 but so far don't think so. I'm also not dosing any ferts yet.
 
#42 · (Edited)
So of course I jumped the gun and the shrimp all died. I ended up with a tank full of plants for the party. Every one squinting at the tank looking for fish. I said yea there's a couple glass fish in there let me know when u find them.

So I found an app that will let me do side by side pics

so here goes a pic of day one and day 14
 
#43 ·
So after the shrimp died and I just left most of them in to continue the cycle. We do a Christmas eve dinner at our house so I waited till Sunday the 20th to go pick up some fish. I went back to aquarium center to stock up.

I wanted some harlequin rasboras but all they had left was some glowlight rasboras,aka lamb chop rasboras. They only had 6 so I took them all. There more clear with smaller black marking and a more brighter orange outline around the black lamb chop marking then a clear rest of the body. I'm glad I got them instead. They actually school together instead of shoal together. They stay nice and tight together. I'm definition gonna get at least 5 to 6 more of them once they get them back in stock.

Then I also got a mix of neon tetras. I went with 4 diamond head neon tetras and 4 regular neon tetras. They are actually doing pretty good at schooling together too. The diamond head looks just like the neon except the blue is just on the head and then where neon have half blue strip it's more of a sparkly silver.

Now I figured by then I should have been fine with my cycle but just to be safe I bought a small bottle of api starter bacteria. It was enough to help jump start a 110 gallons of water. I was supposed to use little less then half but I figured I'm dropping in 14 fish so I umped whole bottle to be safe. Plus I also did double the dose of the api water clarifier plus stress coat. It's supposed to help with the slime coat for injured or newly added fish. With that said and done first.night all fish hid down and in back of tank behind all the plants. Next morning I was glad to see that I the fish were all ok. All but one diamond head. So I'm down to 3 diamond head and 4 neon tetras and all 6 rasboras. That afternoon I did a water change of about 25%-30% along with sucking out the dead tetra and what ever left over shrimp bodies where there. since I use tap water I again did a double dose of the water conditioner plus stress coat. And no 6 days later they are all good and swimming around plus eating fine.

I also added an extra hour of full light on just to see about plant growth plus to see if I can get some alge going for when o get my ottos. I am getting some on the 2 sides and front of the glass already and my cabomba and anarchis have really grown tall. I had to clip some of the Anarchis and toss it in my turtle tank. He eats it as a sorce of greens to go with his turtle pellets, blood worms, and brine shrimp. Both tanks are being feed same except for the turtle pellet in the 47g.

Busy week so I will try and load up some pics later today or tomorrow.
 
#44 ·
Here goes some pics of the fish

Good one of both the tetras and rasbora


Closer shot of rasboras


And some of the tetras was trying to get shots of both types of tetras so u can see the diffrence


The 4 neon


A good shot of one of the diamond head neon tetra
 
#45 ·
And here goes some tank shots

Front right side where the broad leaf Ludwiga is


Front left of tank. Can see the crypts and the red arrow head Lilly bulb that sprouted to about 20 heads and the cork screw sword actually sprouted another small bunch


Right side of tank. This is what you see if you're sitting on the couch


Left side of the tank



And the full frontal lol
 
#47 ·
Again I changed the light schedule to get a little algae before I get some ottos. I changed it to add just 1 extra hour of full lighting. So now schedule is as follows

8am blue light only
9am blue and white lights on
8pm blue only
10 pm lights all off

I'll have to see when I get the ottos if I'm gonna change it back to original time of

9am blue only
10 am blue and white light on
8pm blue only
10 pm all off

That one extra hour of full light really jumped the algae growth. I have some brownish green on glade and a neon green on some of the cabomba . So if they can clean up the tank in a few days I'll keep the new schedule on. But I think algae kicked up to because now that I'm feeding the tank more is settling on bottom more. If the food sinks to fast the rasboras won't go down to get them. The tetras will go lower but not all the way down. So gonna need to get them panda cories soon to help with that problem. But I will be doing a bit of trimming and vacuum the floor with the water change layer today after I put my daughter down for her nap.
 
#48 ·
Went to aquarium center today since I know they get there shipments in on Tuesday. Hoping to get some ottos to clean up the algae I was purposely growing for them that I'm tired of looking at. But alas none where in this shipment. But they told me they did get the panda cories I've been asking about last week. They where so small and cute. They must have had like 40 of them in the tank and I wanted to take 20 of them home. But with my small column foot print I know I couldn't get that many. I ended up just getting a small school of 6 so when they grow they won't be all on top of each other.
 
#49 ·
Got a few pics of acclamation but had to go out with the family. so they got dropped in and off we went . By the time I got home the blue lights where on already. They disappeared into the plants but I was still about to find about 4 of them. Will try and get pics of them tomorrow, but for now here are some from earlier today

Nosey fish.....hey what's in the bag?


Closer shot of them


And shaky shot of them drip acclimation
 
#50 ·
Hooray woke up to all 6 panda cories zooming all over the tank. Never thought about it before but noticed them chomping down on some of the hair algae on the driftwood and plants. But guess that makes sense since your supposed to feed them algae wagers and such. I love the way they swim and they are fast little buggers.







 
#52 · (Edited)
Thanks bigB I've always had luck with the arrow heads. I had one in my 75 also. I really love these panda cories. They are active all over the tank eating algae they are looking kinda chunky already. I got them for $5.99 each. I did same when I added these. I bought a small bottle of seachem stability did double the dose and then added the api stress coat. Plus these are so small I don't think they put to much stress on my bio load yet. I've seen them just sitting on a Ludwiga leaf eating. That's how small they are
 
#54 ·
I know right. I love the way they look like little Chinese kung fu masters with the white barbells like in the old school Kung fu movies
 
#56 ·
No doubt I have algae waffer blood worms brine shrimp new life spectrum pellets and flakes. So they got food for them specificity plus the others
 
#57 ·
Ok so aquarium center is still waiting on some ottos and my tank is filling with algae. So I cut back the photo period some just to knock this back some since I called today and they didn't get any in this shipment. I have mostly brown and green algae on the glass but getting brown and black hair algae on the plants and drift wood. I also had taken off the glass top since last water change because the middle piece blocked to much light. I would have to keep sliding light back and forth from front to back to hit all my plants. But I think with out the top it's getting a lot more light in and bumped up the algae quickly. I'm not to sure how bad the blue lights effect algae so I extended those lights and cut back the full spectrum lights.

The photo period is as follows now
930 am blues only
12 pm blues and whites
7 pm blues only
10 pm all off

I did some timing of the Anarchis today and replanted a couple cuts and dumped the rest in turtle tank. He loves to munch them down. And I don't really give him much greens lately so clippings are his.

I have to pick up some more prime to do my next water change. So I can suck up some more algae
 
#58 ·
So got antsy and went back to aquarium center and bought 6 amano shrimp and 6 horned nerite snails. Hopefully with shorter light period and those in there they can get the algae under control or atleast clear up some till I can get the ottos. The snails are tiny little babies so they are eating stuff on the glass but very small sections.

My anarchis grows really fast. I have to trim it twice a week. I'm thinking I might start some fertz just not sure what to use. I was thinkin some of the seachem flurish but don't really know the diffrence between the flurish and flurish excel and all the other flurish stuff. I am getting lots of hair algae on the plants themselves plus like a neon green algae on some of the cabomba leafs and side of glass.
 
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