20 Gallon Shrimp Only Tank

[emmanuelchavez]

20 gallon. Open tank, two powerhead/sponge filters. 2 clip-on lamps, 4 wpg.
Substrate: Some of the gravel/laterite mix I had in my 10 gallon at the bottom, and playsand on top.



This is what I'm thinking as far as scaping.... I took the drifwood out after filling because it's a floater, and it's still releasing tannins. I've got it soaking somewhere else

That's hc that I plan on using as a carpet... that may change though, it doesn't appear to be doing very well. I'm hoping it's just readjusting to submersed from emersed. I wanted to grow it emersed, but I didn't have anything to cover the tank with to keep it humid inside, but still allow the light through...

Currently, I've got 2 DIY bottles of CO2. One is being fed into one powerhead for diffusion, and the other into a limewood diffuser, placed underneath the powerhead for futher diffusion...

I'm dosing Flourish Excel every day, and Flourish Iron 2x's a week, with Flourish Comprehensive once a week. I've got some Flourish tabs coming from Aquariumguys, I've got to put those into the sand pronto! I keeping my fingers crossed, and hopefully they help the hc recover.

If the HC keeps going downhill, I'm going to pull out whatever is left alive, and put into the 10 gallon. I'll probably replace it with Dwarf Hairgrass since I have plenty readily available in my 15 gallon, and I can get the pots cheap.

I have a TON of javamoss waiting to go onto that driftwood. So it'll have javamoss in some places, and it'll probably have some anubias on some of the branches too.

I've got to get a background also. I'm thinking black.

I'm going to make a canopy, like for the 10 gallon, to lift those lamps up a bit... and b/c i don't want any shrimp jumping out from that one piece of the driftwood that's sticking out of the water...


Comments? Suggestions? Thoughts on how to make the hc work? Do I need to up the lighting to 5 wpg, or 6??

[emmanuelchavez]

OK, so this scape isn't working.... the wood just won't sink. I'm going to leave it soaking in that other container, and save it for another tank in the future. I'm just going to get another piece of wood on slate instead. The hc seems to be recovering... but it'll probably start to hate me again, haha.

I'm going to take out a bit of the sand, and add a thin layer of eco and grow the hc emmersed. I'm going to the hardware store tomorrow to buy some plexi-glass to keep the moisture in.


My favorite LFS ran out of tiger shrimp, so I'm definitely in no rush to get this set up now. I know I should've gotten the shrimp and held them in the 10 gallon until this one was done, lol.







btw, does anyone know if there's a way to change the title of the thread like on TPT? It's a 20 gallon now!

[Lotus]

I think only moderators can change thread titles, so I changed it for you

Looking good

[Cichlid-Man]

That is a ballin tank. I hope you get the wood to sink fast, i love that scape. Looks great.

[emmanuelchavez]

Originally Posted by Lotus

I think only moderators can change thread titles, so I changed it for you

Looking good

Originally Posted by Cichlid-Man

That is a ballin tank. I hope you get the wood to sink fast, i love that scape. Looks great.

Gracias!


I wish I had something big enough to boil that piece of wood in! Hmm... maybe I should throw it into the neighbor's pool... it's hot enough outside.

[Helena21]

It sucks that the wood wont sink, because it looks fantastic in the tank! i really like it
Im sure the tank will look great when its finished

[FishGeek]

I will sink before too long. If you want to get started on the rest of the tank you can use a rock to hold the wood down. (just a thought)

[emmanuelchavez]

Originally Posted by FishGeek

I will sink before too long. If you want to get started on the rest of the tank you can use a rock to hold the wood down. (just a thought)

I'm probably going to use rocks. I'm going to leave it soaking where it's at, and grow my HC emersed, then once the HC has filled in, i'll just put the wood in there, and hold it down with rocks until it stays. I'll do an emersed hc growth journal within this one. I hope I don't kill it, haha.

[emmanuelchavez]

Only a couple new thing to report. I finally got a background, $3 - not too bad...
I finally bought a light fixture for this puppy as well. 130 watt Coralife. It has one 10k bulb and one actinic. I just have the one 65 watt 10k bulb running. I'm going to replace the actinic and have the extra 65 watts run for about an hour or two each day.

I won't be using that piece of driftwood on this tank either. For some reason, when lying down horizontally, the right side of the dw wouldn't sink... but I placed it vertically in my 15 gallon, and voila, it sunk... and made a great tree-like decoration. So now it's in my 15 gallon.

So now I've been debating how to scape this one. I was thinking of having a wall of hornwort, to keep algae at bay... and then covering the hornwort, a wall of some type of val. I'll be keeping the HC foreground.... But I was trying to decide whether to get some other type of driftwood pieces and cover them entirely in moss, or maybe go with rocks....

[Pure]

I finally bought a light fixture for this puppy as well. 130 watt Coralife. It has one 10k bulb and one actinic. I just have the one 65 watt 10k bulb running. I'm going to replace the actinic and have the extra 65 watts run for about an hour or two each day.

Why didn't you just buy the coral life fixture meant for plants with 6700K bulbs? And why are you going to leave the 10000K bulb in this? Isn't that a bit of a waste as your plants won't really use the light in that Kelvin range.

Tank looks nice. Makes me want to get a move on with setting up a CRS tank. crystals mmmmmmmm