Mr_A's Planted 75G

[Mr_Altepeter]

hey nice tank. I am setting up a 75 gallon tank and was wondering how many watts your light puts out? I want to add lots of plants, You are not running Co2 correct?

VampAro, To answer your questions, I am running a GLO T5HO 48inch light set with one Actnic Bulb and one 18K Bulb, both are 54W bulbs.

I am also using Flourite under my rocks, I would suggest making pockets of the Flourite, so you aren't spreading it all over the tank and basically wasting it like I did with this tank. Maybe a few inches wider than the plants root system would be at full growth.

As for the CO2 system, I kind of am, but not really. I picked up one of the Semi-DIY sets to mix sugar yeast and baking soda(?). It is suppose to give off CO2 for about a month or so. I think it did it for around 2 weeks. I recharge about once every other month now, if I remember. TBH it really didn't do much for the tank. If you check my tank set up you can see I have around 30ish inhabitants and a handfull of large Japonica & Japanese shrimp. They help keep the plants somewhat Alage free. They made the biggest difference in plant health. I strongly suggest getting the biggest damn ones you can find though. The small ones apparently were really tasty!! And the Cherry shrimp tasted even better.

Hope this helps a little bit. If you have any more ???? Please feel free to ask them. I will help as much as I can.

 

[Mr_Altepeter]

Loach wars, huh? The CL's will win that fight fo sho! Just kiddin, but actually I have seen it happen when Angelicus are housed with other slender botia like Yo-Yo's or Zebra's that look similar to them, but they never hurt each other. Personally, I love it when they do the Loachy dance! You would not believe how fast they can spin in a circle, chasing each other. Its incredible! I've never seen clowns display that behavior, but my Angelicus do it pretty regularly when I move them around.

Yeah you would think so huh! Believe it or not my Angelicus has actually "hip checked" my Big girl off of a piece of Cucumber so he could have it to himself. I found that pretty amusing, wished I had the video going on the cam for that one. She just kinda swam away and came back when he was done. The LFS Fish manager and I were talking when I picked up the new batch yesterday, and he told me that a couple more Angelicus should be fine, pretty much what you said above. I will probably wait to start finding more until I get the 220 up and running. I can't wait to get everybody switched over to it. Even with only 12 younguns in the QT they are exhibiting all kinds of neat stuff in the last day now. Fun Times Ahead.

 

[JakeH]

Sounds like you're building quite a Loach tank! Like I said, loach wars are really fun to watch & nobody ever gets injured. Maybe embarassed, but never injured...

 

[Mr_Altepeter]

Sounds like you're building quite a Loach tank! Like I said, loach wars are really fun to watch & nobody ever gets injured. Maybe embarassed, but never injured...

Yep, I am really looking forward to having a decent size shoal of em. I have noticed since I started the cucmber feedings the angelicus is a little more aggressive. He likes to make sure he gets his fill before letting anybody else near the one he is eating off of. The "hip check" he does still has to be my favorit though.

 

[VampAro69]

Hey thank you for the reply, everything helps. I just like to get opions from everybody ya kow.

If I have more questions I will ask, I will post some photos when she is up and running.

As far as the shrimp I would love to get a bunch as they look cool and eat algea, perfect, but I am going with a predator tank and they would be on the menu. But maybe I will try and get a handfull before I introduce the meat eaters and hope they blend and hide good. ( I am ging to do cuda's and payara and they may even be more into fish than shrimp so we will see.)

But my LFS had a bunch of SEA kind of small but for only 5.99 thats a deal so UI will get a few of them, if they get along togater I will do my HW>

 

[Mr_Altepeter]

Yeah I know exactly what you mean. The first batch of shrimp I picked up were mainly Cherry shrimp with a few Japonicas. Out of about a dozen shrimp only 2 or 3 of the bigger Japonica's survived. The Tiger Barbs REALLY enjoyed the cherrys though. So Now when I pick up more shrimp, I get teh biggest ugliest ones I can find. I also keep a pretty healthy chunk of Java Moss in the tank for the shrimp to hide in throughout the day. It's growing on and around a coule of nice pieces of Malaysian DW with all kinds of hidey holes in it. Don't get to see them in the daylight very often, but at night they come out and help clean the plants of any algae.

 

[Mr_Altepeter]

So here are a couple of more pics of the tank. Now have a total of 23 Cl's in the tank. 17 are about an inch or so. Looking at the first couple of pics in this thread and even some of the older pics of the tank, the plants have really taken off!! Which is good stuff. Anyways, the 220 is up and running/cycling for a bit.

Pic one is one of my shrimp and the rest are pretty self exlpanatory....heh heh....

 

[redtailshark1]

Looks okay. More plants and a black background would look nice.
How much light do you have? Looks like a T5 fixture, 1 bulb or two?

agree

 

[FSM]

It's looking good. I like the cucumber/zucchini staircase.

 

[Big Dog]

Aquarium is looking good.