New 55 Gallon Tank Thread

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I'm not seeing a thermometer on your equipment list; you should have one. I agree with the Python idea, but even so, IMHO you can never have too many buckets. :) And, yes, latex paint is pretty easy to use...but a black trash bag taped to the tank is way, way faster to apply, way faster to remove if desired, re-usable and is the way to go.

I have become somewhat enamoured with goldfish in recent years; aside from a couple of small ones I owned for a short time back around 1970, I haven't kept them in all those intervening years but they are now the main inhabitants of my biggest tank, a 360-gallon plywood job. There are lots of potential tankmates for them that will do fine at any temperatures you are likely to see in an unheated indoor tank. Mine live with Corydoras paleatus and Scleromystax barbatus cats, Garra flavatra and G.rufa (doctorfish), Gymnogeophagus rhabdotus cichlids, and Buenos Aires tetras. Other potential temperate-water inhabitants would be Weather Loaches, Odessa Barbs, Swordtails, White Cloud Mountain Minnows and many, many more.

Not all of these will live together perfectly. Big Goldfish will eat small fish like White Clouds; Buenos Aires tetras can be fin-nippy if not kept in sufficient numbers, and especially so with big goofy slow-moving long-finned varieties of Goldfish; in other words, you still need to exercise common sense in combining them.

Remember that Goldfish get big and they do it pretty quickly. Don't stuff your tank full of small fish because you think it looks too empty and you want the full effect right now, this instant. Within a year or two, even a couple of Goldfish can make a 55 look quite small. Think ahead. The Goldfish tanks which you have shown in those pics all have a couple of things in common: they all look very colourful and attractive now...and they will all be painfully overcrowded, with attendant water quality and maintenance problems, a year or two down the road when those cute little Goldfish become BIG FAT GOLDFISH.
 
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These goldfish grew from 1¨to above, in a year.
So a 55 gal will not comfortably hold as many as most people think.

I paint a styrofoam panel black , and tape it to the back of a tank instead of painting the tank itself, it allows the tank to be turned around if the front glass gets scratched, and also provides a tad of extra insulation in winter in case of a power outage (more important with tropicals) or cool water fish on excessively hots ones.
 
I'm not seeing a thermometer on your equipment list; you should have one. I agree with the Python idea, but even so, IMHO you can never have too many buckets. :) And, yes, latex paint is pretty easy to use...but a black trash bag taped to the tank is way, way faster to apply, way faster to remove if desired, re-usable and is the way to go.

I have become somewhat enamoured with goldfish in recent years; aside from a couple of small ones I owned for a short time back around 1970, I haven't kept them in all those intervening years but they are now the main inhabitants of my biggest tank, a 360-gallon plywood job. There are lots of potential tankmates for them that will do fine at any temperatures you are likely to see in an unheated indoor tank. Mine live with Corydoras paleatus and Scleromystax barbatus cats, Garra flavatra and G.rufa (doctorfish), Gymnogeophagus rhabdotus cichlids, and Buenos Aires tetras. Other potential temperate-water inhabitants would be Weather Loaches, Odessa Barbs, Swordtails, White Cloud Mountain Minnows and many, many more.

Not all of these will live together perfectly. Big Goldfish will eat small fish like White Clouds; Buenos Aires tetras can be fin-nippy if not kept in sufficient numbers, and especially so with big goofy slow-moving long-finned varieties of Goldfish; in other words, you still need to exercise common sense in combining them.

Remember that Goldfish get big and they do it pretty quickly. Don't stuff your tank full of small fish because you think it looks too empty and you want the full effect right now, this instant. Within a year or two, even a couple of Goldfish can make a 55 look quite small. Think ahead. The Goldfish tanks which you have shown in those pics all have a couple of things in common: they all look very colourful and attractive now...and they will all be painfully overcrowded, with attendant water quality and maintenance problems, a year or two down the road when those cute little Goldfish become BIG FAT GOLDFISH.
Thank you for the detailed response! Overstocking is definitely my main concern as I am trying to avoid that. How many fancy goldfish do you recommend for a 55 gallon?
 
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This is what I mean by taping styro to the tank.
It was especially needed for fish that required stability during power outages
Paint the insides facing tank black, and tank sides and bottom .
I would also have one at the ready for the front glass plate to tape on during power outages.
Inside looked like this.
1776976919901.png
 
View attachment 1575323
This is what I mean by taping styro to the tank.
It was especially needed for fish that required stability during power outages
Paint the insides facing tank black, and tank sides and bottom .
I would also have one at the ready for the front glass plate to tape on during power outages.
Inside looked like this.
View attachment 1575324
Where did you get styrofoam like that? Lowe’s?
 
View attachment 1575323
This is what I mean by taping styro to the tank.
It was especially needed for fish that required stability during power outages
Paint the insides facing tank black, and tank sides and bottom .
I would also have one at the ready for the front glass plate to tape on during power outages.
Inside looked like this.
View attachment 1575324

This probably saves a lot of electricity too. I always wondered how much money it is costing to heat my 300 gallon so I am going to look into setting this up.

As for the goldfish question I think 3 is fair in a 55 gallon. No reason not to get a 75 gallon though since it is the same length as a 55. A 75 just has 1 more inch of height and 5 more inches of width which should not matter(as far as making space in your home) unless the tank is in a narrow space. In a 75 you could safely have 4.

Personally I like how 4 looks more than 3 as well.
 
I like using Plastidip for the background , spray it on and if you want to switch to a different color or remove it, you can easily peel it right off.

Have kept ranchu with rainbow shiners and weather loaches and it worked out great. Those loaches are hilarious and fun to keep
 
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This probably saves a lot of electricity too. I always wondered how much money it is costing to heat my 300 gallon so I am going to look into setting this up.

As for the goldfish question I think 3 is fair in a 55 gallon. No reason not to get a 75 gallon though since it is the same length as a 55. A 75 just has 1 more inch of height and 5 more inches of width which should not matter(as far as making space in your home) unless the tank is in a narrow space. In a 75 you could safely have 4.

Personally I like how 4 looks more than 3 as well.
I would 100% get a 75 instead of a 55 but unfortunately, I don't have the space for one, the 55 I'm looking at barely fits where its going to go as it is lol. One of these days though, once I get my own place I want to have whatever tanks I want lol.

I was thinking 3 so that confirmed my original thought, I'm assuming this is without tankmates?
 
Just a little update for today:

I'm definitely still entertaining a goldfish tank as I've seen some beautiful examples recently. But I'm debating if I'm ready to limit myself with a cold water tank or return to tropical water as before. I miss my old striped raphs so I'm very much also entertaining a tropical tank and returning to something similar to what I had before. I could try to find exactly what I had before but sadly, some of the fish I used to have (namely the dwarf acara pair I had) would be really hard to find again. So, if returned to something similar, what would y'all recommend for a stocking fix? This is the original:

1. Pair of Discus (centerpieces)
2. Pair of Striped raphaels
3. Pair of Dwarf Acaras
4. 1 Geophagus Tapajos
5. 1 Moonlight Gourami
6. 1 Dwarf Gourami

I think that was all of them...lol. I'll add to the list if I forgot some. But if I did a similar setup to what I had before, I would like to either add more Discus (something like 4 instead of 2) or add a fish or two that is more colorful and active.

So here are the fish I'm looking to replace:
1. The Pair of Dwarf Acaras
2. The Geophagus Tapajos
3. The two gouramis

Also, another thing is if I go with a similar to my original tank setup, I would like to make it all South American fish versus random fish. As for my tank setup options, I've been really inspired by MDFishTanks on Youtube. I'd just replace his usual live plants with realistic fake plants.

But anyways, that's the update for today.
 
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