My 50 gallon tropical community tank

[MrWaxhead]

Ya the neons are nice looking with plants, there are only 10 of them the rest are cardinals but they are very happy together and sometimes shoal as a big group.

[Tayful]

Your tank is beautiful, and all of those tetras make it look absolutely stunning! You inspire me with all of those live plants and for some reason I'm very interested in your substrate. Keep up the great work!

[Jim]

Originally Posted by MrWaxhead

Ya I like having the moonlight as it makes a nice transition to total tank darkness so there is not a major snap from light to complete darkness. I run a few different timers, one for main lighting , one for my moon one and one for my red LEDS that comes on before my lighting kicks in (my sad attempt as sunrise in my tank, looks more like **** then sunrise though hehe, I should probably try amber LEDs instead) and another for my c02 as I like to run my c02 a bit longer then my lights it comes on 2 hours before lights on and stays on during lights and runs for one more hour after lights outs, balances my ph better that way. I also have my filters hooked up to a ups unit, so if my power ever goes out my filters will keep running for a while to keep my bacteria alive. I have a gen in my garage that I plug the whole tank into if the power ever stayed out longer then the ups can run the filters. I have only had to do that once so far (knocks on wood).

MrWaxHead... well, turns out I'm NOT the only one here that's running multiple lights on overlapping timers, and with a dawn/dusk light. But I've only been running mine for a couple weeks, I'm curious how yours have been working out over a period of months.
I have my llighting schedule listed on this post somewhere:
The Great Rebuild... with Pictures

[TheEssigs]

Jim - I know I am OFF TOPIC here... sorry... but I noticed that you have 2 75g filters running on your 46g... I have the same tank and I am running just one... I was curious as to why the 2?

[MrWaxhead]

Originally Posted by Jim

MrWaxHead... well, turns out I'm NOT the only one here that's running multiple lights on overlapping timers, and with a dawn/dusk light. But I've only been running mine for a couple weeks, I'm curious how yours have been working out over a period of months.
I have my llighting schedule listed on this post somewhere:
The Great Rebuild... with Pictures

Hey Jim I have had my tanks on timers now for about 2 years and it have never had a problem with it at all. Just makes things much smoother, and gives me more time to enjoy and take care of my fish with one less thing to worry about being that my life is usually pretty busy for the most part.

Oh and theessigs I too run my tanks on dual filters, each one that could run the tank on their own. The reason I started doing it was because a few years back one of my filters died on a tank, and when I replaced the filter and used some mature floss it still mini cycled. Now I could change a whole filter out and still have a mature one running with no worries. I also can swap up my filter cleaning and always have a nice dirty bacteria filled one on the go.

[MrWaxhead]

Wow just realized how long I have been away, been real busy working 7 days a week 10 to 12 hour days. Just noticed the date, I will have to take some pics tomorrow when its lit if I get home from work in time, as its been a month since the last update on this tank.

[COBettaCouple]

welcome back! sounds like quite a grueling work schedule.

Originally Posted by MrWaxhead

Wow just realized how long I have been away, been real busy working 7 days a week 10 to 12 hour days. Just noticed the date, I will have to take some pics tomorrow when its lit if I get home from work in time, as its been a month since the last update on this tank.

[Jim]

Originally Posted by MrWaxhead

Hey Jim I have had my tanks on timers now for about 2 years and it have never had a problem with it at all. Just makes things much smoother, and gives me more time to enjoy and take care of my fish with one less thing to worry about being that my life is usually pretty busy for the most part.

Oh and theessigs I too run my tanks on dual filters, each one that could run the tank on their own. The reason I started doing it was because a few years back one of my filters died on a tank, and when I replaced the filter and used some mature floss it still mini cycled. Now I could change a whole filter out and still have a mature one running with no worries. I also can swap up my filter cleaning and always have a nice dirty bacteria filled one on the go.

OK, you have 2 filters also? Are they back filters? The reason I ask is I'm concerned that I have too much surface movement in my tank, which I'm sure you know can help CO2 escape from the water and i don't want that. At the same time, I don't want to run out and by a canister if I don't need to. I plan on hitting the LFS later for a planted aquarium test kit. I saw one the other day, but didn't have the $$$. I'm going to try and calculate the CO2 before I decide what to do.

FYI, I know how you feel at work, we're in the middle of our busy festival season, and it's been 6-7 day workweeks 10-11 hour days... the paychecks are nice, but not if you're too tired to go spend them! lol

[MrWaxhead]

Yes Jim, both mine are HOBs, I would like to eventually switch to wet dry sump and cannister but atm my tanks are all HOB. On my 50g its a whisper 30-60 with two sides with two different chambers for media. That one seems to set deep enough in the water as to not cause a mass surface agitation.

The other is a aquaclear 70 which very much churned the surface. What I did on that one was drilled a small hole on either end of the outlet and stuck a small branch across the mouth of the outlet with java moss tied onto the branch. Now the water comes down mouth slide and hits this moss stick and slowly and very broken up filters through the moss and into the tank with next to no agitation. Its amazing to, just how much extra stuff I see trapped in the moss that gets past the filtration, I take that stick out and give it a rinse and a trim on the weeks this filter gets its cleaning. As I rotate the weeks my filters get cleaned.

[MrWaxhead]

Update time, its a cruddy pic as I just chopped off tons of riccia a week before to give to a friend. But everything is still going well, I really have to cut back alot of the lily again though, as its pretty much covered 3 feet of the surface of the water at this point.

Aug 11


Sept 11


Oct 11


Nov 14


I am going to pretty much cut all the lily on the surface right off this weekend as there is tons of new sprouts starting up again. I pretty much let it overgrow, until the next batch starts to come in strong. The biggest change has been the crypts, they have pretty much doubled in size in the last month. And its a little messy and loose as I have not had much time to fart around and trim things as of late other then the horde of riccia.

[Jim]

Originally Posted by MrWaxhead

Yes Jim, both mine are HOBs, I would like to eventually switch to wet dry sump and cannister but atm my tanks are all HOB. On my 50g its a whisper 30-60 with two sides with two different chambers for media. That one seems to set deep enough in the water as to not cause a mass surface agitation.

The other is a aquaclear 70 which very much churned the surface. What I did on that one was drilled a small hole on either end of the outlet and stuck a small branch across the mouth of the outlet with java moss tied onto the branch. Now the water comes down mouth slide and hits this moss stick and slowly and very broken up filters through the moss and into the tank with next to no agitation. Its amazing to, just how much extra stuff I see trapped in the moss that gets past the filtration, I take that stick out and give it a rinse and a trim on the weeks this filter gets its cleaning. As I rotate the weeks my filters get cleaned.

BRILLIANT!!! I have my favorite LFS trying to ge me some Java moss right now. If I can get enough to spare some, I would love to borrow that idea, if you don't mind.

[COBettaCouple]

that tank's really looking great!

[Neil]

Looks fantastic !!! whats the growth to the left thats next to what looks like Anubias?

[melawii]

looking at your substrate... what does it consist of actually? I see sand, then flourobase, then almost a small gravel and pebbles. How do you keep them all from mixing? I'm thinking of doing a multi substrate in my 50g once I set it up, but I don't wait it all to end up mixing. I love your tank btw!

[MrWaxhead]

Hey Neil I assume your talking about the crypts that are starting to grow out from behind and poking through the anubis.

And Melawii you are pretty much bang on with what you pointed out, the left of the tank is sand with hollow rocks on it with riccia and moss growing on them, leaving a large cave system under the plants (my corries spend alot of the day in those caves). The entire center is florabase base (for any of my plants that root), and the right is all plain gravel and larger pebbles with a massive bunch of roots coming out of it with lace and regular java fern tied onto the roots about 2 inches off the floor so there is a shaded root system for the fish under the plants.

I keep my substrate divided with hardscape, if you look in the very first pic from aug 11 you can see large pieces of wood that go right to the bottom of the tank to keep substrate from spilling over and to stop the grass from growing outside the area I wanted it to grow in.

[offminded]

wow...looks awesome!

[MrWaxhead]

Well I have not updated this tank in a few months due to being really busy and working way to much (6 to 7 days a week) , mainly due to another baby due in April

So needless to say I have not had much time to post or do much work on my tanks. That being said, I have really cropped back on this tank due to the massive amount of work the riccia took to keep tied down and clean looking. And I have pulled alot of the stem plants and lily shoots as I wanted the tank to be a little more maintenance friendly. I pulled the riccia pretty much right out and left the moss behind over the rock cave system, and I now only give it a light trim every so often.

I put most of the riccia in a 29g nursery tank to keep it growing as I want to reuse it in my 75g tank once I have more time to tend to it. And the 75 should give me alittle more room to work with then this 50. As it takes over pretty fast.

So basically its looking alot different the it was last time I posted but the fish are still happy so I guess all it good hehe.
(Feb11/08)


At its peak of riccia madness (oct11/07).


The start of the fert test I was doing, which btw I still am not using any macros on this tank, fish poo only, I am only using micros and iron. (aug11/07)

[Rbacchiega]

brilliant....beautiful tank MrWaxhead