Transfer to 65 gal from 54 gal Corner

[Kirahn]

A few days ago I was able to find a used 65 Gallon tank and oak stand for $150 and decided it was time to upgrade. My 54 gallon has served me well, but the shape and location in my house have always been an issue for maintenance and aquascaping. I've also found it hard to get even lighting for plant growth, with one bar of lighting some parts of the tank don't get good lighting. So I've struggled with some plants I would really like to get going (swords and val). I'll be transferring my entire stock over to the 65 gal and selling my 54. The 65 gallon tank and stand were stock oak stained when we got them, so we got some cabinet paint and painted both the stand and the trim on the tank black. Looks very nice and being solid oak and oak plywood it is far sturdier than the pine/particle board stands that are far more common these days.

I'm going to use this thread to chronicle the tank so I can document plant growth and see how I'm doing.

So here is the new build.

65 Gallon tank
300 Watt Fluval Heater
SunSun 404b Canister filter
36" Fluval plant 3.0

Stock
1 x Moonlight Gourami
1 x Bristlenose Pleco
2 x Siamese Algae Eater
15 x Salt and Pepper Corydoras
10 x Adult Guppies (and at least as many babies)
14 x Cardinal Tetra
4 x Ruby Tetra (Always looking for more but hard to get here)
3 x Nerite Snails
2 x Mystery Snails

 

[NC122606]

Well goodluck! I have a 54 right now.

 

[Kirahn]

Got the new tank up and running without any loss, in fact there were two Amano Shrimp in there that I hadn't seen in months and figured they were dead. The transition was pretty hard on my Moonlight Gourami, he scraped his head running from the net. But after few hours in the new tank he calmed down, and after a couple days he's now back to normal.

 

[Sankalpakc]

Great looking tank and I am glad the move went well. Are you planning on adding any stock with the change?

 

[Kirahn]

Great looking tank and I am glad the move went well. Are you planning on adding any stock with the change?

I'm actually thinking of getting a Bamboo Shrimp or two, and I want to fill out my Ruby tetra school to about 10. I've also considered maybe a second Bristlenose Pleco, but really only if I saw a really neat one. Other than that, I'll just be on the lookout for interesting colored guppies to add to the gene pool. I like watching the interesting colors that come from interbreeding. I really like the community tank, with many different species and the filter feeder shrimp look really neat. I like the Amano Shrimp but I almost never see them in the tank. Hence thinking they were dead =).

 

[Kirahn]

Tank has been up and running for a while, mostly doing good but I continue to have the same issue with some plants that I had in my old 54 Gallon. Mostly the Amazon Swords just do not live. But even my Java Ferns don't seem to be doing that well, lots of holes in the leaves and such not vibrant green like I see in other tanks. Both tanks are quite deep so I am wondering if maybe the issue is PAR for my light at the bottom of the tank? I'm using a FLUVAL 3.0 and I have it set to ramp up to full light for 3 hours then ramp back down. I keep the blue light low as I understand that grows Algae. I use NILOCG Thrive C fertilizer and NILOCG Root Tabs. I have two Amazon Swords that have about 3-4 root tabs below them and I dose 3 squirts of Liquid fertilizer every day and they just look to be wasting away. In case it matters my light is about 22" above my substrate, which is about 2 inches of Carib Sea Tahitian Moon Sand.

If anyone can come up with some suggestions for me to try I would really appreciate it. I've read through many threads on this and I see many people with similar setups growing amazon swords with no issues.

 

[Kirahn]

Also I wanted to add, as you can see in my original setup I had some Anacharis planted in the front left of the tank when I first set it up, I put root tabs down there but as they did in my old tank, the bottom parts just rotted away and the whole mess ended up floating. It grows really well if I let it float, I just can't ever get it to take root.

 

[Kirahn]

So I've made some changes to my dosing schedule (13 pumps of ThriveC twice a week instead of 3 pumps per day) and my light setup (increased the blue light to 60% during the peak photo period instead of 5%) based on some suggestions I got on another forum. I'm going to try and photo document in this thread to see if I'm getting improvement now.

I had not seen this chart before and if accurate then having the blue light so low may have made it so my plants were not able to utilize the fertilizers I was providing.