Ten Gallon A

The Very First One

That's how it looked in the beginning. Red and natural white gravel, all fake plants, and three stacked rocks to form a little cave. At the time, the mixed red and white seemed like a cool idea, but when I later installed all live plants, I came to regret the fake looking red in contrast to the natural greens and scarlets of the plants.

You can see a clown loach and a black skirt tetra, with a few neons if you look closely. I began this tank with 1 white cloud minnow, 2 zebra danios, and 1 female betta. They successfully cycled the tank with frequent water changes to keep down the dangerous ammonia and nitrite, and the process was complete in about two weeks. I then added a corydoras as a bottomfeeder, then the tetras, and then the clown loach, which is really ill-suited for any tank under 29 gallons. They are slow growers so I guess you could keep one in a ten gallon for a while if you plan to upgrade.

Ich soon struck, as it has a tendency to do with clown loaches. The loach was afflicted first. Immediately I boosted the temperature up to 86 degrees over the course of two days. I added a total of three Tbs of aquarium salt, doing partial water changes regularly and keeping up with the salinity content. (This was all fuzzy math as I didn't and still don't have a low grade hydrometer to monitor salinity, but in the end, all worked out--the only casualties were ghost shrimp which couldn't handle the high heat or the salt). In ten days the ich was vanquished.

When I started my fifty-five gallon, I eventually moved the loach and then later the black skirt tetra.

I began with live plants slowly at first, starting with plants called "Moneywort" and "Aluminum Plants." The Moneywort withered and all the leaves died, yet it oddly hung in there with a tough and growing root system and good stem color. The aluminum plant was a non-aquatic plant sold for aquarium use. Unfortunately, there are dozens of similar plants that look great but are not meant to live underwater. Do some research before you buy a plant. A good rule of thumb is to examine the roots. If they are white, they're usually aquatic.

I added more tetras and soon this became a small tetra schooling tank. At the height of its operation, I had 5 neon tetras, 4 cardinal tetras, 2 black neon tetras, 1 hatchetfish, 3 kuhli loaches, 1 oto, and several ghost shrimp. With the onslaught of various diseases like ich, the rotation has changed slightly.

Here's the tank planted. Plants include java moss, elodea, mayaca, onion plants, anubias, rotala, an amazon sword, and some creeper-like fern thing which you see at the bottom middle. That bright pretty blue fish is a dwarf powder blue gourami. Unfortunately, he loved the needle-like growths of the mayaca and rotala so he had to be moved to the 55 gallon. He was also terrorizing the hatchetfish... you can see him zeroing in on the hatchetfish in the photo. Doesn't he have that lean and hungry look?

I've had more deaths with this tank than any other. Largely I attribute that to the smaller and more fragile fish, and also how I buy about 3-4 of them at a time. Also, I don't have a Q-tank, so I'm playing russian roulette every time I make a new addition.

Planted tanks, especially heavily planted tanks, can tolerate a much higher bioload due to the nitrate-consuming plants. If my tank were not planted, I would be grossly overstocked. Be that as it may, however, I do frequent water changes where I change out about ten percent of the water twice a week.

I filtered with carbon but stopped because I believed it to kill off my elodea. I now filter with floss and peat.

I use Flourish Excel for the carbon source and I fertilize when needed.

Currently I am battling a second ich infestation, as well as witnessing the effect of some other nasties floating around which may be killing off fish. For about a week I changed water every day, but ich still struck. Heat and salt can be just as deadly as meds for planted tanks. I decided on the carcinogenic Quick Cure to treat the tank... perhaps from desperation, perhaps from being out of ideas. Formalin is said to be safe, and malachite green in lower doses should not kill the plants, at least from what I hear from other aquarists. Check out my early blog entries to read about how I dealt with this ugly and annoying threat... and how it tried my patience to no end.

This tank has shown to be versatile and it demonstrates the nearly endless possibilities you have with a cycled, freshwater tank. I plan to keep it densely planted with small schooling tetras and kuhlis and ghost shrimp, but if disaster strikes, I'm open to all possibilities, including turning the tank into a nano-marine system.

Update September 2006

The tank survived the move to our new home and now houses a male and female red eye puffer, along with some glowlight tetras which serve as both dither fish as well as distractions against innate puffer aggression. I've done away with the live plants... after keeping live plants for more than a year, I got tired of them always dying no matter what I did. I had more than adequate lighting, dosed with ferts, and kept suitable plants for the tank.

I'd been looking for red eye puffers for some time now. Before the move, I kept a solo figure eight puffer in the tank in light brackish conditions with aragonite sand to help keep the pH buffered. I believe the puffer had internal parasites as its stomach shriveled and its spine seemed to curl up until the fish succumbed while I was out of town.

Red eye puffers (carinotetraodon irrubesco) are one of the few true freshwater puffers available in the hobby. Unlike other puffer fish, as far as I am aware of at least, there is little controversy and discussion about their salinity levels.

A while back I'd purchased a synthetic coral that looks exactly like the real deal. This piece looks wonderful in the tank as you can see below.