The Freshwater Aquarium Blog

I am a suburban work-at-home mom with an abiding love for aquarium fish and aquatic gardening. In the recent past I've kept a 55-gallon mixed community aquarium, heavily planted, a 40-gallon "breeder" tank with African cichlids from Lake Tanganyika, and a 10-gallon desktop planted tank with Endler's livebearers.

These tanks were all basically no-brainer setups, requiring weekly water changes and feeding of the fish, and not much else. Remove dead plant leaves from time to time, and the tanks ran themselves. It was necessary to remove some of the Endler's from the 10-gallon from time to time to control populations, and these would *brace yourself* be placed in the African tank as live food, or into the 55-gallon to either be eaten by the Boesemani rainbows or to survive amongst the plants. There were no shortage of Endler's in the 55-gallon, as the rainbows had only a mild interest in live food, but no Endler's survived with the Africans.

After several years of maintaining these tanks on auto-pilot, I realized that I was no longer enjoying them or even really looking at them, with the exception of the 10-gallon tank on my desk where I work. That provided some welcome visual distraction after staring at my computer screen for hours.

The 40-gallon African tank, also in my office, had some serious cyanobacteria issues (a perpetually recurrent problem in this tank, even after moving house and not having anything in the tank for 6 months, sitting dry) that I was slowly combating, but I was bored. The N. leleupi were gorgeous in this tank, with that sought-after Kodak film box orange color and producing babies on a regular basis. These fish often go dusky, looking like they came out of a coal mine, when kept in a tank with a dark substrate, and this often does not go away if you lighten their surroundings. This tank had light cichlid sand (aragonite) and base rock for their caves, and I believe a superior diet also contributed to their vivid coloration.

I also had two N. brevis shelldwellers that were very interesting in their digging and posturing behaviors. Put a hand in the tank or do a water change and they dove into their escargot shells. Neat. These fish previously resided in a 10-gallon, as tenants in the "desktop cichlid" setup popularized on the web, but I soon discovered that these feisty fish are small but have remarkably large territories, and they were very unhappy in such a small tank. You could keep one alone in a 10-gallon, but even the mated pair I had in mine fought incessantly and the male actually killed the female as I watched, horrified and disappointed. I replaced her (turns out it was a him) and moved them over to live with the Leleupi and they were much, much happier, each choosing one end of the tank and owning the substrate all around them. Not a pair but the two males were fine in that tank for several years.

Also in the 40-gallon and complementing the somewhat shy rockdwelling cichlids was a small school of Buenos Aires tetras, marvelous companions to testy cichlids, providing the Africans with a sense of security to draw them out of their caves from time to time. "Dither fish" are useful in this situation, as the cichlids are programmed to trust schooling fish to alert them to danger. If the schooling fish are out and about, things must be okay. I highly recommend BA tetras in African setups. They are tough and fast, but do not compete with the cichlids and there were never any problems between the two species. These are plant-eating tetras, however, and as I did not realize this, it did not take them long to mow down the Anubias sp., java moss and java fern I had previously grown in this tank. The plants were toast in the presence of these sparkling tetras.

As for the 55-gallon tank in the living room, it was so heavily planted that the fish hardly had room to swim. 6 Boesemani rainbows, robust and about 6 years old, could only swim back and forth, back and forth, though this species seems to do this together anyway in their posturing amongst themselves, no matter where they reside. The Endler's were doing well in this tank, with babies hiding in the plants, though huge population overgrowth was prevented by the rainbows. I had a few white cloud minnows in there as well. No bottom dwellers - I believe the plant-friendly iron-rich gravel substrate was not a good environment for catfish. I had an Ancistrus (bristlenose pleco) for many years but I lost him about a year ago and was not replaced.

I have never been particularly happy with the dimensions of the typical 55-gallon aquarium, ubiquitous as it is. Most would consider this a relatively large tank, as I did so many years ago when I got mine. However, this is a very narrow tank, only about 13" front to back, and when you add rocks, driftwood and plants that uses up a considerable amount of space. There are many fish that ought to be fine in a 55-gallon aquarium in terms of the fish size/gallons of water ratio, but they do not do well without being able to turn around freely.

Let me also list the other tanks that I have stored away, waiting for inspiration. I have a 37-gallon tall, a 15-gallon tall glass Eclipse, 12-gallon acrylic Eclipse, two 10-gallon tanks, a 6-gallon acrylic Eclipse, a 5-gallon glass tank and a 2-gallon footed bowl. All of these tanks have previously had fish in them, maybe several different times, and all returned to storage for whatever reason. I have kept Altolamprologus calvus in the 37-gallon, probably my all-time favorite fish, but lost them in a tragic accidental cycle (see below regarding "symbol of failure" tanks) and put the tank away, since 3 tanks in my office was a bit much, even for me. I have kept bettas, guppies, dwarf puffers, crayfish, dwarf frogs, etc. in the smaller tanks from time to time. The 5-gallon was a so-called "natural" aquarium, with no filtration other than plants, with, you guessed it, Endler's livebearers. The tank was very heavily planted and well lit, with a relatively light load of fish. This type of setup is easy and I am surprised at how few people have tried it. You should.

These tanks take up some room in storage, but I cannot part with them, and am glad I have not. I also have box after box of HOB filters, very large to very small, internal filters, air pumps, power heads, substrate, fake plants, rocks and driftwood, filter cartridges and other filter media, air hoses, valves, tubing, heaters, lighting of all sorts, light bulbs of all sorts, glass tops, etc. This is a collection covering many years of keeping fish, 26 to be exact. You never know when you might need something. I also have all of the required equipment for pressurized CO2 injection, including the 5-pound tank, regulator, meter and diffuser. I have a full array of plant fertilizers and test kits as well.

I have been interested in a large tank for years, and figured a 75 or a 90-gallon would be next. I wanted to be able to keep larger fish that I'd previously been unable to have. I had the 55-gallon in a 5' space next to my fireplace, and I wondered how big of a tank I could get that would fit there. Well, one day I was in PetsMart and discovered a 150-gallon tall that is 5' wide. Wow! How cool would THAT be? This was a huge expense for me, though, so I figured I'd just bide my time and see if I came across one used. This was somewhat of a pipe dream, however, since this is not a very common size, and you don't often see them. Much more common is the 6' 120-gallon, but, snob that I am, I am not much of a fan of this long, skinny configuration. These tanks generally sit low, also, and when you view them you need to be seated or you crouch down to look at the fish. Also, I do not have a 6' space in my home for this size tank.

About a year ago I missed by a hair obtaining a free 150-gallon aquarium that someone had posted in the Free section of Craig's List. Phone tag was to blame and someone snagged it before I could reach the guy. When it comes to larger aquariums, when people have difficulty maintaining them they become an extremely large and useless symbol of failure, taking up a tremendous amount of room and serving no purpose, not to mention spouses and families getting tired of looking at this big glass box. They may even be relegated to the garage, where they continue to take up valuable space. You forget how much money you put in to the original endeavor and you just want it gone. I always keep an eye out at yard sales for such tanks, but never saw one that was more interesting than what I already have.

Meanwhile, every day I would faithfully check Craig's List for aquariums, not only in the Free section but also in Pets. I was in such a habit of doing this that I would forget why I was even looking, but it was fun to see what people are giving away, or what interesting pets people have, etc. One day, lo and behold, I saw an Oceanic 150-gallon reef ready tank, 5' x 2' x 2', with hood and stand. The picture looked good - this was a clean tank, ready to go. The price was not free, but so cheap as to be suspicious, quite honestly. If you Google that tank you will see how much they cost new, and Oceanic is a much respected manufacturer of aquariums. They generally cost more than an All-Glass tank of the same dimensions, for example. Long story short (just kidding!) I got this tank this past January 2009. Ostensibly this was for my birthday, but I probably would have gotten it anyway - it was that cheap.

Next post will get into the moving and setting up of this huge aquarium.