# My 50 Gallon Convict tank



## Italionstallion888 (Jun 29, 2013)

Hello everyone, I made an into in the GD area down below. My name is Joe and I live in Olathe, KS, which is not to far from Kansas city. 
Anyways, I've had a 50 gallon tank for a pretty long time. At the start it was really just a ooooh looks cool type of tank (lots of plastic) My tank started to leak so I decided to take it down and start over. I picked up a solid glass tank on craigslist dirt cheap. So my rehab began.
This is what the tank originally looked like
Your basic run of the mill petsmart set up. 








I was really really really really really tired of fighting hard water build up on the tank. I wasn't going to put up another tank and deal with it again. We have decently hard water here in Olathe. My first step was to pick up an R/O system. Amazon had a coralife system at a price I couldn't pass up. I put together a little frame to hang it on.








After some serious thought and debate with the wife over "our" new decor I decided it was cheaper to build what I want vs paying retail price. I searched out some local businesses and found some cheap, like .90/lbs cheap slate and rock.
so it went in first 








1 inch of old gravel that just had to much bio to let go, 3 inches of eco complete and the rest is fine black and blue sand. I built all of the rock structures with some putty from petsmart. Not the best, but I'm happy with it for my first attempt.
Suspended the light bar from the ceiling, this light bar was on amazon for 137 and I think I got the last one, b/c they came off the site after I did my purchase. 3 plugs, 3 on/off switches 2 12k, 2 anatic and 4 moonlight leds.
























Looked empty so I picked up some plants from liveaquaria (place is awesome btw)
And plants
(march 27th)








2 ruffle plants, 3 hyprophilas and 2 dwarf hairgrass (which have not taken off yet)
Here is a more recent picture, I built and added a rock cave to the left side of the tank and moved a few things around b/c the fish didn't seem to like how it was designed lol. 
















Here are my babies
6 convicts
9 penguin tetras
Albus the defender (albino pleco)
I got the convicts from a friend, they were super small and only about 4 weeks old when I got them. (march 27th)
I don't have pictures of them all yet, but here are my best shots
Alpha








my alpha female








sup

























The current set up is as follows
Fluval 305
1 50w heaters
wonderful no name light "260w reef marine led light bar" w 2 65w CF cora life 6700k
whisper 40 air pump (only running for 30 min every 6 hours) I hate cleaning the glass deck lids
Pretty basic, I dose with Seachem flourish (5ml 2x a week) flourish excel (5ml daily) and root tabs
10 gallon water changes weekly with a 40% quarterly. 
No issues with the water other than my hygro melting and my convicts eating the hairgrass.

Thanks for taking a look. It's not where I want it just yet, but since we are renting I'm not going to do much more until we buy a house at the end of the year. Thoughts, opinions, suggestions, criticisms?


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