# My Fluval View (4G)



## cjstl (Mar 4, 2013)

OK, so I was looking at Specs the other day when I saw the Fluval View for $25. There were two left from that seller, and I bought them both. I felt darned good about it too, because the next best price was over $45! Of course, they just arrived today and I realized that I have no idea what to do with them :icon_redf

I'm not wild about the plant stickers on the white background. It looks like I may be able to peel those off, but I'm afraid of damaging the background. I'm also anxious to get water in one of these, but I want to address any functionality concerns first. For example, the vent for the filter intake at the bottom looks like it would be an issue if I ever wanted to add shrimp to one of these. But I might be able to glue a couple layers of screen over the back of the vent. Does anyone have experience with these tanks? I'd love to see what you've done.


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## cjstl (Mar 4, 2013)

Here they are in the boxes.










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## cjstl (Mar 4, 2013)

I decided to set one up for my crowntail. He is in a 4 gallonish vase right now that is overrun with algae. I need to clean it out and try to salvage some plants. Going to use what I have on hand, which is mostly jungle val, dwarf sag, DHG, and hornwort. I also saw some nice stems of hygro corymbosa stricta at Petco today, so I picked those up. I wonder if I plant them in the middle if they'll grow up and out of the hole in the lid?


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## cjstl (Mar 4, 2013)

I decided to sell one at cost to another local TPT member. And I'm finally getting around to setting up the other.










I'm leaving the plant sticker for now. Don't think it'll look bad when I'm done. Filled with a base layer of white sand and a little crushed coral (to make my snails pretty). The cap will be a greenish gravel. I think it'll look good.

I did wind up gluing a couple folded layers of screen behind the intake to keep debris out of the filter compartment and in case I ever convert to a shrimp tank.

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## cjstl (Mar 4, 2013)

Flooded a little and started planting.










The hygrophila corymbosa stricta from Petco sat in that container for over two weeks and is still in good shape. I expect some melt once submerged. 
I'm really hoping that it will grow up and out through the hole in the lid. It flowers when emersed and that would look beautiful. You can see in the first picture that there is a little plastic "cup" in the center of the tank. I'm hoping to use this to my advantage. I'm planting DHG in front of and amongst the hygro. I hope it will fill in that area and not spread beyond the cup. I planted some extra sagittaria subulata on the left side. Experience says it will grow almost as tall as jungle val. 

I'm struggling with what to do on the right side. I have plenty of options, including jungle val, hornwort, camboba (if I can find some surviving stems), najas, or more sag. I also have ludwigia repens, but I think it would look too much like the corymbosa. 

With DHG in the center, I'm not sure what to put in the front. I have a lot of choices there too. S. repens, p. helferi, micro chain sword. I'd really like to do crypt parva or marsilea minuta, but I don't have an abundance of either of those. 

One choice to help fill in the midground on the sides would be crypt wendtii red, but again, I'm not sure how that would look with the corymbosa.

I'd love suggestions! Also debating whether to do any kind of hardscape. My crowntail will go in this tank, and I don't want his fins getting snagged. 
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## Fundulopanchax (Sep 13, 2012)

I know this is kind of an obvious suggestion but maybe you could add a few rocks that are of similar color to the substrate to give the aquarium some depth, build up some sand around and behind them.

Equally obvious, maybe a small piece of branch wood. I can't tell if the aquarium is open-topped but if some branch wood emerged over the top it could look good.


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## cjstl (Mar 4, 2013)

Fundulopanchax said:


> I know this is kind of an obvious suggestion but maybe you could add a few rocks that are of similar color to the substrate to give the aquarium some depth, build up some sand around and behind them.
> 
> Equally obvious, maybe a small piece of branch wood. I can't tell if the aquarium is open-topped but if some branch wood emerged over the top it could look good.


I do have a few rocks, but there is very limited planting space in this tank, so the more rocks I add, the more space I sacrifice. I do have one greenish rock growing flame moss and another that I'm trying to grow fissidens on, so I may add one or both of those.

It does have a lid, which has to be on or the light won't work (recent discovery). There is a hole in the lid for feeding and what not, and I'm kind of hoping that my hygro corymbosa will grow out of the top and flower. I'd love to have a small branch or twig in this and a couple of my other tanks, but can't find anything that isn't huge. I'll probably wind up hitting up the yard and seeing if I can find some good river birch branches to use. Of course, then I have to soak and treat them...

I finally got around to planting the rest of the tank, and I'll be posting more pics soon. One thing I didn't realize until now is that the light and filter are on the same power source. That is an unexpected problem. Guess that's what I get for making impulse buys like this!


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## cjstl (Mar 4, 2013)

Tank is planted and filled. Let me know what you think. The corymbosa isn't looking so great. Think it sat too long without high light. I added spiral vals, crypt lutea, and some small crypt wendtii on the left side. Thinking about putting a rock on the right side with either flame moss or fissidens. The marisela minuta in the front was almost completely covered once I added the gravel. I had to dig for it with the tweezers and get the leaves above the gravel. I think a lot of the DHG in the center got covered up as well. May have to go on another rescue mission.


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## AnonAnona (Jul 2, 2014)

cjstl said:


> Tank is planted and filled. Let me know what you think. The corymbosa isn't looking so great. Think it sat too long without high light. I added spiral vals, crypt lutea, and some small crypt wendtii on the left side. Thinking about putting a rock on the right side with either flame moss or fissidens. The marisela minuta in the front was almost completely covered once I added the gravel. I had to dig for it with the tweezers and get the leaves above the gravel. I think a lot of the DHG in the center got covered up as well. May have to go on another rescue mission.


It's a very thin looking tank (front to back) which I love! It keeps your attention focused on the foreground. I think your choice of plants is great! Would love to see an update though! Have the plants filled the tank yet? :icon_smil I think it looks like a betta playground :fish1: I can imagine your crown tail swimming through/around all the plants and having fun!


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## cjstl (Mar 4, 2013)

Radiation91 said:


> It's a very thin looking tank (front to back) which I love! It keeps your attention focused on the foreground. I think your choice of plants is great! Would love to see an update though! Have the plants filled the tank yet? :icon_smil I think it looks like a betta playground :fish1: I can imagine your crown tail swimming through/around all the plants and having fun!


No, sadly this tank has turned into a mess. I need to spend some time on it in a bad way. A lot of the plants are melting and there is a bad diatom bloom. I think part of the problem is lack of fauna. I went to the store today and got two tracked nerites and two goldfish. They were feeders for 13 cents each, but I kind of like them. Going to give it a few days and see what the snails and added CO2 can do for this mess, then re-evaluate.


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## AnonAnona (Jul 2, 2014)

cjstl said:


> No, sadly this tank has turned into a mess. I need to spend some time on it in a bad way. A lot of the plants are melting and there is a bad diatom bloom. I think part of the problem is lack of fauna. I went to the store today and got two tracked nerites and two goldfish. They were feeders for 13 cents each, but I kind of like them. Going to give it a few days and see what the snails and added CO2 can do for this mess, then re-evaluate.


Wow you weren't kidding! That's quite an algae bloom you've got going on there :icon_eek: I'm sure the snails will have a feast and get it all sorted :red_mouth perhaps a few lumps of small driftwood with some Anubis attached would be a nice addition? Pretty low maintenance and create a bit of a focal point?

The goldfish look nice  not bad for 13 cents! I look forward to seeing how things go... Keep us updated with photos


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## cjstl (Mar 4, 2013)

Well, my 13 cent feeder goldfish both died 

But the nerites are still alive. Not sure what's going on in this tank. Guess I'm going to manually clean it out and do a big water change.

My daughter drew me a nice picture of fish because she felt bad that my goldfish died


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## AnonAnona (Jul 2, 2014)

Oh... sorry to hear that :icon_neut are the water parameters alright?


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## JellOh (Apr 5, 2013)

They likely died from ammonia poisoning in such a small tank. Goldfish are major waste producers and shouldn't be kept in anything under 20-50 gallons, depending on their size. Feeder fish can often grow large enough to need 100+gallon ponds as adults. You should do a water change asap or your snails could die as well. In the future I'd stick to inverts or nano fish with such a small tank.


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## cjstl (Mar 4, 2013)

JellOh said:


> They likely died from ammonia poisoning in such a small tank. Goldfish are major waste producers and shouldn't be kept in anything under 20-50 gallons, depending on their size. Feeder fish can often grow large enough to need 100+gallon ponds as adults. You should do a water change asap or your snails could die as well. In the future I'd stick to inverts or nano fish with such a small tank.


Could have been ammonia, but doubtfully from the goldfish. They weren't in there long enough, and they were small. I think one was a comet and one was a standard, so they could have ultimately grown to more than 12", but I was only planning to leave them in that tank for a short while. Goldfish that size are kept in much smaller bowls all the time. I left to go out of town early Wednesday morning. I didn't check them then, but they seemed fine Tuesday night. My wife said she thinks they died on Wednesday and she just left them in the tank. So they were decomposing by the time I got home Friday evening. 

One issue I have with this tank is that the light assembly and filter pump share the same power supply. So I have it set right now to turn off every 12 hours. Might have been an issue for those fish not having filtration overnight


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## kman (Dec 11, 2013)

So there is no way to control the lighting independently from the filter? No wonder you ended up with an algae farm! Generally you only want an 8 hour light period. Maybe see if you can wire in a switch of some sort?

Dwarf hair grass can subsist in a low tech tank, but it really needs co2 to spread out and carpet.

Bump:


cjstl said:


> I do have a few rocks, but there is very limited planting space in this tank, so the more rocks I add, the more space I sacrifice. I do have one greenish rock growing flame moss and another that I'm trying to grow fissidens on, so I may add one or both of those.


Perhaps of you can get a nice piece of driftwood and put it in the tank at an angle. That will use minimal ground space. Then tie on Anubias and/or Java fern to the wood, which will greatly increase your available planting space.


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## kittenfish (Feb 6, 2014)

I looked up this tank and it looks like the light can be turned on and off manually using a switch? Not as convenient as using a timer but I would definitely go with that versus leaving the filter off all night.


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## cjstl (Mar 4, 2013)

Yes, there is a switch, but I'm out of town a few days a week, so a timer is a necessity. I am looking at ways to separate the light from the filter pump. I tried DIY with waterproof LED strips, but the first attempt failed miserably. The lights were waterproof. The connectors were not.


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## kman (Dec 11, 2013)

cjstl said:


> Yes, there is a switch, but I'm out of town a few days a week, so a timer is a necessity. I am looking at ways to separate the light from the filter pump. I tried DIY with waterproof LED strips, but the first attempt failed miserably. The lights were waterproof. The connectors were not.


If you figure out what power supply the tank is using, and get another one, it should be possible to feed the same voltage directly to the lights by cutting the wire leading from the lights down into the guts / switch. I don't know how hidden the wiring is, but it might work. Otherwise, you could just snip the wire to kill the stock lights and put a better, different light on top instead.

Good lights usually cost some money, though.


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## kittenfish (Feb 6, 2014)

Yeah, with LED strips you're going to want to silicone the heck out of everything.


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## cjstl (Mar 4, 2013)

I've been doing some cleaning on this tank. Scrubbed most of the diatoms and removed dead plant matter. One of the spiral vals died, so I replaced it. The bacopa is in pretty bad shape. All the lower leaves were rotten. I did a pretty massive WC after cleaning a lot of the gunk. Also, part of the lid cracked. Looks like it had a faulty spot in the plastic that spread into a major crack. One quick 5 minute call to Fluval customer support and they're sending me a replacement, so that's cool. I'm taking advantage of having the lid off to do some extra filtration (added an Azoo Palm in the right corner). I also have my EHEIM Power LED+ running over the tank right now. So nice and bright!

I'm pretty sure I have figured out where to clip the power cord to get the lights and filter on separate circuits. I'm going to do that and add more LED strips when the new lid arrives.

I just added 8 ghost shrimp about 20 minutes ago. They're swimming around stirring the remaining gunk out of the substrate and off of the plants. Pretty sure the larger of my two nerites is dead  It hasn't moved in two days and a couple of the ghosties keep trying to flip it over. The other one is finally cruising all around the tank now that I manually scraped the diatoms off of the tank walls.


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## cjstl (Mar 4, 2013)

OK, I finally got around to separating the filter pump from the light assembly! It wasn't too difficult. The hardest part was that there isn't much room to work with based on where I chose to snip the cord. If you're standing behind the tank, the power cord feeds into the left side of the light fixture and comes out the right side. There are tracks behind the filter assembly to hold the cords down. It then descends from the light fixture down the back of the filter assembly to the pump. I chose to clip it right before it descends so I would still have room to add to the lights.

I separated the cord and stripped a small amount of the sheath. I then used 22 - 18 AMP but splices to reconnect the cord. I basically cut the cord in half from the light assembly to the DC block so there would be equal lengths of cable for the pump and the light assembly. I decided to use the existing power supply for the filter pump, so I spliced that end of the cable and plugged it back in. Appears to be working fine, and the butt splices are pretty snug, but I may wrap them with electrical tape since they're close to the tank.

I have not hooked the light back up yet, since I'm still using my EHEIM light. But I'm starting to get GSA on the tank walls because that light is so intense. I did get a replacement part from Fluval for the cracked clear plastic part of the lid. Very easy dealing with customer service and got the part in about four business days from calling.

I think I'm going to use the power supply that came with the waterproof strip lights I ordered a while back. It has a female receptacle with screw-down terminals, so should be simple to hook up the light assembly. I'm probably going to tape off the end of the cord that comes out of the light for now, but I'm planning to make a second attempt at adding strip lights to this tank, so it should be easy to connect the cable to the additional lights. I'll probably look for some kind of modular plug for each end so I can disconnect the power whenever I need to remove the lid.

Pretty happy with this tank despite the work involved. Seven of the original eight ghost shrimp are still alive and kicking. They ate their fallen comrade yesterday, those cannibals... I'm getting ready to add some of my male Endlers to this tank to give it more activity and a nice splash of color. I'll post updated tank pics once I do, but here is the power stuff for now:


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## kman (Dec 11, 2013)

Nicely done.


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## cjstl (Mar 4, 2013)

This is another one that suffered horribly during my extended break from the hobby. There was a terrible BGA outbreak a long time ago, and the remnants are still forming a layer at the bottom of the tank. All of the plants died except for the crypt lutea and the crypt wendtii. The wendtii is barely hanging on, but the lutea is doing fine. I haven't had the filter on in this tank for months, so it hasn't really had any inhabitants. It's home to a tiger nerite and a very HUGE blue ramshorn. He is so huge that the nerite rides around on him. There are also a few disgusting squiggly nematodes. I'm re-arranging my desk as I eliminate or move some of my tanks, and I really want to clean and re-scape this tank. I'm thinking about making a purchase and doing all crypts in this tank. Maybe spiralis and balansae for the background, see if I can revive my beautiful red and tropical wendtiis, leave the lutea, and do parva in the foreground. Hoping I can sustain my interest this time. By downsizing to fewer tanks, I'm hoping I can pick just a few to focus on.


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## DMAXNAZ (Sep 30, 2015)

I had one for a few years. I loved this tank. I might bring it out of retirement someday...


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