# Petco arc 6.25, awesome little bowfront!



## thezachammer (Feb 19, 2015)

The other day i was in petco looking for a little nano tank to do something cool with. I ran across this petco brand 6.25 gallon rimless bowfront, about 80 dollars for a rimless tank with a light and internal filter isnt too bad, especially for as good as the tank itself looks. So i took it home and got to work i had a pretty plain scape with with a valley narrowing through the center just to add a little depth, however the box just made it look extremely narrow. The whole idea of this tank was to have something fairly contemporary looking but extremely low tech, so not much equipment, low light, no co2 (maybe a little excel) but nothing more than a cool decoration that all i have to really do is change water on. 

With that in mind i was basically stuck with that big internal box that created dead spots in the corners, or my old aquaclear mini...it was a pretty obvious choice



It looks like the pic in the title didnt post right










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Great! None of the pics posted! Every time with tapatalk...























Cleaning the tank





















Base layer, aquasoil and hardscape



























Planting and filling



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## Veritas (Aug 9, 2013)

nice work!


I never thought of removing the filter box....I might have to consider this.


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## schnebbles (Jan 10, 2015)

nice looking tank! My cats always want in mine so I couldn't have a tank with no lid like that.


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## thezachammer (Feb 19, 2015)

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Box was removed, one glass baffle left

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Cleaning off the silicone

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Bam! Spotless! This is a pretty nice little tank

The box was previously full of well cycled bio max, which i crushed up to have more surface area in the little aquaclear. The light is staying for now, and even though it looks so dull that you couldnt even keep java moss alive, my buces and anubias have been thriving! Plus its very sleek and out of the way

Back to the scape...
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I used cycled eco complete as a kind of powersand, this will seed the substrate with bacteria, and keep compaction down on the bottom. Eco complete is inert, so its essentially the same as powersand, only cheaper...being cycled is a plus too








Base layer of aquasoil amazonia down








I used a rock that ive found locally, its volcanic but i cant remember the name. This rock reminds me of the sato akadama stone because of how red it is... And my all time favorite nano scape is james findleys red rock nano scape where he used a huge piece of the red stone that came out of the water and just made a powerful impression. So if my scape looks familiar its because i basically copied it to an extent, so i take no credit for the hardscape








Backfilled with a little more aquasoil



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Starting the planting. I will be using a lot of anubias nana in the rock, with a few bucephalandra species i had for another tank. The background is mainly java fern, needle leaf java fern, windevlov java fern, blobitis heudelotii, bolbitis mini, and a few other larger anubias species...i want to keep this low maintenence so low light and slow growers are the main focus

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Starting to fill, i use paper towels so i dont make chocolate milk

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Finally a full tank and its done for the night...i used the small pump from the original filter box as a circulation pump in the front...i always keep the majority of flow across the front glass where there arent many taller plants. My only inhabitants are some amano shimp, a bumble bee goby, an oto, and a pretty cool little big ear halfmoon plakat betta...ill probably throw some more bumble bee gobies in when i find some more, theyre kind of entertaining to watch








Its the second day and the same post...im following the 50 percent waterchange everyday on the first week, every second day on the second week and so on up to 4 weeks rule and ive done my first waterchange...i also added some pennywort to carpet in the front. Im not sure yet if i will have enough light but it should be fine so long as everything stays consistent. So much for the minimalist tank, i had a 5lb co2 tank laying around and i couldnt help myself. But its still pretty low tech ( only a bubble every 4 seconds) just for lack of bio load. I'm excited to see how this tank develops and ill post regular updates on it!


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I tried to fix the original post but I'm still not sure if they posted correctly...either way they're all there even if they're in separate messages

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## thezachammer (Feb 19, 2015)

Well the leds just werent doing it for me, i wanted something that looked a little closer to daylight...i had a small pc fixture laying around, it was really bulky so i stripped it down and have made a sort of skeleton of an ada solar mini type fixture. Right now the bulb and reflector are taped to the bars to hold it in place while i test it







Im going to make a round cover like a solar mini for the top so it will clamp the bars and give me a little more adjustment...then obviously use some longer wires and finish everything out 

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## tanksRkool (Sep 6, 2015)

That light makes all the difference. Really cool concept and implementation. I really like it a lot!!


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## thezachammer (Feb 19, 2015)

tanksRkool said:


> That light makes all the difference. Really cool concept and implementation. I really like it a lot!!


Thanks! have to admit, i havent had this much fun with a tank in a while

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Update on my ada-ish light!















Ive made a hood from an old sheet of aluminum, obviously it still needs body filler, primer, and paint, but you can at least get an idea of how it will look. I also added more wire so i can hide it, probably just zip tied to one of the small bars holding the bulb. i really wanted to keep the stock light but it just wouldnt have been enough to get a decent carpet, this should look clean enough to not be an eyesore when its all finished though...and i do think fluorescents grow plants better than leds...dont get me wrong, im a huge fan of leds, and ive have them on every one of my tanks but this one. But in my experience you just dont get the same growth with comparable lights, so im excited to go "old school" in that aspect

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## thezachammer (Feb 19, 2015)

Update on the betta house! I still havent finished the light fixture, maybe this weekend...but i did drain it down to almost nothing and do a little rescape on the right side...the pennywort had started filling in, and i really wanted the carpet to go around the side towards the back. So i took out the next to last rock on the right side and moved the long one on the far right inwards, then added aquasoil to the slope and made substrate supports from black plastic to hold the scape in place








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## Maverick2015 (Aug 8, 2015)

I like the look of the LEDs but I can see how they were not really dispersing enough light. Looks good.


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## thezachammer (Feb 19, 2015)

I wanted to clean up the look of everything tonight so I did a little rearranging








I moved the filter and diffuser to the right side, I was able to turn the flow up on the filter and do away with the little power head, and the co2 is almost right under the outlet of the filter so it's diffusing very well. I also cleaned up the layout a bit, first I trimmed some of the longer pieces of penny wort to start filling in some of the bare spots, then I consolidated almost all of the Anubis nana to the back to get it off of the face of the main stone, and I moved the buces to the bottom in the shaded area, they tend to do better in shade anyway, at least the ones I have.


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## thezachammer (Feb 19, 2015)

I did a little more rearranging last night, they had some micranthemum Monte Carlo at the Lfs and it makes such gorgeous carpets I had to get some, so the penny wort stayed in the back behind the anubias and the whole carpet was replaced with the micranthemum. 

This is right after planting









I should also add, I'm dosing flourish and excel, also bumped the co2 up to a bubble every two seconds...I'm slowly abandoning the idea of low tech on this one, but I'll get over it

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Quick shot after the water cleared up


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## mlefever8 (Oct 4, 2015)

Hello -

I have this tank and just accidentally broke the lid cleaning it this morning. Does anyone have a lid they are not using? I can pay for it and shipping.

Please and thank you!

Morgan


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## thezachammer (Feb 19, 2015)

I'd give you mine but I stepped on it during the night:/ now you have to go crazy with it and just scape out of the top


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## thezachammer (Feb 19, 2015)

Well the betta house has been running for about 5 weeks now, and I'm starting to see a lot of new growth (mostly in the last week) it's finally come into balance where the dust algae is slowing considerably 















The micranthemum has only been in for about two weeks and you can see a considerable amount of melting in the old growth, but there's an equal amount of new growth. I don't want to trim it yet because I want to give it time to put out a strong root base first. Also the bucephalandra in the second photo has a lot of old growth that's rotting and melting but there are several new leaves that have come out in the last week, since it's only been in that location for a couple weeks I'll do the same and let it anchor to the rocks before I start pruning it















The anubias in the first photo had hardly any melting (just some algae on the oldest leaves) but it's had some very good growth, I've already pruned the oldest leaves once. The big cluster in the second photo I got a few days ago, I've gone a little anubias crazy in this tank but they're doing very well and I love the look of large groups of them







and a full tank shot. I moved a couple weeks ago so I had some substrate shift and some micranthemum uproot but it's had some good progress since then, considering this tank (for a relatively low tech tank) is still running on 10x the co2 and 3x the watts per gallon as the 75 gallon had with considerably more nutrients dosed per gallon


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## Mikeygmzmg (Mar 19, 2015)

Wow this a nice little tank. Really like it.


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## thezachammer (Feb 19, 2015)

I've had a pretty cool thing happen in the tank, at least cool to me...when I was starting up planted tanks again in the beginning of the year, one of the first things I looked to put in were ramshorn snails as part of the cleanup crew. Turns out the new ower of the Lfs keeps loaches or assassin snails in every tank that's had plants in it...every time I'm in there I look for a pink or gold ramshorn that might've made it there somehow with no luck at all. My tanks were getting trumpet snails so I've kept assassins in them, when I put a couple of nerites in the betta house I took out the assassin. So for the past few weeks he hasn't been in there, a few days later I noticed some baby snails all over the glass, no clue what type. So tonight I'm looking around in the tank and here's what I see







ramshorns! No clue what type but there isn't a single adult ramshorn at that store! Pretty cool little surprise...shortly after I noticed them I got a text from Ian Malcolm that said "told you so" 


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## thezachammer (Feb 19, 2015)

The betta house has a stock change, now I'll have to think of a new name, maybe project alpha. the betta was healthy but he didn't like the flow, he spent most of his time on the filter intake. The bubbles were also making the tank look really bad, some were from co2 but he made piles of them as well. So I took him out and got some fish a little more suited to it







i put in 8 ember tetras, they do blend in with the rock some, but I'm thinking they will color up over time. And I'm pretty limited on stock for a tank this small














i also added a couple black tiger shrimp and a ninja shrimp, the ninja was the only one at the store so he just threw it in. Couldn't find him to get a pic though.







and a full tank shot. The other night the power flickered for about a half second but it was enough to reset my timer, because I was lazy I didn't program it again and fell asleep on the couch without turning the light off, and somehow the co2 solenoid stuck off, so by the time I noticed, it had run two days without it, on top of about a 24 hour photoperiod. That resulted in bba on the rocks and a few anubias leaves. I've clipped off the leaves with bba, and scrubbed what I could with a toothbrush before an 80 percent wc. I tapered off of excel about two weeks ago, so I did a heavy dose and will taper down over the next week or so, and spot treat with h2o2 as needed, but it's been receding so far, other than that the plants are looking healthy and the micranthemum has been steadily spreading with only a little of the melted old growth on the right side...and stay tuned because I'll be starting a way nicer (slightly larger) high tech nano in the next few weeks and I'll be doing a complete build thread, starting from scratch with the stand and everything


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## Tihsho (Oct 10, 2007)

Love the setup! What prefilter are you using on that AC?


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## thezachammer (Feb 19, 2015)

I cut a piece of foam filter to sit in the bottom of the basket and wring it out when I clean the tank...other than that i just have a bag of crushed up bio max, it's pour us as is but in 1/4" pieces there's a ton of surface area


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## Tihsho (Oct 10, 2007)

No no, the prefilter to the inlet is what I mean. Unless AC's come with new input pipes, that grated input doesn't look OEM.


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## thezachammer (Feb 19, 2015)

Oh haha I cut the tube down since it was a little too long, and put a strainer from a maxi jet on it...I just used a piece of silicone hose as a grommet so it fit right 


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## Tihsho (Oct 10, 2007)

MAXI JET! That's why it looked so familiar! Thanks for the details on your mod.


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## thezachammer (Feb 19, 2015)

A couple random shots because why not

















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## Nevets9333 (Jun 11, 2014)

Great scape for such a small tank!


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## big b (Jun 3, 2015)

Nice tank. I especially like the shrimp .


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## thezachammer (Feb 19, 2015)

Sneak peek at the new build










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## thezachammer (Feb 19, 2015)

Another update. I've added a mini canister (zoomed 501) and put the tiny power head back into the corner behind the anubias...with the growth behind the rock I was starting to have some flow issues, which should be fixed now







you can probably tell there's some new additions in the back right corner...they aren't staying I'm just using that corner as a makeshift nursery for a few plants that are going into the new build, and it was the perfect spot because the aqua clear created sort of a dead spot there so the micranthemum died off there, one more reason for going with a mini canister and power head other than that spot the carpet is growing slowly and steadily, it's been a few weeks now and it almost all new growth. There's still some old yellowed, melting growth hanging on but it disappears little by little every day


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## thezachammer (Feb 19, 2015)

I suppose it's been a while since an update, anyway the Monte Carlo is still steadily spreading, I've plugged a few spots in the back where there wasn't any so hopefully that will start spreading pretty quick. But the front is almost a full carpet! I also added some anubias and the most horrible chunk of monosolenium I've ever seen between the far left and middle rocks. The anubias weren't that great either, but they should all recover










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## thezachammer (Feb 19, 2015)

I've almost got a full carpet, the front is covered but the back is still steadily spreading...I trimmed the carpet for the first time, and once again cut back the Christmas moss and pennywort on the top of the driftwood...I'm also seeing some growth on the new piece of monosolenium, good thing too, that stuff looks pretty cool!









Here's a before and after over the last two months









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## brandonhauser (Nov 6, 2015)

Love the progression! And your results with the Monte Carlo are very inspiring! Before seeing this thread, I was under the impression that you have to do a dry start for a carpet like that, but now I might just try it out


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## thezachammer (Feb 19, 2015)

[email protected] said:


> Love the progression! And your results with the Monte Carlo are very inspiring! Before seeing this thread, I was under the impression that you have to do a dry start for a carpet like that, but now I might just try it out



Dry start is always a good method for a carpet because you can flood it with light and not worry about algae, it also won't uproot before its established...but you can absolutely get the same results underwater, just takes a little bit longer...mine didn't do much for a month and then just took off, all about patience and consistency!


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## thezachammer (Feb 19, 2015)

Well I've ditched the diy "solar mini". I think the bulb had about had it, and I was having a lot of algae problems, so instead of getting a new pc bulb I found a really cool compact led light, a fluval Eco bright. It fits PERFECTLY! And puts out quite a bit of light at 7500k, I was very impressed with it, however, the light wants to sit right on the tank. That's a problem because the rock sticks up past the top. I recently built an acrylic door on my 45cm stand and had some strips left over, so I cut it to the right size and put a notch in the bottoms to sit on the tank rim. Then I cut off the old legs and stuck the small rods into the acrylic and slid them into the fixture...now it sits right where I want it






















I love the look of this light, and I'm guessing the plants do too...I noticed within ten minutes, the plants started pearling more than they ever have.


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## bereninga (Mar 18, 2006)

Looking good! I'd hit that BBA w/ some Excel though. Is the tank made of acrylic or glass?


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## thezachammer (Feb 19, 2015)

bereninga said:


> Looking good! I'd hit that BBA w/ some Excel though. Is the tank made of acrylic or glass?



That's exactly what I've been doing, I found a tiny little syringe that lets me treat all of it with out overdosing too much, I generally don't use excel at all unless I absolutely have to, but man it works so well on algae. The tank is glass

Here's a shot from today with considerably less algae on the rocks










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## thezachammer (Feb 19, 2015)

I did a little bit of rearranging last night. The Christmas moss in the left corner has been bugging me the more it grows out, but I liked the shape, so I pulled it up and planted that corner with glosso...it looks like it's getting enough light there but we'll see...I love the color, since it's almost the same shade as the Monte Carlo it will keep the color scheme light in the front and hopefully add an appearance of little depth to that spot










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## DanPlanted (Jun 15, 2015)

Tank looks awesome


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## thezachammer (Feb 19, 2015)

http://youtu.be/-IySdR-wst0 
Here's a video update on the tank, after I did a little drilling on the filter and re-ran the tubes


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## terror lover 11 (Dec 11, 2015)

If you want more fish, you could try some glass cats.A little delicate, but their transparent look and schooling behaviour makes it like the opposite of the betta, making it very interesting! Hope it helps.


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## thezachammer (Feb 19, 2015)

terror lover 11 said:


> If you want more fish, you could try some glass cats.A little delicate, but their transparent look and schooling behaviour makes it like the opposite of the betta, making it very interesting! Hope it helps.



This tank is sadly no longer the betta house, it's been home to a school of ember tetras, bumble bee gobies, and some shrimp for a while now...but this week, a friend is getting some very tiny cardinals, and I'll be replacing all of the stock with a dozen or so of them...until I have to move them to one of the larger tanks


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## terror lover 11 (Dec 11, 2015)

If you want something with your betta, get some glass cats. A little delicate, but it's schooling behaviour and transparent looks makes them an opposite to the betta. It would be very interesting!

Bump: Sorry, the damn computer made me send two! But yeah, I reckon that you could keep some bronze corys in there to help the shrimps! They need to school like the other fish in there. Also they are very durable. so they aren't going to die with some sort of a disease quickly! I had one who had swim bladder disease and we didn't have a quarantine tank , but the guy lived for three weeks with the disease and recovered! Tough little guy!


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## thezachammer (Feb 19, 2015)

I did a pretty big trim on the carpet last night, the front is getting pretty thick!










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## bereninga (Mar 18, 2006)

I've trimmed Monte Carlo until it's almost near the substrate. It's a fast-grower! Looking neater though.

Btw got around to watching that video. The light mods are awesome!


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## thezachammer (Feb 19, 2015)

bereninga said:


> I've trimmed Monte Carlo until it's almost near the substrate. It's a fast-grower! Looking neater though.
> 
> Btw got around to watching that video. The light mods are awesome!



Thanks! I've still yet to finish the edges and polish them...soon though!


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## thezachammer (Feb 19, 2015)

I wanted to see how a surface skimmer would do if I cut one down to fit...so I did, and it's great! I'm going to have to make one that's small enough to not look ridiculous though. I'll probably make a fixed skimmer on the intake tube and just use an auto top off to keep it consistent...here's a few shots

















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## thezachammer (Feb 19, 2015)

It's been almost 5 months since I started this little project and it's been doing great! I've had my fair share of little issues and setbacks but so far this scape has far exceeded what I expected in only 5 months...the carpet is almost completely full, in the back that is. The front has been extremely thick for a while. The tiny rotten clump of monosolenium has turned into a nice little bush. The anubias have taken hold and started growing like crazy. The glosso has started to spread, very slowly but progress is progress. Theres still bba on the rocks, but with every week there's less with almost no intervention by me. I've tapered off of all dosing except for co2 injection. It's still got a ways to go but I've been very happy with its progress!










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## Buu (Feb 15, 2015)

What size elbows and tubing did you use to mod the 501 filter?


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## Julie7778 (Apr 21, 2015)

The tank is beautiful! Great work. What CO2 system are you running on this little tank?


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## Kerdai (Jun 11, 2016)

*FIlter box*

Ive had this tank for a year and used the filter it came with until it stopped working. I bought a tetra whisper filter and now I want to remove the old black filter box.. how did you do it?


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## thezachammer (Feb 19, 2015)

I thought this thread is long overdue for an update, the mini bow is still running and should be closing in on a year! On its 9 month birthday it went to live at my lfs as a planted display by the register, still maintained by me. The carpet has gotten out of hand several times and had to be cut down an inch or so, along with the moss and hydrocotle...the last time I trimmed it I pulled strings of hydrocotyle from every corner of the tank! Anyway here she is










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## thezachammer (Feb 19, 2015)

Buu said:


> What size elbows and tubing did you use to mod the 501 filter?




They're food grade 3/8 press fittings with the oe hoses that come with the filter, wire loom around the hoses just because it looks cooler


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## thezachammer (Feb 19, 2015)

Julie7778 said:


> The tank is beautiful! Great work. What CO2 system are you running on this little tank?




A 5lb tank and Milwaukee regulator...apparently I lucked out with that regulator though, it seems to work fine but the solenoids stick all the time on the others I've been using:/


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## Umar Mujeeb (Feb 22, 2017)

How did you get the filter box out? I have the same tank and I think the filter box takes up way too much room.


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## fhcastillo (May 7, 2016)

I know this is an old thread, but I have good news for folks who still have these little tanks...Petco has filter cartridges for them again! They use the same size catridges and sponge filter as their Imagitarium line desktop aquariums.









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