# The 40 gallon tank "Triple Low"



## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

So I've been working on this one for a while getting it set up. It's still in the process, but I wanted to start a thread here to show it off and to expose my flaws for the world to see. 

So to start with, I had an old old 55 gallon tank that hadn't held water in 10 years sitting in a shed. Decided I could use the stand, the sump filter, and some of the hardware at least even if the tank was scratched up beyond saving and the caulk was all shot. So I started sorting through what I had and what was still usable.









And low and behold, just in time for my birthday there was the petschmo aquarium sale.








...and a 40 gallon breeder tank just so happened to fit on the old stand.

Next I got to learn how to drill holes in glass.









And dog help is always the best help.








(I did have to spring for a bigger pump, the 500 gph one that was with the old tank just didn't seem to be doing the job anymore)

I then proceeded to spend the majority of October up in the mountains for work, which made for slow progress but at least I was able to look for some cool rocks while I was there.









And then, between my other tanks and a very kind RAOK I was able to find quite a bit of Anubias









Oh, and then a bit more









Not to mention some other plants that I ordered, like some Bucephalandra, some bigger Anubias, and a bit of Java Fern









Then for kicks and giggles I threw together a couple of planters on top to try some houseplants








(not sure if the sensitive plant will work this way or not, but someone on the internet said it would, but I'm fairly confident the arrowhead plant and pothos are good to go, anyway)

So that's what's happened so far. After it gets settled in a little bit more, I'd like to see if it could just be a massive RCS colony--right now there's only pond snails and red ramshorn snails


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## mbkemp (Dec 15, 2016)

Nice start! Your dogs look like great help! 


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

mbkemp said:


> Nice start! Your dogs look like great help!
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


HA! It's very enthusiastic help, if nothing else!


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

Here's a pic from this morning:









And just for kicks and giggles here's the whole wall, complete with the 45 gallon and some houseplants:









And I decided that I wanted more flow still, so I picked up some 3/4" tubing to replace the 1/2" and got a cinderblock to raise the sump up another 8" (to reduce the headloss). We'll see how much those things affect it.


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## The Dude1 (Jun 17, 2016)

That looks great. Have you decided on fauna yet?


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## The Bungulo (Aug 28, 2017)

If you can afford a few more plants, I would recommend a iwagumi nature aquarium, with a carpeting plant in the middle front. You could get a shoal of 20 cardinal/ember/neon/rummynose tetras and about 10 RCS. For iwagumis the go-to fish is usually a shoal of one specie. (the RCS will breed if conditions are good and form a huge colony. the tetras will leave them alone, but will eat dead shrimp.)


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

The Dude1 said:


> That looks great. Have you decided on fauna yet?


My plan is to just have a massive cherry shrimp colony, and then maybe eventually some endlers.


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

The Bungulo said:


> If you can afford a few more plants, I would recommend a iwagumi nature aquarium, with a carpeting plant in the middle front. You could get a shoal of 20 cardinal/ember/neon/rummynose tetras and about 10 RCS. For iwagumis the go-to fish is usually a shoal of one specie. (the RCS will breed if conditions are good and form a huge colony. the tetras will leave them alone, but will eat dead shrimp.)


I was thinking about it, but I kinda actually really like the bare black sand for now.


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## Jjonesls1 (Apr 26, 2017)

I think it looks very good as is. I think Cardinals would look out of place, but embers or Harlequin rasporas would look great with the rcs.

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## The Bungulo (Aug 28, 2017)

wait, did you say you found the rocks in the mountain? did you get them tested? they could have contaminants and mess with your PH. boil them for a few hours, and if you did, test them for anything.


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## Rogozhin75 (Aug 15, 2017)

Looks great, I like the dark substrate and dark rocks.


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## mbkemp (Dec 15, 2016)

I think Endlers and shrimp would be s great mix. A 40 will hold a ton of Endlers. Which color form are you looking at?


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

The Bungulo said:


> wait, did you say you found the rocks in the mountain? did you get them tested? they could have contaminants and mess with your PH. boil them for a few hours, and if you did, test them for anything.


They?re lava rocks, pretty much inert. No change in pH as of yet, anyway







The mountains I?m referring to are literally the very top of the drainage basin, there is no agriculture there, but yes, I did soak them in bleach water for a couple days, and then rinsed and rinsed and scrubbed and soaked in heavily primed water.


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

mbkemp said:


> I think Endlers and shrimp would be s great mix. A 40 will hold a ton of Endlers. Which color form are you looking at?
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


I?m not sure yet, but that?s probably a year away


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

Well, I increased the return line diameter to 3/4" and raised up the sump by 8" so the flow has increased by quite a bit, which I'm happy about. Stuff was settling in the corners. Still getting nitrite readings, so I stole some more filter media from the other tank. The anubias all look pretty happy anyway, got lots of new leaves coming in, and the snail pioneers are definitely increasing in number


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

Well, it's been almost a month I guess, so here's some new pictures. Still only a snail tank, but hopefully in the next week or so I'll be able to order some shrimp. It's been a crazy busy month, what with the holidays starting and all the insanity that brings.














































Lots of happy snails!


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

And... shrimp ordered! They should ship monday and be here shortly thereafter. The weather looks to be cooperative so there shouldn't be any issues, hopefully...


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## The Dude1 (Jun 17, 2016)

That's some serious filtration for a shrimp tank!! That's going to be awesome. How many did you start with? It looks great already.


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

The Dude1 said:


> That's some serious filtration for a shrimp tank!! That's going to be awesome. How many did you start with? It looks great already.


Started out with 25, fit the budget best. Had a hard time deciding if I wanted to stick with regular red cherries or go with a different color variation, but decided red was a good starting place. Maybe someday I’ll get bloody Marys or something to see if I can expand the gene pool, but this will be fine  the red will look good with the black and green!


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

Just sat and watched the snails a bit this morning, and... you know that feeling you get when your Anubias puts out a new leaf, you get happy and excited? There’s so many of them in here there’s always 5 or 6 new leaves coming in and it’s pretty great. They’re slow growers but if you add them all together they reach critical mass, I guess!


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## The Dude1 (Jun 17, 2016)

TacitBlues said:


> Started out with 25, fit the budget best. Had a hard time deciding if I wanted to stick with regular red cherries or go with a different color variation, but decided red was a good starting place. Maybe someday I’ll get bloody Marys or something to see if I can expand the gene pool, but this will be fine  the red will look good with the black and green!


That's how I started mine. 25 Cherries and added 5 painted fire reds at 2 seperate times and removed the less desirable ones to other tanks to start colonies. Ended up with cronies in everyone of my tanks and a main tank full of fire reds. Did maybe 3 water changes in 13 months. Probably sold off 500. It gave me a distorted perspective of shrimp keeping. I haven't had good luck getting the carbon Rili shrimp colonies going. I would go to cherry shrimp again, but I wouldn't want them to gross with the last remaining carbons. That's going to be a cool tank.


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

The Dude1 said:


> That's how I started mine. 25 Cherries and added 5 painted fire reds at 2 seperate times and removed the less desirable ones to other tanks to start colonies. Ended up with cronies in everyone of my tanks and a main tank full of fire reds. Did maybe 3 water changes in 13 months. Probably sold off 500. It gave me a distorted perspective of shrimp keeping. I haven't had good luck getting the carbon Rili shrimp colonies going. I would go to cherry shrimp again, but I wouldn't want them to gross with the last remaining carbons. That's going to be a cool tank.


That's pretty much my plan too! I'd like to throw culls eventually into the 45 gallon, and then I've got a little 6 gallon edge that used to have more shrimp in it that I'd like to restock again too (it's got a few Ember Tetras, I think they slowly bullied the shrimp to death). Then my LFS will buy shrimp for in store credit, and for whatever reason shrimp are impossible to find in town, so I think there's enough of a market locally to take the culls.


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

A nice pic of some of the Buce in here, think this is the Mini Blue Almond:









And I rearranged the planters and redid them to be all the same shower caddy:








(also added some Purple Velvet plant, another one of those things that someone somewhere one time said would work, and it was $5 at the nursery so why not?)


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

Shrimp were shipped yesterday but the seller notified me that UPS told him that they might be experiencing delays. The tracking number still says they're expected tomorrow. No big storms in the mountains right now and he said that they were shipped with insulation and heat packs, so I think they should be ok either way. Cross your fingers I guess.


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## The Dude1 (Jun 17, 2016)

I had issues with my orders both time, but no DOA's. Unfortunately both times I had big losses. It could just be circumstance, but the carbon rili were no where near as hardy as regular cherries. My LFS does the same thing buying them from a local guy. They have some gorgeous shrimp, but like $3 - $5 a piece for Neo's. 
I'm doing something similar (I hope) with Gertrude Rainbows. Very difficult to come by. They said they would buy as many as I could provide. I'd like to get a group of 25 going first though.
Once those cherries get going they are amazingly resilient. I would intentionally leave the lights on for 12 hours a day to grow algae for them to eat. Shrimp tanks are amazing for growing out mosses that normally become inundated with algae. The moss coming out of the shrimp tank is 10 times nicer than the moss that comes out of my high tech tanks.


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

The Dude1 said:


> I had issues with my orders both time, but no DOA's. Unfortunately both times I had big losses. It could just be circumstance, but the carbon rili were no where near as hardy as regular cherries. My LFS does the same thing buying them from a local guy. They have some gorgeous shrimp, but like $3 - $5 a piece for Neo's.
> I'm doing something similar (I hope) with Gertrude Rainbows. Very difficult to come by. They said they would buy as many as I could provide. I'd like to get a group of 25 going first though.
> Once those cherries get going they are amazingly resilient. I would intentionally leave the lights on for 12 hours a day to grow algae for them to eat. Shrimp tanks are amazing for growing out mosses that normally become inundated with algae. The moss coming out of the shrimp tank is 10 times nicer than the moss that comes out of my high tech tanks.


This tank gets really good morning sun and so far there’s no problem growing algae! I used to have a really good colony in my Edge tank but when I moved a couple years ago it had to stay behind for a few months and the neglect just wiped them out, sadly. But I’ve missed my shrimp ever since! Hopefully they’ll be back with a vengeance now


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

Trying to use the mobile web browser to post a picture, something new


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

And now there’s suddenly so much more activity in here.


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

A small update:








I've finally got a few berried shrimp! I had about convinced myself there were no males in the whole bunch.


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

A FTS!










The crystalwort is just crazy, and the Crypt balansae is also pretty happy there in the middle of things. Still haven't had any baby shrimp but we'll see if anything happens soon. My GH and TDS kinda got out of whack (the GH in the tap when I started the tank was 4, when I noticed things were getting high in the tank I tested the tap again and it was at 10!) so I've been trying to bring it back down slowly with distilled water, and so far there's been no shrimp death.


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

I built (or kluged) a new sump with a 20 gallon long aquarium.










Took a few months, finding bits and bobs of parts and then changing my mind as to what I was doing halfway through, etc etc. The most notable distraction was my wife went into labor (and then had to have a C-Section) a 6 weeks early so we got to spend quite a lot of time at the NICU in February! But wife and baby are both home and healthy now so I'm happy, and able to spend more time on the aquariums


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## Phil Edwards (Jul 18, 2003)

Lovely tank and congratulations on the safe delivery and recovery of mama and the little one.


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

Thank you! It's a change, but he's awful cute


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

Hey, long time since any update, but wanted to drop some pictures to show where things are at. 

To start with, there's just been no action at all with the shrimp breeding. It's been pretty disappointing, I've seen the females berried occasionally but nothing ever seems to come of it and the population has dwindled to be, as best as I can tell, 4 shrimp. I've just been so busy with the new parent thing that I haven't done anything about it though. But I've been seeing more and more planaria pop up, and so








Yuck. I've been pulling the trap out once a day to see what I've got, and I think I've counted maybe 50-60 planaria total so far. So maybe this particular problem can be helped at least. 

Then there's some neat moss action going on off on a lava rock:








I've never had moss creep along anything before, I think this is Christmas Moss that came mixed in as a scrap in something else, but it's definitely different than the rest of the regular Java Moss.

I had my arms in the 45 gallon community tank last night and saw that the Anubias Congensis (bought at a big box store, as a tissue culture with like, 5 leaves, maybe 4 years ago?) in the corner was going gangbusters, so I separated out a third of it to put in the back of the 40 with some more of it. Making a pretty solid hedge of the stuff along the back.








It's kinda cool to have something like this that started so small reach a point of critical mass, where you can start expanding it out to other tanks. Not sure what'll happen when I get more Anubias than will fit in the tanks though 

And then, a relatively recent FTS:








It's slightly murky, was removing some filamentous algae that's trying to take over right now. I've been hitting it with H2O2 and have been trying to be way more consistent with glut and ferts. I also took the Y off the return line and just have the VCA random flow nozzle on there--putting all of the return through it has boosted the flow a bit (since it's one of those venturi nozzles) which hopefully will also help with the algae.

We'll see what happens next. Maybe the weather will cool off enough in the next year or so to be able to order a few more shrimp, but so far it's not really looking like it.


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## Thelongsnail (Dec 2, 2015)

Missed this thread last year, but it looks amazing!

If you're still thinking about endlers, they'd certainly sort out your planaria problem. Pretty bullet-proof too so they'd be fine with the whole parenthood thing (congrats by the way!)


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

I am still wanting endlers, but I would really like to get a good population of shrimp going first. But it's seemingly kinda doing a catch-22 situation right now


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

Picture time!



















And... a couple of blurry ones, sorry...



















I was mucking out the 45 gallon and saw that the anubias in there were going a bit bonkers, so I split them up and added them to the anubias forest (or carpet, maybe?) 
Looking at whats in the 40, I think I could split up a bunch of what's in there too and spread it out a bit. And then I was looking at the anubias in the Edge tank, and it's probably about ready to get hacked back too. Pretty soon I'm gonna have to start giving it away :surprise:

Next week it's looking like the daily highs won't be much above 80F, I'm thinking it might be time to make an order for shrimp...

Edit: Oh, and forgot to mention, I haven't gotten any more planaria in the trap, so I'm gonna maybe just set it up one night a week just to maybe help keep things under control. Cross your fingers, right?


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

And I realized I haven't actually done a recent FTS so


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

Well, I ordered more Red Cherries yesterday. The seller says that he breeds them himself, and focuses on healthy shrimp first. Given how the last batch didn't seem to take off (I think there's still 4?) hopefully we can get this going.


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## ustabefast (Jan 24, 2017)

How are you feeding the RCS? I always have an Indian Almond leaf or two in my shrimp tanks.
You mentioned getting Endlers, have you kept them before? The males are pretty but you will have a population explosion with a mixed group and unfortunately, the females are much larger and unattractive.
I have a 20-gallon long tank stocked with Blue Velvet RCS along with a shoal of Chili Rasboras. Micro fish are a pretty safe tank mate for shrimp if you are going for a minimalist look.


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

No fish yet. I want to get the shrimp population up before I venture out into that territory. And with 4 in the tank I’ve barely fed them at all. Maybe once a week, a couple pellets of hikari crab cuisine. 


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

I made a water change doohickey to try and simplify water changes. It's just a flow diffuser to keep the hose from blasting things around. My long term plan is to get an r/o unit and something like a brute trash can. With the overflow drain in the sump I should be able to just wheel the can up to the tank, open the bottom valve, and run the pump to get the water into the tank.


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

Ordered some new shrimp. Had 5/20 DOA, so the seller refunded me for the dead at least, but the others seem to be doing shrimp things. They're all babies compared to the year old ones that are still in the tank!


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

Here's one of the few remaining old ones from last year, with one of the new guys blurily out in front of her.


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

The shrimp have gotten to the point that they seem to come out when I sit down next to the tank. Which is cool.


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

https://youtu.be/xmrDyqXE234

I made a little video of the tank, I wanted to show a better sense of the tank. I'm pretty happy with it, though of course there's room for improvement


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

I’ve got a berried shrimp!

https://i.imgur.com/8v4T3HX.mp4


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

Hey all! So it's been a while here. Since the last time I posted my water got way wonky and I wound up getting tired of buying distilled water, and just sprung for an R/O unit. Finally got my TDS down to be consistently below 400 (it hit over 700 before I did!) My water company is happy if the stuff that comes out of the tap is 450, but sometimes they go higher than that if things happen in their system, so the R/O unit just helps me not have to worry about whatever they're up to at any given time. But in the mean time after the one berried momma, there was no more baby shrimp, and nothing came in to replace the ones who died off until I only had 3 or 4 left. 

So since I got the water under more control, and the summer temperatures went down from 95+ every day, I went and ordered yet another batch from a different seller. This time I went whole hog and got a lot of 60. They came in happy and healthy, I only saw one dead one, and now they're exploring the tank. Just being able to look in there an see things moving around besides drifts of algae made me sit down with my camera again and I made another little video:






So there's still a ton of algae, but things are getting under control, and I'm looking forward to seeing what happens rather than just being sad about it.


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

I made another video, this time more about the hardware. 






The algae is getting more and more under control, and the shrimp seem to be doing fine still. I'll wait until the first real molting cycle to pass final judgement on that one though. Fingers crossed!


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## Econde (Oct 13, 2015)

This is neat!


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

Econde said:


> This is neat!


Thanks! It's been set up long enough that the plants are crazy pants, even though they're all slow growers. Now I just have to get the fauna sorted out.


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

Some slightly blurry photos. But there's a berried shrimp, and I think she's even one of the few survivors from the last batch so she might even be a second generation, so these eggs would be third generation!


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

Here's a monday morning moment of zen for you


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

So since the last update there's been a severe drop off in the shrimp population. They're just not breeding. So, as I was walking the aisle at one of the local fish stores I saw a bunch of Hillstream Loaches and I went "Hmmm. That tank is 3/4 of the way to being a hillstream type tank anyway..." and I got to thinking. The pump I had was a little bit under powered anyway which I think is part of the algae problem I've had, as well as just not keeping things as clean of debris as I would like, so I found a cheap Chinese pump on amazon to try out that was rated for 1060gph vs the 640gph of the old pump. With head losses I figure now I'm around 650gph into the tank, which is a turnover of around 16 times per hour. Then, a group of White Clouds to liven things up, and now I have a group of 3 Sewellia lineolata loaches too. They were small, and seemed to be kind of traumatized by the store, so I haven't seen them out and about at all, but there's so many places for them to hide in here I'm hopeful they're still alive at least. There's certainly plenty of biofilm-covered surfaces in there at least...

So with all of that, I made another little video of things:


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

The loaches are starting to come out occasionally:










And then I made an internal filter to help stir up the corners without swamping the sump with debris, though I think I'd like to get some sort of powerhead eventually to just increase flows in the tank. This pump/powerhead is a Rio 1700 which is rated at 640gph so it's definitely bigger than anything that I'd want to have in the tank permanently, but the minnows have fun playing in the extra flow for an hour or two.






Last, I raided the discard bucket in the soil lab at work and sorted though a bunch of pea gravel sized rocks to find the smoothest of them to clean off. I think I need a few more bigger smooth rocks but I'm pretty happy with how it's shaping up for now.


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

Got a piece of 4" pvc for a couple bucks, then drilled some holes in it, then clipped out a hole in the eggcrate in the sump for it to go though, then added a filter sock. Works super well. Next I think I'm going to plumb in a hard drain line. The hose is just too long and I think is the primary culprit for the gurgling noises.


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

More detail on the sump. 

In the meantime I had a cold and was home all weekend, so I just sat and watched everything. It was pretty nice and restful. 

Now I'm working on making the drain into a hardline. But I think I'm now on to the 5th trip to the hardware store. I'm apparently not that great at estimating how 45 degree angles add up!


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

Rearranged some of the Anubias nana in the front and added a few more rocks that I've found.


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

Another video, this time mostly just shots of the fish and plants. I set up my little tripod and did some fun timelapse shots of a loach and a shrimp playing on the rocks

https://i.imgur.com/CfRAfwr.mp4


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

Both the loaches were out and about at the same time. I think the bigger one is starting to get used to things too and isn't hiding all the time.


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

So I went back to the LFS and was able to eventually find three more hillstream loaches (they’re good at hiding!) so I now have 5 of them. 

Got out the macro lens and tripod and had a fun time looking at the loaches:

https://i.imgur.com/hj4gJFQ.mp4

And made a video with a lot more macro shots and timelapse stuff


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## TacitBlues (Aug 4, 2016)

So I've been messing with how the water comes into the tank, and made a little spray bar thing just because I had the PVC laying around. 










Then used the existing loc-line on the end and made it into kind of a waterfall?










I don't know, I might just go back to the loc- line only like I had before, I can't decide if I like this idea or not.


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