From 5 to 29... gallons, in under nine months

Once my betta, Mr. MJF II, was all well established in his new 5 gallon tank, with a varying cast of tank mates, I had to tell my old friend Jim from Connecticut, who used to know me when I had lots of tanks at home and who still has a house full of aquariums himself - both fresh- and salt water. Then, last September (2015), about a year after I started my nano tank, he called me to say a friend of his had a son moving out, and he was leaving a 29 gallon tank with a stand and equipment behind, and she wanted to get rid of it. Did I want it? After some hemming and hawing I decided yes. Somehow it found its way from Connecticut to the Bronx in November, and at that point I let it sit over the holidays, but I started reading some of the recent books more intently, and my two favorites soon became:

•  Diana Louise Walstead, Ecology of the Planted Aquarium: A Practical Manual and Scientific Treatise. This book was first published in 1999, after I dismantled my tanks in Connecticut, because I was moving to NYC. It contains a wealth of new insight about running planted tanks.
• Matt Owens, An Alternative Aquarium: A Robust Habitat, published in 2011. More wonderful information and food for thought as to how things really work in a planted tank, if you want to get anywhere close to a natural environment, particularly in terms of adding inverts to the equation.

It turns out some of my most basic assumptions were misguided, and I abandoned all notions that I knew anything, and decided to plan my new tank very differently than I'd ever done before. Having said that, I did also decide that the path I wanted to find was to a high tech "natural aquarium." For me, leveraging the existing technology means in effect simulating a larger body of water than just the tank itself, and to make maintenance absolutely idiot proof by automating everything. The goal is to be able to take off without any worries. Given my new ecological focus, specific choices needed to be made. 

So far this has resulted in the following:

• Under gravel heating cables, in this case Hydrokable from Hydor, with their Hydroset thermostat with digital display. I want to maintain about 78F, and since the heating cable is only 50 Watt, and it can get a bit chilly at night in winter, I needed a backup heater, so:
• Backup heat provided by the Hydor ETH in-line heater for canister filters, in this case the 200 Watt unit. A very elegant solution. I set it about 2 degrees below the under gravel heat, so the under gravel heat always comes on first, ensuring circulation through the gravel, which is the point.
• I did want to use a canister filter, as I do believe water movement is important, and it gives me the option to filter more or less, as needs dictate. In came a Hydor Pro 150, Fair to say, I sort of fell in love with the Hydor gear, and so far my experience with the company has been stellar, especially regarding after sales support. For now, the filter uses standard Hydor media, a black pad for coarse filtration and a white wool pad for fine mechanical filtration in the first tray, and Hydor's Sintered Quartz bio-rings as well as some lava rock in the second tray. In short, with this setup there is excellent mechanical and biological filtration, and chemical filtration is an option, when necessary.
• Because I want to have some live inverts in the tank, I needed a good pre-filter, a sponge filter, and the ATI Filter Max II Hydro Sponge was the way to go. The place to buy it is American Aquarium Products, they have some of the best information on their site on this and other products, here is the link to their impressive information on sponge filtration.
• For substrate, after looking far and wide, I decided to go with Aquadert from Aquarium Plants - about 3" worth of their "Natural Amazon" variety.
• For the rest, I've used an Underwater Treasures 3D background, the Cave Wall, and, because I have a problem with radiant heat in the summer, I applied some Reflectix radiant barrier to the back of the tank, to avoid having to have fish soup in summer. Last summer I learned the hard way that the brick wall continues to radiate heat all night long, even with the A/C running, and without a radiant barrier, it was impossible to keep the temperature in the tank in a reasonable range.
• For UV I chose the TMC Vecton V2 200 8 Watt unit from American Aquarium Products (AAP). Some extensive reading went into this, but eventually it was Strohmeier's articles on the AAP website that gave me the conclusive insight, namely that UV will improve the ORP (Oxidation Reduction Potential) of the water, and since fish effectively swim in their immune system (as opposed to drinking water as we humans do), the main effect is to raise the immune system of the fish, even more so than killing off potentially harmful bacteria or algae.
• Otherwise, the tank is a standard 29 Gallon tank, with a stock hood, with a Hagen PowerGlo T8 high power fluorescent, and I'll keep this around until I am ready to move to high intensity LED lighting, CO2, and some serious aquascaping and permanent plants, 
• For now, I only have 6 Amano Shrimp in this tank, just to get it settled, for other inverts I've added some MTS (Malaysian Trumpet Snails), Tubifex, Planaria, Daphnia, Rotifers, Copepods, and Gammarus (Scuds), hoping that they will become established before the permanent planting and ahead of the fish. The selection of inverts follows the recommendations of Matt Owens, except I did not go out and catch them outdoors, but I bought them from a biological supply house, Niles Biological.
• For plants, as a temporary arrangement, I have a Wisteria that outgrew my 5 Gallon tank, and was well on its way to killing off every other Wisteria in that tank, so by taking it out, the remaining Wisteria are starting to grow again. I put the Wisteria in a terracotta pot, with a shard to cover the hole in the bottom, then a handful of Aquadert, some organic potting soil, and covered it with some gravel from the original 5 gallon tank, and allowed the tubifex to settle in the pot, by way of an experiment. I did use one Seachem Flourish tab in the planter, and the Wisteria is taking off, so far growing two new shoots in the first two weeks. I have two Amazon swords to provide some cover for the sponge filter intake to my canister filter. Then, there are some Marimo balls, and some strands of Java Moss.

Pictures: Installing the Hydrokable was a bit of a challenge, but with a few practice runs and some extra cable clamps, I got it to work. The operative thing is, the cable cannot cross over. The ATI Filter Max II is large, but I've mounted it sideways, to get the intake as low as possible in the tank. The return is via a spray bar, below the water line as I am planning to have in-line CO2 injection.

What will be interesting is how I will do with the filter, but I suspect that I will only have to change the filter media once every three months or so, because the sponge filter will get rinsed out every week when I do my water change, and it will prevent a lot of debris from even entering the filter. The filter media are the standard Hydor filter pads of white wool and black foam in the first tray and Hydor's Sintered Quartz bio-rings, plus some lava-rock in the second tray. The sponge filter is very fine, so inverts will not get sucked up in the filter, and the shrimp love to pick the sponge clean. In short, this is mechanical and biological filtration all the way, with the option to do chemical filtration when needed. This is one reason why I like the canister filter better in concept than the no-filter approach (with maybe a circulation pump), for it leaves you without the option to do chemical filtration if it should ever be necessary.

In all, the whole thing is becoming a slow and gradual project, and the culmination will be when I get CO2 and high intensity lighting, and at that time I will plant the final plants, and finally it will be time to add some fish - probably by June, nine months after I was offered the tank.

My thinking about the plants is to have some simple plants that can grow with moderate light first, but then to design an aquascape that makes the most of the lighting and CO2, and for fertilizers it will become an experiment how much can be supplied by the fish, and what needs to be supplemented. I foresee starting out adding fertilizers but gradually to wean the tank from them as much as possible and try to find a balance so I don't need to add a lot of fertilizers in the long run - always striving as much as possible for natural solutions and minimal maintenance needs.

Refugium

I'll also be running a refugium of sorts to have a steady supply of inverts once there are fish in the tank. For now my refugium is a 5 gallon pail that houses a lucky bamboo, and in there I've managed to grow an invert culture fairly well. All in all up to this point, these are just the first steps towards a hopefully nicely balanced natural aquarium, without shying away from hi tech solutions, to make life easier, and particularly to reduce the maintenance requirements. My goal is that I should be able to go away for a week or two without a problem, so in due course I will hook up an Automatic Top Off (ATO) outfit as well.

Reflections on my first aquariums

The first one does not count... it was a lame rectangular tank, small, maybe 2 gallons, with a gold fish, in the living room - a 'nano' tank in today's parlance, and I was in charge of feeding it. Not too much, etc. It was a family aquarium, and I was the maintenance guy (at about 6 years of age).

My real first aquarium, as I see it, was a bit later, when I got a tank in my own room, and I could really take charge. My reading at the time was mostly about natural aquariums, and there is a very good (Dutch) website, about the natural landscape in Holland, which has a great section about the ecological aquarium. It is in Dutch, and these online translations are not all that great, so don't get your hopes up, but you can get an idea. The bottom line is the drawings there are the type that I remember, and my early attempts were at some how catching various little animals that lived in nearby lakes and creeks, and see if I could not keep them in my little tank. Eventually that proved too difficult, the things I wanted to catch were hard to catch, and if I caught them they often did not last too long. In the end, I switched to tropical fish, mostly guppies, to keep it simple and cheap, later came mollies, and maybe a few other species. For the most part I always had natural plants, but otherwise my concepts of an ecological equilibrium of sorts were not very sophisticated.

Interestingly, I am now starting to recognize why my original inclination of always attempting to achieve some sort of natural equilibrium, and focus on natural plants, and creatimg realistic environments was a bit of a Dutch tradition, and the reason why this was often referred to as a Dutch aquarium.

Collectively, I would term these efforst my "first" aquariums, and the experiment extended into my teenage years. At some point I guess girls won out over fish... and the aquariums went by the way side.

The Riddles of Tank Mates

One of the more remarkable on-line resources for the aquarist it the AqAdvisor, which allows you to calculate the capacity of your tank. This little program is great for guidance, but let common sense be your guide. If you do weekly water tests, you will see quickly if your tank is over populated. In my little 5 gallon nano tank I have experimented a lot with different possibilities, and some of the time I know I have stretched the system to the limit, but then I scale back again, and it's always the weekly water tests that tell me. My ammonia and nitrite are always 0, but nitrates and phosphates can get stubborn if the tank is over populated. Having said that, I have found that I am often amazed at what is possible, but I do use excellent filtration (API Superclean 5-20, throttled to about 50% for my 5 gallon nano), and if need be, I use a Nitrazorb, or Phoszorb cartridge.

At one point early on, I had 4 little Corydoras Aeneus, with the idea in mind of having some bottom feeders, for betta's tend to be top feeders, and they can be sloppy. It worked for the most part, except the betta would go after the sinking pellets for the corys, so it wasn't easy, sometimes I isolated him temporarily to allow them to feed. And, when the Cory's grew, they were clearly too much, and they went back to the store, and I started with small ones again.

 After doing the routine with the Aeneus Corys twice, I started with Pygmy Cory's instead - Corydoras Pygmaeus. Seven of them. The betta chases them once in a while and I have to do handstands to make sure they get to eat too, but I'm getting handy at it.

Along with these developments I acquired a population of Malaysian Trumpet Snails, and they keep my algae under control pretty well, and to be sure I added some Amano shrimp. Over population again. Mr. MJF II is going to move to a larger tank. I am convinced by now that the minimum tank for a betta is 10 gallons, and then you can have a few bottom feeders to balance out his behavior. At five gallons the tank IS his territory, in a larger tank he can set off his own corner. I used to have a betta in a 125 gallon community tank, and it worked just fine - but again, you really have to watch it with who the tank mates are. No fin nippers, etc.

The shrimp are hilarious, and they will go hang upside down on the betta's feed ring, and the funniest part is he does not know what to make of them, and essentially ignores them, and they simply try to steal a piece of food, and then they whisk it away to a corner where they can eat it. Apparently some bettas will chase and possibly demolish shrimp, but I see no sign of that with mine. He does chase the pygmy cories, but they are faster and it does not seem to really bother them, it usually only lasts a few seconds that he shoos them out of the way. There's an excellent forum dedicated to bettas, www.bettafish.com - recommended if bettas are your thing. Happy exploring.

My first aquarium III

My third first aquarium happened after I was at a dinner some eighteen months ago, and there was a vase with a betta on every table with instructions that someone should adopt the fish. My girlfriend knew I used to have aquariums, and challenged me to take the fish home. Resistance was futile. So, the next day, in mid-September of 2014, it was off to my local pet store, where I acquired a Aqueon Cue5, a 5-gallon "nano" tank - a little setup that was complete with aquarium, LED light, and filter, and the heater was the only thing I added. The first heater was no good, and I found that the pet store underestimated the amount of heat I needed, for temperature swings in my old-line NYC apartment can go from 55 at night to highs of 75 by day in winter, and a small heater would not do the trick, so in the end I settled for a 50W heater, and that can handle the load.

I added some gravel and some plants, and of course I got some food, and there I was, establishing a serious home for my betta friend... I even got a name for him MJF, My Jesus Fish, in honor of Mike Lemieux' book Hey Dude, Where's My Jesus Fish. Unfortunately, it was not to be, and in what was possibly a case of new tank syndrome, about two weeks later there were some symptoms that no one could explain, and within about two days, Mr. MJF was no more. I gave it some time, but I ended up getting a Mr. MJF II, who looked exactly like the first one and has now been with me for one and a half years already.

The picture on the left was Mr. MJF II about a year ago, at a time when I had my initial gravel substrate. The picture on the right is him in the hunting position, after I switched to Fluval Stratum for a substrate, and had allowed tubifex to become established in the tank, and he loves hunting those worms. By that time I also had a dark background of a picture of some aquarium plants.

Equipment

In short, it has become an ongoing experiment, in very short order after I got the tank I added CO2 injection, using both the Nutrafin Natural Plant system, which generates CO2 by fermentation, and is pretty nifty for a small tank like this, but during the day I also supplement the CO2 usually with one shot in the AM from my Fluval Mini Pressurized 20g CO2 kit. The logic of CO2 really is that you need it by day and not really by night, because at night the plants produce CO2, so the fermentation system provides the base load, and the manual operation of the pressurized CO2 provides some "peak load" during daylight time.

Pretty soon after I set up this tank initially, I did not like the little filter, and replaced the small Aqueon Quietflow filter that came with it with an API Superclean 5-20, which can be throttled down to the flow rate you want. It is an excellent filter, very flexible, and I've had excellent experience with it. I added a Fluval Edge sponge to it in order to prevent too many inverts to get sucked into the filter, or even small snails (I have an MTS population).

With my preference for plants I was not satisfied with the original light either, and for a while I added some extra lighting at midday by means of a Deep Blue Solarflare Micro 3 Watt LED, which is excellent for that purpose. However after about a year the LEDs on the original light began failing, and I went shopping for a better light. I found one that I absolutely love, the Nemolight Aquafresh 18 Watt light, which has a built-in timer function and the option to run a night light, which I do. This light could possibly handle up to a 20 gallon tank, so I run the day cycle at about half capacity, but that works like a charm, and I no longer need to run the Solarflare for extra lighting. It has to be the best aquarium light I have ever owned.

Plants and substrate

Now you wonder, is all that worth it? Well, to give you one example, out of my little tank I've been donating about one plant a month back to the aquarium store, that's how well my plants are doing, which means that there's always one that's outgrowing the tank, and that's the one I donate to the store, but then after that, I can trim as I please and mold the plants to fit the tank. So it is a living environment with a whole variety of plant growth. The plants are doing much better after removing the original gravel, and switching to Fluval Stratum substrate. For a while the micro swords had some problem staying anchored, but after a month or two of continuous replanting, their root system is growing strong enough they no longer get uprooted, not even by the Malaysian Trumpet Snails (MTS) burrowing in the substrate. For a while the betta was uprooting them also by trying to wiggle through the plants... but even that problem disappeared after the roots started to grow in. I do use some plant nutrition, both Seachem Flourish tabs, and after water changes some API leafzone.

The upshot

I guess, this is the third time for me to get into the fish hobby, hence the name of this blog, more about the second and first time later. Increasingly, I realize plants were always as important as fish in my book, but this time around I am going even further, for I became more interested in an ecological aquarium, and especially after reading Matt Owens' book: An Alternative Aquarium: A Robust Habitat, I became newly inspired to go in an ecologically balanced direction, and for one thing I introduced inverts, and for now in lieu of a refugium I have a 5 gallon pail with lucky bamboo and the original gravel, and from that the tank is getting live food about once a week or so, and some tubifex definitely are staying in the tank. I did not follow Matt's advice to collect my own inverts, but I bought them from a company called Niles Biological. For now, I have Tubifex, Rotifers, Copepods, Planaria, Gammarus, and Daphnia.- the Malaysian Trumpet Snails I inherited from the pet store with some plants. Net, net, I rarely have any algae issues, so that is working fine. And some live food will definitely help the health of the occupants.
The trouble began in earnest when an old friend from Connecticut called me a few months ago and mentioned a friend of his, whose son was moving out and left a 29 gallon tank with a stand behind. Did I want it? To be continued...