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Tank of the month

May 1999

I must say I love this tank shot. Great looking tank (The Webmaster)

Description by tank owner:
My tank is an old 55 gallon, stainless steel, slate bottom tank. there is 3" to 4" of natural quartz gravel that has been
supplemented with laterite.
Lighting consists of 2 X 55 watt 5400K power compact fluorescent lights and 2 standard
48" fluorescent Vitalite Power Twist lights.
The lights provide enough heat to keep the tank temperature between 74 and 78 degrees F with no heater.
Filtering is a Fluval 303 and a Magnum H.O.T filter both with only mechanical media, no carbon or other chemical media.
I have a bottled CO2 injection system using 10lb. refillable CO2 bottle.
My water is New England well water which has a GH of 7 and a KH of 3. I supplement with Tropica Master Grow and
Potassium Nitrate twice a week and do a 30% water change once a week.

My plant kingdom consist of Rotala, Hygrophilia Sunset, Pygmy Chain Swords,
Dwarf Saggitaria (some of which measure over 10") Cabomba, and Java Moss.
All of which grow at a such tremendous rate I have to prune 2 to 3 times a week.
I'm still getting the hang of pruning properly, which is tough when the Rotala and Hygro grow almost 6" a week!

The show fish population right now consists of 3 Rainbow species, Neon Rainbows, Ornate Rainbows and
Bosemani Rainbows.
The worker fish population is SAE's and Otos(for algae control),
Neon Rosy Barbs (for hair/thread algae control, which by the way are EXCELLENT at it!) ,
a Pleco, and newly added Yo Yo loaches (added to control the snail population which recently snuck in on a plant).
My fish keeping history spans over 30 years in the hobby.
I have bread and raised Discus, Angels, Killies, and many different Africans during this time.
I have just recently gotten involved in having a 1st class planted tank as raising plants in an aquarium
has always been next to impossible for me.
For me this has been the final frontier in freshwater aquarium keeping.
As you can see from the pictures I no longer have a problem growing plants!

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