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Vote Now! March 2021 Tank of the Month Contest (16 gallons and smaller)

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Vote Now for March 2021 Tank of the Month


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Fishmanic

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Tank of the Month
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PLEASE VOTE!
We have 9 awesome tanks entered in Fishforums' March 2021 Tank of the Month contest featuring tanks sized at 16 gallons and smaller. View all the tanks and descriptions below and then go to top of this thread and click on your choice for TOTM and then click the "Cast" button.

It’s best to view these awesome tanks on a computer screen or a tablet instead of a small phone screen.

Please Note:
Any attempt to influence competition results, other than by casting your allocated vote, is not permitted and may result in your entry being removed and / or further action being taken. This is a public poll so source of votes can be viewed.

Winner will be awarded a neat "Tank of the Month Winner" banner in his profile area and will be featured in a "TOTM Winner" thread for all to see and to comment on. Winner will also be added to our TOTM WALL OF FAME

This poll will end on March 15th at 7 PM ET (US)

Please DO NOT post any comments about specific tanks in this thread...such posts will promptly be deleted. This thread will be cleaned up occasionally for best readability.
 
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This is a 15 gallon column tank. I have an AquaClear 20 running on it, with a sponge on the intake. I use an Aqueon preset heater, and the lights are led.
I started this tank in January of 2020, and have changed the stocking a few times.
My Ph is 7.4, hardness is 110ppm, and my temperature is set to 78°F.
My current stocking is:
1 Blue Marble Betta, named Sailor
5 Pygmy Corydoras
1 Nerite Snail
1 Black Devil Snail
50+ Red Cherry Shrimp
And some hitchhiking MTS
I have 2 pieces of spiderwood, some oak leaves, an Indian almond leaf, and a piece of bamboo.
Plants in the tank are an amazon sword, 2 small Java fern, Java moss, hornwort, a couple of marimo moss balls, and duckweed.
Once a week I change 50% of my water and add Prime and a small dose of Seachem Flourish.
This is my feeding schedule:
Bugbites Flake, Sera Spirulina Tab
Bugbite Micropellet, Aquatic Arts Bottomfeeder Shrimp Pellet, Cucumber Slice
Frozen Bloodworm, Ground Seaweed Flakes, Cucumber Slice
Rehydrate Tubifex Worms, AA Bottomfeeder Pellet, Sera Spirulina Tab
Shelled Peas
Fasting Day
 
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Happy day,

IMG_20210228_192115.jpg


Size: 9.6g
Light: ONF Nano.
Age: 3 months
Filtration: Walstad-method tank
Hardscape: Okho stone (dragon stone), spiderwood, wood from my lake
Floating Plants: Frogbit, damn duckweed, some sort of fuzzy, superhydrophobic floater, and red root floaters.
Planted Plants: Dwarf sags, crippie, subwassertang, pearl, and some other grassy stuff that i pulled from another tank.
Substrate: Miracle Gro Organic Potters mix capped with Carib Sea Eco-Complete.
Ferts: None
Temp: 74-76.
Critters: 25 blue dream shrimp, two amano shrimp, one purple mystery snail, two blue snails, one ramshorn snail, messload of illegal immigrant snails
Diet: strawberry, cantaloupe, rasberry, honeydew, carrot, green pepper, cucumber, and the Denerrele family of food sticks, plus some Plecocaine just for good measure.
Water Chemistry: 7.8ph, 210 TDS and a lot of Xanax, Zetia and Prozac, the latter of which enters our water supply from humans peeing it out. I bet I could make a pretty penny if I could extract all that and sell it back on the open market.
 
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Tank size: 18.5"×5.5"×7" approx 4g
Flora: moss, duckweed
Fauna: 10x boraras urophthalmoides, 9x neocaridina "blue"
Temperature: 78F
Heater: Aqueon mini heater
Lighting: 6500k lamp
Feeding: Fluval Bug Bites, Northfin Fry Starter, Hikari First Bites, OmegaOne Flakes, Hikari Shrimp Cuisine, Bacter AE

GH 8
KH5
pH 7
Set up since September 2020
 
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Tank: 9.6g
Filter: aquael versamax fzn-1
Soil: fluval stratum
Light: NICREW ClassicLED Plus Planted 50%
Age: 4 months
GH 8
KH 3
PH 7.4
NO3 5

Temperature: 27°C
Once a week I change 50%

Fertz: Aquayer micro/macro 0.5ml per day

Plants: Echinodorus tenellus, Bucephalandra, Hemianthus micranthemoides, Hydrocotyle tripartita, Rotala macrandra, rotala sp green

Inhabitants: 5-6 Heterandria Formosa and shrimps
 
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This is my divided 10. On the left side is count Rosencross. I’ve had him for over 2 years. On the right side is my 2 ADFs and my koi/Nemo betta named Thiery. I just got Thiery on Saturday, so he is the most recent addition. He gets along great with the ADFs, and the ADFs are hand fed so there’s no feeding issues.

The tank is planted with rotala, anubias, crypts, moss balls and giant duckweed.

light is a 24 watt led
I fertilize with seachem flourish (comprehensive, not excel) and the occasional osmocote root tab.
Currently I’m running two mini tetra whisper filters and two sponge filter on this tank. The reason I got the whisper filters is because my sister doesn’t want the sponge filters running at night, she likes it quite, so I got something that doesn’t bubble for her. The sponge filters still run during the day however.

Temp is 82°
Ph 8.0
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate <5ppm

My babies are fed frozen mysis shrimp, bloodworms, veggies and omega one sinking pellets.
 
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Just finished my planted bowl! No idea how many gallons it is but it's definitely less than 16g!

It's filterless so I'm trying to do the Walstad method. Eventually i want to add some red cherry shrimp but for now i just want to get it cycled and make sure it all works.

Substrate: ADA Amazonia 2.0 with Seachem root tabs.

Plants: dwarf hairgrass, montecarlo, hygrophila, rotala rotundifolia, anubia nana, java fern and java moss.

Light: clip on LED desk lamp off ebay.
 
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Tank size: 45l (~11gal)
Age: almost 4 years old
Stocking: 10 amano shrimp (green jades and betta arriving next week); live plants - anubias, Java fern, moss (flame & peacock), Hydrocotyle tripartita, salvinia, subwassertang, marimo balls
Water parametres: pH ~7.8; ammonia, nitrites and nitrates all 0 (liquid tests)
Fertilizers: daily dose of all-in-one liquid fertilizer
Lighting: 1 x COB LED lamp (~20 lumens per litre)
Filtration: small internal filter (Aquael pat mini), no aeration
Maintenance & feeding: 25% water change every week, the amanos subsist mostly on things they find in the tank with occasional supplementation in the form of spinach, carrots, indian almond leaves and frozen brine shrimp.
 
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60 litre/15.5 gallon planted tank, started as an emergency tank in August 2020 after my shrimp were being poisoned by plants contaminated with pesticides. You can read about that here, if you're bored enough to check it out! Luckily, moving the survivors to this tank with new sand and only in-vitro grown plants saved the colony, who are thriving and reproducing in here :)

Ammonia: 0
nitrite: 0
nitrate: Rarely goes above ten
GH: 253ppm
Filtration: Sponge filter mainly for aeration and because the shrimp like it, All Ponds Solution canister filter for the heavy lifting.
Hardscape: Dragonstone, coconut hut
Planting:
Echinodorus 'rose'
Limnophila sessiliflora
Rotala 'bonsai'
Amazon Frogbit
Hygrophilia siamensis 53b
vallis


Ferts:
TNC plugs (root tabs)
Tetramin Liquid ferts

Feeding schedule: Usually small meals twice a day, flakes once, frozen food once - mixed frozen foods, usually some daphnia/cyclops/moina since it's small enough for fry and makes a cloud in the water column, letting everyone feed, and the adult fish like it too. Smaller amounts of frozen mini bloodworms, brineshrimp or tubifex for the cories and adult fish. Cory pellets and wafers used at different times, shrimp live on tank algae, the same pellets as the cories, occasional Shrimp Cuisine and snowflake food. Brineshrimp with spirulina. Live food when I can get it, microworms fairly often since they're small enough for fry and I have colonies of microworms going. Feed small meals 3-4 times a day when there are fry, like there is currently. Have been trying a bit of veg now and then to try to tempt the cories to eat some. I like to feed a variety! Change it up often.

Maintenance: Frequency and volume of water changes differs according to stocking. Minimum of 50% once a week, but more often as fry grow and increase the bioload. Since it has shrimp, I don't like to do more than 50% at a time on this tank, and nitrates are always below 20ppm when I test, rarely go above 10 ppm, so it seems to be balanced pretty well. The frogbit sucks up a lot of waste.

Plant trimming as needed. Sessiliflora is planted around the sponge filter to hide it, frogbit needs thinning out and the roots trimming back frequently, every water change it gets thinned out.

Current Stocking

Three adult female guppies, six young sterbai cories (moving to 57 gallon soon) seven young blue platies growing out, many fry! Countless Neocaridina Davidii, six amano shrimp.

This is currently the female only tank. I'd kept a young female that had been born with a prolapse. Don't want her to breed, didn't want to cull, and wouldn't send her to the store, so she'll live out her life with me. Named her Cherry, and have kept two other females to keep her company. :wub:

I'm trying to wind up livebearer breeding/keeping, but it's a long process! Those two females are still churning out fry :lol: I want to switch the male/female tanks I have since catching fish out of this tank is a nightmare, really not suited for catching fry - It inevitably ends up with a load of plants uprooted, which doesn't help them thrive! So this one will become the retirement tank for the male guppies I'm keeping, the females will go to my other 15.5 gal tank, and the fry to the grow out tank. Cories will be moving to a 57 gallon tank when they're a bit bigger/the 57 gallon has been revamped (lots of projects on the go!)

Also toying with the idea of making this a themed tank! I think creating a naturalistic, fairy or hobbit type scape would be really fun, and suit the male guppies and shrimp pottering about :D I've been training the hydrocotyle tripartitia 'Japan' to grow over the coconut hut at the front right, the cories and the shrimp love that little hut. Also create little caves out of Indian Almond leaves that they like to hide under.

Good luck to everyone who entered! Some really stunning scapes and tanks entered, makes me want to work harder on my own aquariums!
 
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Tank Dimensions: 18" x 5.5" x 7.1" Capacity: 3 gallons
Started: July 2020

Parameters: Ammonia: 0, Nitrites: 0, Nitrates: 0, pH: 7.0, KH: 990 ppm, GH: 180 ppm, temperature: 78F

Maintenance: 80% weekly water changes, vacuum substrate because inhabitants are poopy-heads, no glass cleaning.

Light: Fluval Aquasky 2.0 on 8 hours/day, dim for 30 minutes before and after (red 68%, green 100%%, blue 100%, white 90%).
Direct sunlight for 1-2 hours when the sun comes out.

Filtration: Aqueon Quiet Flow 3 gal. internal with sponges only. ZooMed 10 gal. canister with sponges and biomedia only, no carbon. Filters get cleaned once a month, alternating every two weeks.

Heater: Archaea 25W

Hardscape: Ohko Dragon stone, mangrove branch, lava stone, petstore gravel for substrate.

Plants: Anubias nana petite, Hydrocotyle leucocephala, Chryptocoryne lutea, Phyllanthus Fluitans, Lobelia cardinalis, Epipremnum aureum, Spathiphyllum, Ceratophyllum demersum, Lemna minor

Critters: Home to Nicodemus (Carinotetraodon travancoricus), and an assortment of bladder and ramshorn snails (his roommates). There used to be a cherry shrimp but I think he became snack a couple of weeks ago.

Feeding: Algae for the roommates (they keep the tank clean), live bloodworms for Nicodemus once daily, mosquito larvae and scuds when available. He'll give me the look is the food is dead and won't touch it. He snacks on his roommates when he feels like it. No fertilizers for plants, just critter waste.

This tank has been fun to put together given the constraining dimensions for a pea puffer. I used to do twice weekly water changes until I put in the canister filter, so am now to a once weekly water change. The plants do an amazing job at keeping the water quality stable.

Nicodemus is a great little bit, always curious and greets by opening his tail. However, he is terrified of high contrast stripes, so I have to make sure not to wear them when I am near him or he bolts.

I am very much enamored with the Pacific Northwest forests and ecosystems, so am glad to have been able to recreate that feeling with this tank. The banana slug still won't agree to move in there but I will not take it personally. He has a nice spot in the garden.

Thank you all for the help in making this tank happen with all the sage advice and encouragement. Good luck to all participating, and thank you for sharing your creations and being an inspiration.

Cheers!
 
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End of Entries:
Please scroll up slowly as you review the 9 entries and then cast your vote in the poll at the top of this thread.

Our very popular Pet of the Month contest resumes in mid March. So take a pic of your favorite pet in your household and be ready to enter POTM.
 
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Presently we have a tie for first place. Just one day left for voting. If you haven’t yet voted, please vote now.

Please note: you are allowed to change your vote if you wish.

Our very popular Pet of the Month contest has now started. If you have a pet, we hope you enter it in the contest.
 
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We have a very close race. Less than one day left in this poll. Please vote now if you haven’t voted. You can change your vote if you wish.
 
We have a tie! We need your help to decide which of the top two entries should win March 2021 Tank of the Month. Please head over to the Tiebreaker Poll and cast your vote!

 
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