long term, what has been your best, most stable tank, and what has been your worst, most unstable tank???

[Magnum Man]

I've got a successful African Tetra, and South American Tetra tanks... the African tank is a 45 gallon, 3 foot wide, by 2 foot deep tank, that can be viewed from both the front and back, but all maintenance, has be be done from a narrow end, so I got lucky on that one... the South American Tetra tank is a standard 55 gallon, and has won TOM previously, and I like it, but it slowly loses fish more than it should...

I would say my best, most stable, is my standard 55 gallon Hillstream tank, it's highly unconventional, and is a cool water tank, that is one of my most crowded tanks, but it rarely loses fish, and I'm having good luck raising up some baby panda loaches, right now, and I now have cherry shrimp started in this tank, even with a small school of Denison barbs, and a single medium sized pink kisser gourami in the tank very little maintenance has been required in this tank...

I would say my worst, is another 45 gallon, it's highly planted, and highly filtered, and while it's a mature tank, I lose a fish every week or two out of this tank for some reason ( zombie disease ) a couple of the oldest fish are still doing fine... ( at this point ), so they may be resistant, or the carriers of something... it's a beautiful tank, I guess I've resolved to quit buying fish for this tank, until a month or two goes by, with no losses...

what's your best, and most troublesome tank???

 

[Magnum Man]

part of my thoughts along this thread, is, I'm sure some tanks ( size or shape ) are inherently "better" at keeping fish, I think a lot of shapes and sizes of tanks, were created for us, nor the residents... I'm not a fan of hex or cylinder tanks, for those reasons... those 45 gallons make beautiful tanks to view, they just don't seem as stable as a standard 55

 

[GaryE]

The longer I do this, the more stable the tanks are because even I get better at doing things right. Once I decided to look at the adaptations my fish (or potential fish) have, and to respect their evolution and natural history with the tank 'design' (my tanks are pretty basic), things settled into a welcome groove here. It's been good for about 25 years now, but before that, there were many moments of mayhem. I still make mistakes, but not trying to balance out communities with different needs reduces them.

Bigger tanks with smaller populations and lots of plants, water changes, filtration and preparation do best for me.