Severum Tank Journal

[garyspence84]

Ok, so my tank is finally empty. Sold all my fish, stripped down the whole tank, gutted it out and now I am starting from scratch.

I am going for a easier to maintain set up. It WAS a heavily planted, discus community tank (never again) for the past couple of years, but now I need a new project, so this is it.

Over the next few months I will post pictures of my progress and give some updates as well, so I can have records of the tanks progress as well as a bit of reading/viewing for who ever stumbles across my thread.

I'm off to paint the back of my tank black...

 

[Chad]

I can't wait to see what you come up with. Any idea what direction you want to go with it?

 

[garyspence84]

Just finished painting the back, looks awesome!

Before...

After...

Going to give it a 2nd coat on friday (working tomorrow... booo) then get it filled with water again and get some fish hopefully over the weekend.

Thinking of getting some barbs, red line torpedeo barbs maybe. nice shoal of red eyes and a pair of sevs. That will prob all change on a daily basis though i'll see how it goes.

 

[Chad]

Boy that black does make a huge difference. I like that.

 

[garyspence84]

Thanks very much, it does make a big difference doesnt it? Such a simple idea too, wish I had found out about it years ago instead of mucking about with countless, rubbish backdrops.

 

[Chad]

"rubbish backdrops"
So true!

 

[Sharpy1987]

may i ask as to why you have said ' never again' to the heavily planted discus tank? too much maintainence?

 

[garyspence84]

may i ask as to why you have said ' never again' to the heavily planted discus tank? too much maintainence?

Pretty much Yeh. Seems to be (for me anyway) when its good, its really good but as soon as standards slip a tiny bit, its really bad. I never really managed to find a good balance. But I might 1 day, in the future try it again.

But severum for now. Iv kept them before for years and regret getting rid of them (ironically for discus).

 

[Electric Warrior]

I have always wanted to do a planted discus tank. Maybe I will someday when I can shell out for some decent sized adults. How did you do yours. Did you raise them in a bb and go planted when they were older, or did you try and grow them out planted? Sorry to get off the topic of your sevs, but just curious?

 

[garyspence84]

Haha slightly off topic, but not to worry.

I got all my discus as babies and just added them to my planted tank and let them grow up there, along with plants (if that's what your meaning?).

It is very rewarding if you can keep on top of it, but unfortunately I couldn't, and when 1 died (my fave blue turq) I kind of lost the plot and it went to the dogs, so to speak.

Looking forward to keeping some hardier severum (or poor man's discus ) again.

 

[Sharpy1987]

what size is the tank?

 

[garyspence84]

4foot

 

[garyspence84]

Wee update.

Got my tank moved to other side of my living room, and filled it with water, and everything all put back together. It doesn't seem like its a big job, especially when I read this back to myself, but its taken me a fair bit of time, but got there in the end.

Will post some pics in the morning, bed time now

 

[garyspence84]

Got some fish today

2 gold severum
2 fire mouth
9 tiger barbs
1 red tail shark

I couldn't decide on the severum or fire mouth, so I got them both. A decission I hope I won't regret.

I will post some pictures tonight of fish if I can.

 

[garyspence84]

Ok, we picture update..

Filling the tank... boring...

better get scaping...

New Gold Severum

other sev

New Firemouth

other firemouth

and in the mix (as you can see) are all the tiger barbs / killer zebra's

I know I started this journal as a Severum journal, but now its going to be Severum AND Firemouth journal.