🐠 TOTM VOTE NOW: June 2026 Tank of the Month Contest (16 gallons and smaller)

[connorlindeman32 33]

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Please Vote Now
We have 6 great tanks entered in Fishforums' June 2026 Tank of the Month contest featuring tanks sized at 16 US gallons and smaller! View both the tanks and descriptions below and then go to poll at the top of this thread, click on your choice for TOTM, and then click the "Cast" button.

Please DO NOT post any comments about any specific entry in this thread...such posts will promptly be deleted. You are not allowed to update your entry picture or video once voting has started.

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. You are not allowed to have friends or family join TFF for the main purpose of voting for you. This is a public poll so source of votes can be viewed.
If you wish, you may vote for yourself.

Winner will be awarded a neat "Tank of the Month Winner" banner in their 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

You are allowed to change your vote if you wish.
This poll will end on June 17 at 7:30 P.M (ET).

 

[Back in the fold1]

Here it is fellow TFFer’s . This is the one you’ve been waiting for ! My Fundulopanchax gardneri breeding five gallon . No substrate , no plants , no light and nothing in the way of decor except the two exquisitely handcrafted spawning mops you see . True simplicity in the art of fish keeping . There’s a small sponge filter , a thermometer and a heater and no lighting . This aquarium and its five adults yield two to three nice fry every week with no effort at all on my part . Two of the males are native to this aquarium and were hatched and raised in here . This is not a “ house beautiful “ aquarium and I don’t pretend that . This is a working aquarium set up for a purpose and it does indeed work . Is this a Tank of The Month ? It isn’t if you’re looking for stunning planted opulence but it is if you’re judging by results .

 

[anewbie]

This aquarium has some jelly beans (seen on the left corner back - they are pretty friendly but they don't much care for the camera - so the minute i put the camera down they will come back and say high - and a pair of Enigmatochromis lucanusi. They have been in there since march 10th so 10 days short of 4 months. As far as i can tell the e. lucanusi have not paired but the male is pretty relaxed and doesn't bother the female much (there are species of west african fishes where the male will spend all day chasing the female until they pair). In truth they deserve a larger aquarium and they might see one eventually either when i move or if something ages out before then they are 2nd up for a larger aquairum. On the positive side they appear to be less active then some of the other west african dwarf cichild.

The jelly beans have grown substantially since i've received them and seem to have settled in quite nicely. The plants are a mix bag but nothing unexpected. The hydro grows fast as does the nana val in the back - the few Echinodorus will take a year to establish them selves but that is normal esp in a tank with pure water and little nutrients. Of the 10s i have i guess this is the 3rd most interesting one but I'm ok with it - the fishes seem healthy though i would like to find a larger home to give the male a bit more room to spread his fins. Oh well a problem for another day.

If you keep blackwater aquariums i highly recommend those jelly beans - though maybe in a year or two my view will change.

 

[Whitecloudminnowguy09]

Here is my 10g White cloud mountain minnow tank. The plants include: Amazon Sword, Vallisneria, Dwarf sag, Moss ball, limno ragusa, limnofiimno wilsonii (rarer plant), and duckweed. 4 WCMMs, need to get more after a few aged deaths recently. A topfin filter, topfin lid, topfin tank. PFS for substrate. That grey rock is from a local creek (all cleaned). A bunch of ramshorn snails and a nerite snail.

 

[MrsShrimp]

This is my 10g community tank, home to a variety of shrimp, snails, tetra, sparkling gourami and corydoras (pygmy, salt & pepper & 2 female bronze who are 2 years old and get along beautifully). The salt & pepper and pygmy corys are now alone since I lost one of the former and then 2 of the latter. Not sure why as yet but maybe due to the substrate damaging their barbels. My very favourite are the sparklers. I have a menage a trois going on at present with a male displaying like crazy to 2 females. He flares his tail and dorsal fin and the colours pop and at the same time he croaks like a frog! Very cool. He occasionally will build a bubble nest which the females completely ignore!
I also have 4 armano shrimp and 3 bamboo shrimp who are very entertaining and often have little quarrels between each other and upset the male dwarf gourami who lurks at the back when they land on him by mistake!
There are a few nerite snails, zebra and brown, and assassin snails which eradicated the bladder snails which took over the tank and are themselves now taking over!
The tank is quite new at about 2 years old. It is heavily planted and when I do weekly water changes I have to pull the long thin strands out as they take over. I planted anubias on to the drift wood pieces and these have rooted.
I feed twice daily with granules, flakes and algae wafers twice a week, also weekly blood worm.
Thanks for reading and good luck all!

 

[gimme302 1]

This is Buce Box 2.0.
Version 1 ran for 4 or 5 months before the tear down, which I had to do because the *%+#^* snails that hitchhiked in wound up eating the plants. I only let them stay in the first place thinking they'd clean up any algae while the tank was maturing, but while the pic looks bright it actually isn't bright enough to grow algae. So they ate my plants instead.

Version 2 is snail-free, with the exception of the assassin you can see on the left side glass. He's there in case I missed any of the blasted snot mines from the first go around.

This is a 3 gallon UNS tank I purchased for an experiment. I've been unable to keep any sort of bucephalandra in my tanks with critters so I wanted to play with water parameters to see if I could figure out why. This allows me to change things without having to worry about the fish, and I think I'm making progress but after 2 months it's too early to say.
But, so far so good!

With the exception of the Schismatoglottis prietoi in the front left corner it's all bucephalandra. Brownie jade, brownie ghost, pink malawi, super blue, antyovani, aragon, mini purple, green wavy, and....I think that's it.

As for the aquarium itself it's well made and seemingly sturdy, but I don't care for rimless tanks because A) Build up at the waterline isn't hidden and B) They never come with lids, which I need in this dry climate to reduce evaporation. Not to mention keeping the dust out. (Colorado is incredibly dusty) UNS does actually offer a lid for this tank, but it's a piece of glass that covers the entire top so oxygen exchange would be inhibited. It's also not fastened in any way so I could see me fat fingering it into the space behind the desk where it would lie shattered for an eternity.
Or until I decide to get a new desk.

The light is a Fluval plant nano which is total overkill, but it was lying around from a previous experiment so......

Filtration is UGF. I cannibalized a powered sponge filter for the pump and used modular plates found on Amazon and it works great and takes up far less space than a sponge.

Once I've settled on the water I'll stuff it full of shrimp. Just to be improper.

 

[JCinPA1]

My first tank in about 50 years.

This is a Marineland standard 10 gallon aquarium with an Aqueon full hood with a basic light. It was set up on April 27 and I had a disastrous start, but have since recovered. It is fully cycled, using a Penn Plax undergravel filter powered by a 2W Nano Whisper air pump, and an Aquaclear AC20, modified to hold a foam stack of 20 PPI, 30 PPI, a dual-density polishing pad, topped by the Fluval Bio Max media that came with the filter. It now houses four guppies, two endlers, and one sunset thick-lipped gourami, trichogaster labiosa. That will be it for this tank, a larger one is in the planning stages, as my centerpiece fish will outgrow this setup in a few months.

I don't expect to win with only plastic plants, colored gravel, and a plastic hollow log, but I wanted to join in the fun just because this forum is so awesome. Thought I'd participate. Many thanks to those who have helped me through the learning process this place is great!


You can see my prize sunset gourami lazily surveying his kingdom just right of center. That's blue guppy in the upper left corner, there is a yellow guppy and one dumbo-eared guppy with a fire orange tail upper right by the lift tube and two endlers in the lower right corner. I have a tequila sunrise guppy in there somewhere, probably in or behind the log.

My grandkids are fascinated by this. Ages 2 and 4. Much fun!

 

[connorlindeman32 33]

Please scroll up as you review the six awesome entries, and then in the poll at the top of this thread, click on your choice for Tank of the Month. Be sure to click the CAST button to register your vote. Good luck to all our entrants.

 

[connorlindeman32 33]

Sorry that I was late getting the poll going. I've been really busy getting my applications ready for September. Working on my personal statement and lots of other things.

 

[Alice B]

what's a jelly bean? I ran a search and found jelly bean convicts and jelly bean parrot fish and a wolf fish?

 

[Back in the fold1]

jelly bean convicts

NO ! ! ! The mad scientists can’t even leave the humble Convict Cichlid alone ! ? ! ?

 

[anewbie]

what's a jelly bean? I ran a search and found jelly bean convicts and jelly bean parrot fish and a wolf fish?

Ladegasia roloff


i

 

[connorlindeman32 33]

Three way tie. Can't let that happen. VOTE VOTE VOTE!

 

[JCinPA1]

Hahahaha! Photo finish!

 

[Fishmanic35 151]

and gimme30 leads by a nose hair