Letters of a Betta Addict

I’ve never had a community tank. Not really. Red my Red-tail shark has never been what I would call tank-mate friendly, and I’ve never had a tank large enough for him where I would try tank-mates. I’d need to upgrade his 32 gallon to something like a 55 before I felt comfortable doing that simply because he’s grown so large and his tank-mates would need to be so big as well.

I suppose the 20 was sort of like a community tank but really the Cory’s were little anti-social bits of adorable that fled whenever I entered the room and the WCMM just stayed in the top few inches of the tank nothing really exciting happening there. Well with the leaking of the 32 Gallon tank earlier this week I comendered the 20 Gallon for Red until I get his tank fixed and so moved the Cory’s and the WCMM into the 56 gallon with the goldies. It’s an interesting learning curve.

The 56 is a bare-bottom tank with a bit of an algae carpet thing going on. There’s river rock in the two front corners, and then various decor scattered around 3 pieces of drift wood. With the canister from the 32 currently running along with the Whisper 72 EX along with a box filter that I’m keeping cycled… you could defiantly call it over filtered at the moment.

My three Goldies (Charlie, Sin, and Sam) seem to have adapted well to their new room-mates. Charlie ignores them unless he feels like bossing them around. Sin and Sam spar with the Cory’s for the shimp pellets I slip in on the sly. The White-clouds seem much more active, swimming in more area’s of the tank now and loosely shoaling where ever they may. The bare-bottom doesn’t seem to bother the Cory’s and I see them out and about allot more now, the loner Cory even stays with them more as they wiggle along in search of their next meal.  Overall I have to say that no-body is to un-content with the new set-up.  Well, no-body other then me anyway.

I’m happy with the stocking. I’d have loved to add a goldie or two more but I’ll have to try to resist that temptation. No what bothers me are two other aspects of the tank. 1 the lack of live plants and the lighting. Both of these are fairly easy to rectify but will have to wait until I move into the new place. The other is an aspect of a community tank that I knew of, had heard of, but didn’t really understand. The concept of have 3 different species needing 3 different diets. I suppose I could teach each group to spot feed but that’s almost too much hassle. I’ve been soaking the Goldies pellets in garlic guard to help soften them out so that Sin and Sam could have a better chance at getting some. The WCMM seem to end up getting whatever kind of flake I have so I’ve moved them from a Tropical Flake over onto a crumbled up Goldfish Flake now. That way it doesn’t matter if the Goldies decide to eat that. The Cory’s are getting a shrimp pellet dropped in the far corner from where the others get there stuff. This way once the Cory’s find it they have a chance to have some before the Goldies wander by and try for a share.

Until Later,

A Betta Addict

Well it’s every aquarists nightmare, but also a most unfortunate aspect of this hobby. I got back from a week’s holiday last night. Did a check and everything in the tanks looked fine. This morning I grabbed my book-bag (sitting on the floor beside the 32 Gallon tank) and the bottom of it was more then damp… but less then truly wet. A bit of snooping confirms it. The bottom seam on one corner of the 32 gal tank is leaking. In fact it’s dripping from the bottom down through the inside of the stand then down the leg. This is not making my day.

You see the 32 Gallon is my only tropical tank remaining, the 20 gal was converted to coldwater and will actually be taken down when I move into the new apartment. This means that I don’t have another tank to move my red tail shark to. This also presents another more complicated problem. I’m downsizing to a smaller apartment and I really hate to give up this tank. However with it leaking now… I don’t know. I love the tank and I hate to tear it down so we’ll see what can be done. Red is one of my favorite fishy babies and I hate to have to re-home him over something as simple as this…

Ok so my first impulse when I found out that I was going to be moving was to try to design a special stand to hold the betta tanks. Now that I’ve thought about this for a bit longer I think I may scrap that idea. I might still cobble a stand together (more of a 2×4 and plywood construction) but after thinking on it I can probably get by with the stands that I already have or perhaps I’ll pick up some of the black plastic ones for the breeding set up later.

Now I’m thinking that I need to work on the evaporation issues. I mean yes there will always be humidity especially with so many tanks. However I think that on a few of my tanks at least it shouldn’t be to difficult to modify them to cut that down a little bit. Specifically I’m looking at my 10 gallon and the 5 gallon in the kitchen. The main culprit is the 56 gallon goldfish tank. Since there’s a HOB filter on it there’s only so much that I can do with it but it’s mostly an open top tank right now and I think that’s one of the big issues. I’ll see if I can come up with a plan to fix that before the move. Also the 2.5’s probably will need to have something done with them. No hurry there right now but I think that I may use them for my conditioning tanks and likely as the tanks for the breeders as well.

Anyway that’s all for now,

So I’ve been doing reasearch and working on the article for the last few days. Part 1 is going well and Part 2 needs some more work yet. I’ve been thinking on the 56 gal and I think I’ve settled on a goldfish only tank. So to break down my stocking:

56 total gallons

-20 gallons (1st goldie)

leaves : 36 gallons

-10 gallons (2nd goldie)

leaves: 26 gallons

-10 gallons (3rd goldie)

leaves: 16 gallons

- 10 gallons (4th goldie)

leaves: 6 gallons

Therefore with this method I’ll be fully stocked with 4 Goldies. Now I’m going with fancy golies rather than comets of common feeders. However I still need to decide on a filtration system.

GREEN AND GROWY:

This system will give ideal biological filtration as well as be very good for alage control along with visually appealing. Now there are 3 parts to this plan that need to be ironed out.

1st: Construction. - What will I need? How am I going to put it togeather?

2nd: “Media”. - What to use as plant anchor/bio filter?

3rd: “Plants” - What plants to use? What layout? How many?

or

CONVENTIONAL

Set it up it’s done.

August 7th, 09

Well I did the calculations and it turns out that my “65″ gallon tank is actually just of 56 gallons. Also I’ve decided again (after much debate) that I’m going to go back to my original plan to stock with Fancy Goldies. I was planning to have weather loaches as well but since the tank isn’t as big as I thought I’ll just go with the Fancy Goldies for now. However there is still a fair bit of work to do yet to get everything ready.

I still need to refinish the tank and stand (which will be alot easier without fish ect in the tank). I need to choose weather to go with my “green and growy” filter idea or to just run a traditional filter. I also need to make a decision on a substrate, since goldfish tend to dig AND eat plants the El Natural approach that I’ve been using lately isn’t going to be a good choice. However if I use the Green and Growy idea that should make up for it for the most part, and I suppose that I could always just try potting my favorite ones. There’s someone on kijiji who’s selling slate, I could silicone some pieces togeather and make “flower boxes” that were about 3″ high. That would allow for 2″ of soil and then an inch of gravel and then some stones to keep the goldies out of there. Desicions decisions…  first things first though is the stand fix. That means I need to pick a color, my first thought was black but I don’t know if that will end up being to much if I go with a dark substrate as well… I shall think on it.