40 gallon long "dutch style"

[goatnad]

I'm here with a new 40 gallon long tank i found on craigslist for $50. I had to do a bit of work on this to get it ready. First someone had drilled a hole in the tank so I had to seal that. Second the stand wasn't in the best of conditions. Had to put a new top on it, fix the doors and do some minor cleaning. I am doing a dutch style aquascape and I'm thinking of going with rainbowfish in this tank. I'm in a bit of a rush to get this typed before work so later on I will update this thread with all the plant names I used.

 

[Fresh2o]

That is a nice foot print for a planted tank.
Did you use a bulkhead fitting + screw cap to seal the hole? In the future if you ever wanted to operate a sump, this would allow you to add an overflow.

 

[sharon9476]

Looks great!
Good luck

 

[goatnad]

That is a nice foot print for a planted tank.
Did you use a bulkhead fitting + screw cap to seal the hole? In the future if you ever wanted to operate a sump, this would allow you to add an overflow.

The tank had a bulkhead already in it but it was leaking. I decided to remove it and seal the hole with a piece of glass and silicon. I've looked at sumps a few times but they don't really seem like something I would ever do.

 

[goatnad]

Looks great!
Good luck

Ty and pretty betta you have there.

 

[goatnad]

plant list


rotala rotundifolia
lobelia cardinalis
pogostemon helferi
limnophila heterophylla
alternanthera reineckii "varigated"
bacopa caroliniana(probably will replace this with something else)
ammania graclis
ludwigia pantanal
pogostemon erectus
ludwigia mini super red
thai moss
hydrocoytle sp. "japan"
blyxa aubertii
eriocaulon vietnam
eriocaulon cinereum
eriocaulon(unkown species)

 

[ZxC]

Following along. Tank looks good so far. This is the only Dutch tank I'm currently following that is using a white substrate. Most are black / dark. Looks good though. I'm excited to see where you can take this!

 

[goatnad]

1 month update here. things are going great and all plants are now settled in. ive done a few things to the tank since last post. first i made a diy powerhead filter just to have some filtration until i get a canister filter for it. i did a trimming on the limno and rotala since they were almost to the top of the tank. i decided im going to be doing 2 skunk loach, 3 pearl gouramis and a few rainbow fish( probably 6 of them). i have the loaches and gouramis in there now. i also have 15 neon tetras in there that i picked up for a future project. these will come out when i start buying my rainbow fish. here are a few pics. sorry for the bad angles on a few of these. i have a stand with a 10g sitting in front of this tank and it makes it hard to get a straight on shot.

these ludwigia are looking strange because they had a rough transition to this tank

my 3 pearls. they hang out in this corner a good bit. also some ludwigia mini super red

 

[Caliban07]

Looking good. Nice work.

 

[Barliman]

Looks really nice. What kind of lighting are you using, and how long is it on?

 

[goatnad]

Thanks everyone for the kind words. I'm using 2 flourecent shop lights. My uncle gave me a t12(I think that's it) shop light and 2 6500k bulbs. Not sure of the wattage. I then went to Lowes and bought a t8 fixture and 2 32w 6500k bulbs. It seemed a bit bright to me so a few days ago I took out one of the t12 bulbs. I need to make deflectors for the t8 fixture. Its the one in front and as you see I'm losing a good bit of light. I think if I do that I can remove the t12 fixture all together. Never used flourecent tube lighting like this before so let me know if you think its to much light or not enough or any opinions.

 

[goatnad]

Also forgot to say the lights are on for 10 hours. 8:30 am to 6:30 pm.

 

[ZxC]

Fertilizers?
Water change schedule?
pH / kH / gH?
CO2?

Lighting looks to be in the high range, not crazy high but more than medium.

 

[goatnad]

I use organic potting soil. No liquid or dry ferts. 50% Water change every week. DIY co2 but I'm sure it's not optimal for the size tank. I'll be honest, I haven't tested any tank for ph,kh or gh in over a year. Almost all my tanks seem to even out at around 7 ph and Kh usually came in at 5. No clue what gh was. I'll test these when I get home and post proper numbers.

 

[ZxC]

I use organic potting soil. No liquid or dry ferts. 50% Water change every week. DIY co2 but I'm sure it's not optimal for the size tank. I'll be honest, I haven't tested any tank for ph,kh or gh in over a year. Almost all my tanks seem to even out at around 7 ph and Kh usually came in at 5. No clue what gh was. I'll test these when I get home and post proper numbers.

On a tank this size you may benefit from running the DIY 24/7 at a reduced rate, that way when the lights turn on your CO2 saturation will be high enough to prevent algae growth.

Try the pH drop test.

1) test fully degassed tank water pH - (No CO2 dissolved at all)
2) Test tank water again when the lights come on and again just before the CO2 goes off for the day.

Note the drop in pH from degassed tank water to CO2 saturated water. The closer you can get to a full 1.0 - 1.3 point drop in pH the better.

Excel might be of benefit if you can't get the pH drop, or run it 24/7 to achieve a 30 "ish" ppm concentration of CO2. I'm not familiar with 24/7 CO2 use, so some additional research would help out

 

[Fishlover99]

1 month update here. things are going great and all plants are now settled in. ive done a few things to the tank since last post. first i made a diy powerhead filter just to have some filtration until i get a canister filter for it. i did a trimming on the limno and rotala since they were almost to the top of the tank. i decided im going to be doing 2 skunk loach, 3 pearl gouramis and a few rainbow fish( probably 6 of them). i have the loaches and gouramis in there now. i also have 15 neon tetras in there that i picked up for a future project. these will come out when i start buying my rainbow fish. here are a few pics. sorry for the bad angles on a few of these. i have a stand with a 10g sitting in front of this tank and it makes it hard to get a straight on shot.

these ludwigia are looking strange because they had a rough transition to this tank

my 3 pearls. they hang out in this corner a good bit. also some ludwigia mini super red

Really beautiful scape man. I love the colors.

 

[goatnad]

Really beautiful scape man. I love the colors.

Thank you very much

Another update. I got some of my rainbow fish today! Yay! Sadly these were only available because of someone's misfortune. 2 weeks ago we had flooding rain here. Unfortunately it flooded the house of a professor that frequents my LFS so he had to tear down and sell all of his plants and fish. We are talking 50 species of plants and 15 species of rainbows. I seem to have been a bit late to the sell since there were only 4 species of rainbows left for sale. I picked up 2 boesemani, 2 neon blue, and 2 species of which they didn't know the names. I was told that one of the unknown species was a female and apparently one of the professors pride and joy rainbows. He wanted them to ask $30 for it but finally agreed to let it go for $20. I know I paid more for these then what I could have paid but it saved me the hassle of ordering them online. A little props to my LFS, they originally agreed to house these fish free of charge until the guy got his tanks back running but its going to take awhile so he decided to sell. The LFS is giving all the sells of his fish and plants to him. They aren't taking any money for this. It just goes to show how much they really care for the hobby and their customers. Fish are acclimating now so I will post pics soon.

 

[goatnad]

Here are the pictures.
https://imgur.com/a/BFc5mXx
Can anyone ID the small fish in the first picture and the large red one in picture 3?

 

[goatnad]

it has been quite awhile since i posted about this tank. a few things have changed so here is an update for everyone. this tank still isn't where i want it and this is largely due to my habitat of costantly trimming and selling plants. so i had issues with the diy co2 system i had setup. i would fill it and in a day or 2 it seemed to stop producing. because of this i just stopped using it for a month or more. some plants did well but others slowly began to suffer. i have now got it back working and things are looking much better. the one that suffered most was my pogo helferi. it died off completely. seems like there were some dwarf hairgrass in with it since that is what is now growing there. i don't intend to leave it. my pogo erectus also did not take well to this tank. it has just now started to settle in and grow how it should. the ludwigia pantanal also did not do well so i removed it and replaced it with ludwigia arcuata. this has done much better. the ammania gracilis also kind of was doing strangely but has now started to really do better. i did recently trim it all out and replace the nice stems so this is why it looks so small now but it is growing much better then it was. the lobelia cardinalis also did not do well. it didn't die off but it just did not grow any. i have removed it and replaced it with some lobelia cardinalis mini i recently got so lets see if i can get it to do anything. i also added some cabomba that seems to be doing very well. the neons were removed and rainbowfish and pearl gouramis were added. i also added a fluval 407 canister filter. oh yea. got a new phone today so better pictures now! yay!

 

[1midniterider]

Nice looking tank...