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GIJoe

Aquarium Advice Newbie
Joined
Oct 12, 2005
Messages
3
Location
Orlando,FL
I was looking for some help forums for an issue I had and came across this forum. It seems like a great community to learn about aquariums.

Anyway, I used to have fish when I was little and now that I have a place of my own I decided to get back in to aquariums. I had an older 10gal Hex tank that I re-setup and kept for about 8 months or so. This was OK, but way too small for me.

A friend of mine had moved out of state and left me his 29gal aquarium, which I rushed over to his parents house to pick up.

This tank has been running for almost 5-6 months now, with a few of the fish being almost a year old now. The single albino tiger barb and the pleco are the oldest two fish in the tank (over a year now each)


A little bit about my current tank:

29gal glass
AquaClear power filter
under-gravel filter (basically just there for more bubbles heh)
heater
bubble wand in back left corner
"underground river" bubbler in right corner
...and the complete set of palm trees from PetsMart. There are 2 larger trees that are sitting on my desk since the tank is too small for them.

My overall goal was to re-create a tropical island feel since I love places like Key West, etc. Since I can't travel much, I decided to create my own little tropical world for the fish to live in. The blue multi-shaded gravel is the "water" which surrounds all the islands. The plants don't really go with my theme, but I needed some in there for the fish and these were about the best ones that matched the rest of the items in the tank.

The background will soon be a jumbo sized picture (sized to fit the glass) of a tropical island (picture the Azul stock windows XP wallpaper, something similar to that)

Anyway, here are a few pics of the setup along with the fish :)

tank02.jpg

tank01.jpg


The fish are as follows:
4 Tiger Barbs (3 regular, one albino)
3 Rainbow Sharks
1 Pleco
1 Bala Shark (new)
1 Clown Loach (new)

I want to get more tank buddies for the Bala and the Clown, but I've run out of room for fish and am currently looking for a 55gal tank to start setting up.

Tigers, a Rainbow and the Clown. The Tiger Barbs are near full size of 2" each. They won't get much larger from what I've read. The Clown Loach I bought because I have always wanted them, and the pet stores around Orlando NEVER have any. I hear they are hard to keep in stock. I need to add a 2nd one in before they disappear from the stores again. The clown's name is Drake (my wife named him) after his little "fang" whiskers, she thought he looked like vampire.
group01.jpg


This is the largest of the 3 Rainbows. It was just pregnant last week, but I was unable to find where the eggs went before the tigers and who knows what else gobbled them up. It is currently about 3.5" or so long. The other two are much smaller.
rainbow01.jpg


Here is the bala. His name is "Dart". The Tiger barb in the 2nd shot wouldn't get out of the way. They are attention hogs and follow you all around the tank.
bala02.jpg

bala01.jpg


Here is another pic of the Tiger Barbs (when there used to be 5, and with an old plant in the background) They go crazy as soon as anyone walks into the room. Tiger barbs are great fish!
fish02.jpg


Another pic of Dart and Drake the day I bought them:
newfish_sm.jpg


And last but not least, my favorite fish in the tank: Everette. He is munching on his alge disk :)
fish03.jpg


The only thing I want to change about the tank currently is the fact that it is too small, and the new light I bought to replace the burned out bulb is WAY too dim. I wasn't sure which one to get. You can see the difference in lighting between the two lights. The one with the tiger barbs and the blue plant and the one with the pleco are using the old brighter light... vs all the other photos with the newer dimmer light... blech.
 
Welcome to the board. The tank has plenty of promise, especially after the loach, pleco, and bala move to the 55....perhaps a tropical island tank of assorted barbs?
 
Thank guys. I am really liking the look of some of the planted tanks I've been looking at in the galleries on here... very cool stuff.

I do like to use them to shut people up about their pets though... especially new dog owners...all the want to talk about is what their new dog does every single minute of the day. So I start talking about my fish "So the other day you should have seen it HAHAHA one of my fish was doing loops and the other one learned to play dead and HAHAHA and then this one fish... OMG you should have seen him he was like.... " you get the picture... I don't usually get any more pet talk out of people after that ;)
 
:multi: Welcome to AA! :multi: I really like the look of your tank as well! I hope you enjoy your stay here.
 
Feel free to upload the images to the photo gallery or attach them to this thread if you wish aswell.
 
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