My 5 gallon Bowfront

[Kylefight11]

I plan on raising the water level eventually, but not for at least a week or so.
I'm not sure what color background to use, I'm thinking just a dark blue or black piece of poster board. What color do you think would look best?
The bulb is a 23w, 5000k, CFL from Home Depot.

 

[Kylefight11]

So yesterday I found something completely unacceptable floating in the tank, mosquito larvae. So, after a trip to my LFS to ask for advice, I got a higher flow filter and a bubble stone. I couldn't fit the old filter cartridge into the new filter but I did manage to add most of the particles that I shook out of the old filter into the new filter. Hopefully the cycle didn't get set back all the way to square one.
So, for the record, here is what the tank looks like now:

 

[Autumnsky]

The BB is on the fabric part of the filter mostly and microscopic, you could have or maybe still can use both filters while you cycle it. Al so cut off the fabric fuzzy part and stuff in there too.

You can add an additional filter pad in this new one to to have 2x the BB capacity, always even better for a small tank.

 

[Kylefight11]

Time of a tank update.
Water Parameters
Ph has been holding stable at 7.6 for the last 5 days despite a large water change. I think that's where it's going to stay for now
Ammonia rose up to 0.5 ppm between 3 days ago and the day before yesterday. Yesterday it dropped back down to 0.25
Nitrite has, in 2 days, gone from 0 to 1.5 to over 5 ppm
Nitrate has, in the same amount of time, gone from 0 to 25 ppm
And, because pictures are worth a thousand words:
The top is ph
The next lines are ammonia and nitrite, in that order
The bottom line is nitrate



Now for the living stuff
All plants seem to be doing fine
The anacharis is sending out roots like crazy and there is some noticeable stalk growth too
The moneywort has some stalk growth and is sending out a couple roots
The anubias hasn't shown any distinctly noticeable growth but it still looks healthy so it may be growing really slowly or I'm missing the growth for some reason
The christmas moss is almost covered with bright green tips of fresh growth
The moss ball seems to be doing okay, a third of its surface is covered with brown patches but the rest seems to have recovered from what I put it through
I have at least 5 or 6 hitchhiker snails that seem to be very happy, none are larger than a head of a pin and I think 2 are rams horns while the others are either mystery, nerite, or pond snails, I'm not sure which.

 

[nick.h]

Was it consistently getting too hot as I had that problem as my heaters' thermostat had blown due to the top of it being out the water which I've spotted in one of your pics, the other problem is many LFS will try and sell you things you don't even need.

Looking good!

 

[Khuligirl93]

Are the tops of heaters supposed to be under water? I thought having them under water would cause them to malfunction because they have a "maximum water level" line. I have had many heaters malfunction so if this is the case- that would explain why! I always keep the top if mine out of water

 

[aquandrew]

Are the tops of heaters supposed to be under water? I thought having them under water would cause them to malfunction because they have a "maximum water level" line. I have had many heaters malfunction so if this is the case- that would explain why! I always keep the top if mine out of water

pretty sure it says minimum water line, so the glass won't be out of the water making it heat up too high causing it to crack. you just don't wan't the glass sticking out of the water. having the tops underwater, all depends on if they are submersible or not

 

[nick.h]

Yoy can get heaters that do have a part coming out of the tank but submersible heaters are completely submersible