octanejunkie
Aquarium Advice Freak
Being new to the hobby I found myself addicted to new plants and acquiring too many plants for our one 6-gallon tall tank, so I set up a grow tank. It occurred to me that glass tanks are more for our benefit than their inhabitants, so I setup the "tank" in a 3.5 gallon bucket.
OSH sells a 3.5 Gallon bucket, like a short 5-gallon, with a black foam padded handle in the paint department for $3.49. I have bought 3 of these so far and use them for acclimation, water changes (new water and siphoned water in different buckets), quarantine/hospital, and grow out. I have also used this for soaking small pieces of driftwood for several days, harboring plants, etc. they are very useful
Here is the overall setup
Filter
I bought 4 Azoo Palm filters from DrFosterSmith.com for $9 each and set them up with AquaClear 20 bio max bags and two grades of foam, the Azoo black foam and AquaClear 30 Foam cut to size. I seeded these in the bucket with my excess plants and old filter media from our 6-gallon tank. I stoked this with a course of Stability.
Lighting
For lighting I am using these 3W Dolphin LED clamp-on 6500° white lights from Amazon for $26 each. They fit up to 1/2" thick wall. These lights run 12V DC, 1.5Amp so an alarm or cctv power supply (panel) or Malibu timer/transformer could power tons of these to reduction of plug-strip/transformer clutter. For now I'm dealing with transformers.
Maintenance
After a about a week green slime had accumulated all over the inside of the bucket. Rather than clean it I added a pair of CAE, Chinese algae eaters (gyrinocheilus) and within a day or two they cleaned the bucket walls and moved on to the plants. I will need to feed them once everything is clean, but the advantage to having these guys in the tank is their waste will keep the BB in the filters' media active.
I also do weekly water changes, about 50%...
Any issues to a setup like this, long term?
OSH sells a 3.5 Gallon bucket, like a short 5-gallon, with a black foam padded handle in the paint department for $3.49. I have bought 3 of these so far and use them for acclimation, water changes (new water and siphoned water in different buckets), quarantine/hospital, and grow out. I have also used this for soaking small pieces of driftwood for several days, harboring plants, etc. they are very useful
Here is the overall setup
Filter
I bought 4 Azoo Palm filters from DrFosterSmith.com for $9 each and set them up with AquaClear 20 bio max bags and two grades of foam, the Azoo black foam and AquaClear 30 Foam cut to size. I seeded these in the bucket with my excess plants and old filter media from our 6-gallon tank. I stoked this with a course of Stability.
Lighting
For lighting I am using these 3W Dolphin LED clamp-on 6500° white lights from Amazon for $26 each. They fit up to 1/2" thick wall. These lights run 12V DC, 1.5Amp so an alarm or cctv power supply (panel) or Malibu timer/transformer could power tons of these to reduction of plug-strip/transformer clutter. For now I'm dealing with transformers.
Maintenance
After a about a week green slime had accumulated all over the inside of the bucket. Rather than clean it I added a pair of CAE, Chinese algae eaters (gyrinocheilus) and within a day or two they cleaned the bucket walls and moved on to the plants. I will need to feed them once everything is clean, but the advantage to having these guys in the tank is their waste will keep the BB in the filters' media active.
I also do weekly water changes, about 50%...
Any issues to a setup like this, long term?
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