I was in my LFS one day when I saw a no-brand low iron glass 10 gallon tank selling for $50. I quickly made it into a holding tank for plants and conveniently I had an extra light and filter ready to go.
I held some Ludwigia arcuata there that I pulled from my emersed growth setup, while thinking of some different aquascaping ideas for the new tank. First I thought to make it a farm tank for plants complete with an actual little resin farmhouse and plants arranged in neat rows.
But then someone I know who has a shrimp breeding business wanted to rehome a lone CPD with me. When I went there I bought 10 yellow neocaridinas and decided to make it a tank for them. Another friend gave me a bunch of narrow leaf Java fern and some Hydrocotyle leucocephala.
It's said that the only fish that can be safely put with the shrimp are otocinclus. I set my light (Twinstar series A) to a 12 hour photoperiod and grew some algae. I also like other invertebrates so I got 4 Amano shrimp, 2 red racer nerites, and 2 clithon corona snail to help tame the algae. I gave a clithon corona to my wife's tank, where it's doing a great job dealing with a small algae outbreak.
So can I keep this system balanced to meet the needs of a full tank loaded with algae eaters? This might be a really interesting experiment to try.
In the meantime I've been trying to plan the scape. I'm going to use the plants already there, like Iron Chef. I bought some tissue culture Pogostemon helferi and Staurogyne repens. The plan is to use these together with the Ludwigia all arranged in random patches as a kind of foreground, foregoing the traditional carpet (though there is some Monte Carlo in there from another tank). For hardscape, I have a piece of wood that was found in the mountains and some basalt with quartz veins from the beach. I'll put the Java ferns and some other epiphytes, maybe a nice bucephalandra, on the wood.
Tomorrow I'm planning to pick up the otos and plants I need to finish. I'll probably make a video on my Youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC86e8JIClN4j3oZ4W11iGEA) and an update on this journal when I get it all set up.