Search the Community

Well I’ve never been one to journal but I’m nearing the 6 month mark on my first aquarium. Brief breakdown of my long journey and intro into the hobby: setting up an aquarium has been a dream of mine for the past 10 years since stumbling upon a YouTube video by uarujoey at the time. I was hooked! My parents had a 55 that was a community tank ( honestly hated it, never felt a connection to it ever!) that they did eventually get rid of after I started high school but never did I know the scale fish keeping was done. After going into the rabbit hole that was fish keeping YouTube back in 2010 my parents wouldn’t let me have a tank. I waited 4 years until I graduated high school when my parents let me have dart frogs! I kept dart frogs for about 4 years during college and bred about 6 different species of ranitomeya before I sold them off when I moved out of my parents. A 2 year stretch of not have any exotic pets while I finished college leads us to 6ish months ago when I finally decided to set up my desktop aquarium. I had just built a large desk setup that held my pc and 3 monitors and I had a 25x13 space on the end of the desk I knew what needed to be done. I ordered a 60p (17gal aquarium) online and decided I wanted to keep South American dwarf cichlids. I found a local fish store that had some apistos and I knew this was for me. I set up the tank in March let it sit for a month until cycled and added 12 cardinal tetras! Then about 3 months later I got my apistogramma blue steel, sold as borelli 😅, and have since got them breeding. It took about 3 months of them maturing and I am raising the first fry in this desktop aquarium! This has been by far the most fulfilling hobby I’ve ever been apart of and I can’t wait to continue this journey with all of you! make sure to follow my journey on my Instagram desktop_aquatics for dailyish pictures and I’ll continue to post journal entries on this forum post! here’s my tank and species inside!

I have decided that there is something wrong with my bowl that I can’t test for - a chemical, heavy metal, some bug that I just can’t get to or treat. I just killed 2 bladder snails and 3 ramshorns and the bowl Looks super healthy! I’ve tried a lot of different things. Look at that lush green algae, the colors and the textures! here’s the history of the bowl: What to do? I’ve got 3 ideas 💡 1) scrap the whole idea of a Caridina bowl and do Opae ula shrimp instead - get a piece of glass for the top, use aragonite sand and crushed coral, huge pile of lava rocks and obsidian, and raise up some cheeto algae in there. 2) try again on the Caridina tiger tank - buy new Fluval stratum, clean the rocks, use a whole different set of plants, and just start from the beginning. ive really appreciated all the support on here for this doomed project. Ugh painful.

Here is the journal on this bowl for reference Anyway I’m officially moving on and was wondering if anyone can critique my ideas for substrate and planting for this bowl. I’m going to use some Bags of lava rock to create height in the back of the bowl. I think it will help with the optics to create perspective. I was going to put down some laterite and was going to use a couple cups of substrate from a tank that’s doing well with Fluval Stratum on top. I’ll use my local obsidian for hardscape. Plants - crypts crypts and more crypts with some others thrown in. I’ve grabbed some red tiger spiralis for background and may use balansae as well; mid ground crypt wendtii red, bronze and green; mid ground crypt nurii rosen maden; crypt parva for the foreground; have been debating about using some different colors of cabomba I have to fill in spots and bring some different color and texture to the crypts; I also have some ludwigia a green form that I think will be nice and give some height and fill in as well. I have some baby’s tears which might also give a different level of height texture etc. the goal is to creat a beautiful planted tank with lots of surface area for shrimps - about 20 blue dream shrimp these are in the pics I’ve got them already in another setup.

so i love going to stores and looking for jars, bowls, and other containers to make little jarrariums and terrariums. i came across 2 pretty decently sized bowls. these have been sitting in storage for a few weeks and i decided last night that i’ll make a shrimp bowl using only the materials i have in storage. anyone else constantly buying new stuff “to try” and is left with a very full storage room? in pretty happy with how it turned out, the opening of the bowl is about 9” and it is 12” at the widest. no filter and no heater. also sorry about the bad lighting and photos, 2am me apparently cannot work a camera. also unnecessarily difficult to take photos of bowls it turns out. step 1: i decided to use my favorite substrate combo which is fluval stratum mixed with fluorite dark i love the natural look and i find those two substrates mix well together for good plant growth step 2: i have this statue cave i bought online last year that i planned to use in a jar terrarium, never got around to doing it so i forced myself to use it as a centerpiece. step 4: i had exactly two pieces of spider wood that were small enough to fit into the bowl so those are the two pieces i shoved in. i did like how they branched out and gave the appearance of arms to the statue. step 5: i had a storage container full of seiryu stone from a previous build, unfortunately it was all pretty large pieces but i was able to pick a few to put in the bowl. the stone matched the appearance of the statue pretty well and i liked the look. i thought this was going to be the final resting place but i don’t trust those ikea wall shelves and there was barely any room for a light so i moved it to my plant stand. step 6: plants! i pulled plants from the medusa jungle tank and i had a little tissue culture package of s. repens i was saving for that tank. i also pulled a few plants from the goldfish tank. if anyone could ID the moss i have that would be very appreciated. plants used: crypt lucens, crypt wendtii, red giant jungle val (excited to see how this will look in here), java ferns, wisteria, s. repens, creeping jenny, unknown moss, dwarf hairgrass, deep red ludwigia, and a few floaters step 7: fill it up and add some bacteria booster. i keep a gallon of fritz zyme bacteria in the fridge i use and its worked well for me the water was foggy this morning (i didnt rinse the fluorite, oops) so i did a 50% water change. the water is still foggy in these photos but it’ll clear like always. i’ll post good photos once it has cleared! also the light is temporary, i didnt have any nice lights to use but i am going to swap it for a nice pendant light of sorts. the moss excited about this val and how it will look long term, these are baby shoots i pulled from the gf tank