What Tank Setup Are You Daydreaming About?

[AllFishNoBrakes]

What up Nerms? Hope you’re doing well. 

I’m currently daydreaming of turning my 20 gallon long shrimp/crayfish/snail tank into a blackwater setup. I imagine 2 pieces of Spiderwood flowing from the ends of the tank towards the center. A few stones in the center, a gooseneck style light, low light rhizome plants under the gooseneck, and then tons of botanicals. For stocking I’m thinking Chili Rasboras, 1 trio or 2 pairs of Sparkling Gourami’s, a couple nerites, and then some shrimp. When it comes to stocking the thing I can’t decide on is A) a bigger group of Chili’s or B) a smaller group of Chili’s and then either Green Neon Tetras or Black Neon Tetras. 
 

I have the light picked out, bulk Almond Leaves, and a mixed pack of botanicals in the cart. Tomorrow I’m gonna stop by the LFS and see if there’s a “matching” piece of Spiderwood to the existing piece already in that tank. I’ve been thinking about this tank for a hot minute, I’ve been piecing it together in my head, and I’m ready to start making some moves. Super stoked to try something new!

Now it’s your turn. What’s the tank you’re realistically going to set up that you can’t stop daydreaming about?

[CJs Aquatics]

I kind of want a breeding pair of something small for my empty 10 like bettas or hillstream loaches, but have also considered doing a little diy and setting up a live food culture of some sort (probably adult brine shrimp) and getting it to auto feed some of my other tanks. No idea what direction I’m going basically every tank I see right now I daydream about bc I have an empty one 😅

[A3M0N]

I've been daydreaming about a little 5 gallon to sit on my desk. My original thought for stocking was a betta, but now I'm thinking some chili rasboras and shrimp. For plants I'm thinking epiphytes and crypts. I kinda want to try my hand at making a foam background since it's such a small tank I don't want to take up a ton a space with excess hardscape. 

[AllFishNoBrakes]

@CJs Aquatics Nice! A brine shrimp culture would be fun. I’ve heard Cory talk about it but haven’t looked into it. Not sure I have the space/time/energy to dedicate to that but man would I love feeding live foods everyday 

@A3M0N Heck ya! I’m only in the office 2 days per week. If/when I’m ever in the office 5 days per week I’ll most definitely have a shrimp tank on my desk. Sounds fun!

Edited February 16, 2023 by AllFishNoBrakes

[A3M0N]

@AllFishNoBrakes I work remotely from a home office/guest room. 🙂

[AllFishNoBrakes]

@A3M0N Lucky you! I’m lucky I don’t work from home. My “office” would just be a room full of tanks with the minimal amount of space necessary to complete my work, lol. 

[A3M0N]

@AllFishNoBrakes I'm not sure I'd have this as a fish room, its upstairs, and my wife wanted to keep it useable for family and friends when they visit. I work in crisis care/mental health, I figure a small tank with little critters and maybe soft bubbles from a sponge filter would help my mental health! 

Anyhoo, I'll stop hijacking your thread about daydream tanks! 

[EleanorM]

This little 9 gallon is? was? my just finished daydream tank.  I went with 20x Bloody Mary neos, 12 Celestial Pearl Danios and 2 nerite snails.  Yes, that is a heavy stock, but that’s why it’s so heavily planted. 

Water wisteria, water lettuce (and unfortunate duck weed) along with all the unknown stem plants came from my other tanks, trimmings.  The buce, dwarf sag, buce, and anubias petite nana all came from Aquarium Co Op.

I strongly recommend you make the daydream a reality!

the CPD are too excited to hold still for their photo op:

and Bloody Mary shrimp

some of the new plants are melting back a bit, but I have faith they will recover just fine.

I am not sure about the leaves in the front?  Might be sunken floaters?

If the Nerites and or shrimp haven’t  eaten  them up by morning I will vac them out.  it’s time to purge floaters again anyhow.

[AllFishNoBrakes]

@A3M0N it’s all good! My mom is a nurse and I know how taxing working in that field can be. We all have our escapes! I know tank maintenance and daydreaming of my next tank helps me with getting through the day. Best of luck with your relaxing desktop tank!

@EleanorM that tank looks fun! My CPD’s are impossible to photograph as well. Pictures don’t do them justice. 
 

On 2/15/2023 at 9:39 PM, EleanorM said:

I strongly recommend you make the daydream a reality!

It’s definitely in the works! If this hobby has taught me anything it’s to be patient. All in due time!

[EleanorM]

This is my desktop 5 gallon.  It’s also planted (in this one, the Java fern is doing something odd?  too much light maybe?)

It’s about the perfect size for what I wanted.

in this one, it is all about baby Chili Rasbora!

and baby Blue Diamond neos

I work in criminal law.  I wouldn’t know what to do if I didn’t have my aquariums to stare at and clear my mind.

This is my home office:

I wasn’t sure if my art was pg-13 or not, so I redacted it.  That isn’t the CPD tank, that’s the Ember Tetra tank.  The smaller one is my desktop Rasbora/Shrimp tank.

maybe I have a problem?

[nabokovfan87]

On 2/15/2023 at 6:21 PM, AllFishNoBrakes said:

Now it’s your turn. What’s the tank you’re realistically going to set up that you can’t stop daydreaming about?

Alright.... let's try to explain this one succinctly.

I have a 75G.  Let's just daydream and call it a 6 foot long tank.  Whatever that is.  I want to have a setup where the substrate is good for plants, the sand is actual sand and they don't do crazy mixing.  Massive chunks of seiryu stone or lava rock (black specifically) that have a good shape to them or have been tumbled.  I would acid wash the seiryu so it doesn't go too crazy on my water and the crags and canyons it makes in the pattern are actually great for things like fry, aufwuchs, etc.

I want to have a few varieties of moss that aren't the typical java moss or similar.  I would want something like fissidens nobilis all along the entire back wall of the tank and some of the more difficult ones that have a bit more interesting texture on the fronds through the tank.  I want a few pretty intensely big ferns in the tank.  I don't really like java fern, but if there is a broad leaf version of java fern, it'd be that or some species of bolbitis that fit the mold.  I would want to have a section (not the entire top surface) with some salvinia for cover.  A section of hygro pinnatifida featured prominently and doing well.  I would want to see S. Repens in the tank as well in front, then some sand, then some hairgrass.

I don't want to have a log or a stump, but some interesting, flowing wood that works well with the rock.  That sort of wraps through the rocks by weaving through the tank and giving it some life.  Moss on the top of the wood and looking good with shrimp hanging out on it.  Otos shoaling around.  Corydoras doing their thing.  I would want 3-4 good size open areas for them to feed and graze.  I would want to have a few caves, swim throughs, and places for them to escape to if they need be.  Moss balls in the open sections that don't have the hairgrass tufts.  If you're familiar with some of Amano's famous tanks then you'd be sort of familar with the setup.... I want to have wood with moss + epiphytes, things I haven't done yet, but you do need a pretty big tank to do well.  To have the space to do it well and be able to place things specifically.  I want a tank that visually looks really nice.  To show a bit of knowledge and growth with my ability to tune things for plants and to actually have something to sit and stare at to transport me elsewhere.  I just want to be happy with it, at the end of the day, and I am not unhappy with my current main setup, but I know it has a lot of issues.  I know it's cramped too, which doesn't really help things.
 

On 2/15/2023 at 9:00 PM, EleanorM said:

This is nuts.  Well done.  I am very very jealous of this one!

[beastie]

I am sadly maxed out on my wishing and ideals, cause I spent last year redoing and purchasing and stocking, so I am I guess done (though the urge never goes away, but I was told I was done 🙂 ).

I remade my 10 year old tanganyika mix to amazonian with driftwood two years ago and found a fun stocking, hatchetfish (also never again, stupid jumpers), ember tetras (wouldnt do those in a large tank again), rummy nose tetras, sterbai corydoras and very recent addition of bolivian ram, so much fun with the juveniles. I started an asian "stream" tank last october, stocking is mostly finished now, so white cloud minnows in gold variety, panda garras and sewellia linoleata. The garras are also juveniles and super cute, sewellia are new to me and it is a flat fish, come on, instant love, attaching a picture. I have a shrimp tank running year and a half that I decided to add indostomus paradoxus, am just waiting for import, it is full of little critters, cherry shrimp are breeding, tank is low maintenance low flow, should be ideal for them and the fish looks like a mini-dragon. And my fourth and last tank that I promised my boyfriend would be just a quarantine and was upgraded by the asian tank, is being slowly transformed to a large snail + clownkillifish tank, again, just waiting for the fish to be available 😄 

My dreams are now for the tanks to work, the fish to prosper and breed (looking at you minnows) and to be happy with the setup and stocking for another year, no changing anything.

 

BTW @AllFishNoBrakesI so wanted a sparkling gourami too, but the aggression and the fact they will cooperate and actively hunt and kill adult shrimps dont make them good for those type of tanks. That is why I opted them out from the large snail tank too, I fear the antena would be too much temptation.

@A3M0N some hobbyist here did a culture of the brine shrimp, even the freshwater kind, hatch till adulthood, feed and wait for adult to produce babies to feed. All of them found it too much work or not feasible in the long run. Daphnia work better but outside in large containers, they get contaminated by mosquitoes. If you have larger fish, best option si for Hyalella azteca but you have to be super careful, never cross-contaminate your tanks and never ever drain this tank water to usual water supplies. They are super invasive and basically immortal

I love how this forum makes me feel not crazy about the hobby. I also work from home, keep looking at my tanks, I even dream about them sometimes....

Edited February 16, 2023 by beastie

[Theplatymaster]

Im daydreaming about a cherry shrimp centered community tank, but dont actually want to restock my tank.

Id keep the plants but i would have

cherry shrimp

amano shrimp

hillstream loach

mystery snail

Mini-ramshorn snail (im not getting rid of these, itd be to hard, and they are so fun to watch)

id keep my panda garra

[OnlyGenusCaps]

I'm currently dreaming of (some might say obsessed with), putting together my marine species breeding setup.  First getting my phyto cultures going, then the copepods and mysis colonies.  Once I have the live foods, I'll be ready to assemble something to rear the larva most marine species hatch out as.  For that, I'm going to go with a modified modular larval rearing system (MoLaRS) à la Dr. Andy Rhyne that he developed at his lab at Roger Williams University.  Because the ones he created are thousands of dollars, mine will be the Fleet Farm (think if Walmart served farms) version of one; so I'll be using a stock tank and muck buckets in mine.  I think I can put on together for less than $120, which is also part of the fun and challenge.  😁 

[Sharon M]

 

My current, albeit still empty tank, is a 20 Gallon (90 Liter) long tank.
I'm attempting a biotope of the Rio Negro. 
Granted, it's a poor attempt, but it has driftwood, botanical, plants (including houseplants, like Pothos, Philodendron Micans, Spider plants, etc)and rocks.

My dream tank would be a 100 Gallon (380 Liter) Low Iron aquarium, Rio Negro biotope, with accurate wood, plants, botanicals, etc, collected from there.

It would have habitat appropriate fish of course!

 

 

That is the top of my aquarium. 
I am still learning how to take pictures with my phone, and upload them. 

It has an Aquarium Co-op light (I love it!) two modified HOB filters, Fluval substrate, and a PH of 6.8, low hardness, blah blah.

Very dark right now, I love it.

[Sharon M]

On 2/16/2023 at 3:30 AM, beastie said:

love how this forum makes me feel not crazy about the hobby. I also work from home, keep looking at my tanks, I even dream about them sometimes....

BHAHHAAA! I watched Cory's video yesterday on how to properly siphon a tank. 
Last night I dreamed about doing it. 
Only the tank was half the size of my room, with only three fish (and were oddly animated) and I was making a real mess of it. 

It was so hard to do, and the tank was getting worse. 

[Sharon M]

On 2/15/2023 at 9:21 PM, AllFishNoBrakes said:

A) a bigger group of Chili’s or B) a smaller group of Chili’s and then either Green Neon Tetras or Black Neon Tetras. 
 

I'd say B!  That sounds lovely. 

[billango]

The setup I've been daydreaming about lately I'm not sure is really possible, but it's basically a mangrove in a large glass bulb where the roots spread across and fill out the inside of the bulb, and the tree has some nice growth growing outside of it as well. Maybe imagine these images combined: 

 

The end result would be a somewhat bonsaied mangrove that is then impossible to get out of the bulb, as the roots would have grown in and spread out wider than the opening. I would then add an aquasoil capped with gravel to the bottom and just do dwarf hair grass and littorella uniflora to carpet it, and maybe have a floating stem plant at the top of the roots. For stocking it would depend if I end up making this brackish or freshwater but it would be some kind of shrimp. Rudolph if brackish and maybe some caridina if fresh. Anyways, I've started growing the mangrove in mud and have the bulb as well. I completely understand that this might not work and if it does, it will take years and likely still turn out differently than I expect. Just what I've been daydreaming about. 

[TheSwissAquarist]

What tank setup am I daydreaming about? Planted mini paludarium, with Anubias Nana and a dwarf baby tear carpet grown from seed. Zero fish; but it would be very pleasant to look at. Maybe with a cool-looking rock in the middle?

[Tanked]

My daydream tank remains: the avatar tank with floating Islands, a sand fall, a troupe of shrimp or a school of ?

[TheSwissAquarist]

On 2/16/2023 at 4:22 PM, Tanked said:

My daydream tank remains: the avatar tank with floating Islands, a sand fall, a troupe of shrimp or a school of ?

You mean this? 

 

[FLFishChik]

On 2/15/2023 at 11:14 PM, A3M0N said:

@AllFishNoBrakes I work remotely from a home office/guest room. 🙂

Me too! I currently have a 5g betta tank on a dresser… but I **dream** of a planted Zen Aqua bowl with cherry shrimp!

[MickS77]

Daydreaming about a rimless paladarium, half land mass with tropical houseplants lit from above, Amazon river fish below, à la Serpa Designs inspired. 

[Tanked]

On 2/16/2023 at 10:35 AM, TheSwissAquarist said:

You mean this? 

 

Yes.  But I will build the budget friendly model.  Mine would have more open space and probably use lava rock.  Building a reliable sand fall has proven to be elusive.

[SandBkeeper]

I'm working on my dream tank right now! Corner heavy aquascape, rocks, community tank with lots of plants. 

Got everything in, waiting for it to cycle and add some more plants. Going to have a trio of honey gouramis, a school of tetras or rasboras (not sure what yet, suggestions would be appreciated), either forktail or spotted blue eye rainbows, hastatus cories and possibly a mystery snail. The stocking theme for this tank is yellow, black, white, and blue!