Fishtake's Office 40 Gallon Breeder

[Fishtake]

Bought a 40 Gallon Breeder probably 5 years ago at a Petco sale with the idea of drilling it and adding a sump. Totally chickened out and bought a canister filter instead. This is my first serious dive into fishkeeping I've had a goldfish as a kid and a ton of guppies but never could make it last.

Me and the wife got onto a betta kick for a while where we had like 10 different betta tanks but none bigger than 10 gallons.

Going to try my first properly cycled/matured planted tank with a couple feature fish, dither fish and maintenance crew.

All the contents are currently bought at Aquarium Depot in California (Tazawa visited them)

• 40 Gallon Breeder (Petco dollar per gallon sale)
• Stand bought at Wayfair (Someday I'll be brave enough to build my own)
• Large piece of wood
• Seiryu Stone
• Fluval 307 Canister Filter (No extra media yet)
• Fluval Planted 3.0
• Fluval Stratum base layer
• Pool filter sand cap
• 300W heater (75 gallon rated)

Currently on week 2

I have done 3 massive water changes to get the tannins out. I did not boil the wood initially and ended up with a nice dark tea and biofilm/gel looking substance on the wood. I took it out and put it in an old cooler and poured about 5  soup pans worth of boiling water ontop of it and let it sit for 3 hours occasionally topping off with boiling water.

I have dosed with

• API Quickstart pretty much every water change
• API Leaf Zone every water change
• API Accuclear every water change (had been messing with the scape a bit)
• API tap water conditioner every water change.

Tank currently has a couple of Anubias, and some Borneo Fern (Which i found out later are not actually submersible)

I have been sitting on 0 Ammonia and 0 Nitrites and between 0 / 5.0 ppm Nitrites for 2 weeks now.

I have ordered more plants from Aquarium Coop this week arriving tomorrow.

2 Ferns (Going on the wood probably), 1 Sword probably to cover up some of the heater, and 2 ludwigia reds to give the tank a pop of color and hopefully propagate to cover up other mechanical items in the tank.

I'm doing a plant-in cycle and eager to get some actual life into the tank.

As for stocking the tank

• Some sort of cory not sure which yet but i'm thinking like 6 ish
• Some sort of dither fish i'm highly leaning to harlequin rasboras
• And then i want some sort of feature fish. Currently going between Apisto's, Kribensis and Chindingo Saulosi
  • My water is pretty hard so Apisto's might be out of the question if i don't want to deal with softening the water.
• And finally I'll probably end up throwing in a couple shrimp to leave to fend for themselves (mbuna's will probably slaughter them), and really considering not putting in snails

Totally stole the light settings from @Bentley Pascoe's video on the Planted 3.0 

Edited July 27 by Fishtake
updated topic

[Fishtake]

Woo, new plants from Aquarium Coop arrived.

All of them look as expected besides the Ludwigia red they did not quite make it across the country.

Half the plant stayed in the bags they came in and one of the pots has no leaves left as you can see.

Do you think i can revive either of them? I'll put them in the water to recover before i attempt to split them all up and plant them properly.

[Fishtake]

Ferns and crypts have found their place.

time to go dissect the sword and pray it recovers.

Edited July 26 by Fishtake
more pictures

[Fishtake]

We are getting some algae on that capstone!

[Jack1235]

I did a great job at your tank

[Fishtake]

Start of Week 3 of cycling.

Tested the waters this morning,  after adding the plants from Coop yesterday.

Results:

- pH 8.0

- Ammonia  0 ~0.25 ppm

- Nitrite - 0.25 ~ 0.50 ppm

- Nitrate - 5.0 ppm

Going to do a 50% water change today and redose with leaf zone, quickstart for 20 gallons

[Fishtake]

So milestone today, both Anubias are growing new leaves and my rocks are starting to grow some nice algae on the surface. Plants ordered from Aquarium coop are definitely going through a transition and some leaves are dying off but i totally expected that after being cooked for 5 days in transit. I don't think that attempting to save the Ludwigia red's is working out but we shall see the stems are getting really dark but still seem very solid. (New ones are on the way, amazing live guarantee policy)

I tested my water today after the 50% water change (I'm going to need to figure out how to get that better my syphon doesn't reach my sink and if i stretch it the sink doesn't quite drain fast enough to handle it).

- pH 8.0

- Ammonia  0 pm

- Nitrite - 0.25 ppm

- Nitrate - 0 ppm

I believe we are going the right direction.

I'm super eager to add in fish but since nitrites aren't 0 I'm not sure if that is a great idea.

By now I've gone through an entire bottle of quick-start  which should treat 110 gallons so I'll have to buy more of that.

Still floundering on stocking.

I really want cory's but they like lower pH and the same with the harlequin rasboras.

I think I'm pretty set on trying out 2 groups of Kribensis for the main fish which should be able to inhabit opposite sides of the tank.

I was considering Chindigo Saulosi but I'm really worried they will destroy the plants in the tank.

 

Totally open for some ideas 

 

[Fishtake]

Dosed my tank with Dr Tim's Ammonia Chloride yesterday.

This morning the values read a bit different.

Ammonia: 0.5 ppm

Nitrate: 10 ppm

Nitrite is sitting at 1~2 ppm

Looks like we might have a ways to go still.

[Fishtake]

Added 2 Oto Cat's and 2 assassin snails in the tank the other day.

We have a bit of an Algae bloom. This will be the stocking of the tank until September when i get back from a birthday trip.

After that we'll probably get the dither fish, CPD's or some sort of rasboras

 

Couple pics of the current tank. Turned the light down to 30% and 2 % blue light.

Also added some Nathans Super Red and Rotala Indica this weekend