Need a new fishtank - what do you love/hate about yours?

[stillnzcookie]

Hi, I posted a month or so ago that we had baby panda cories in our tank. Well...we just keep seeing more and more of them! I'm pretty certain there are more than ten of them now and every week there seem to be one or two more tiny ones in there. :bounce: Our eventual plan is to build a bigger house than we currently have, and get a big fish tank, so I don't really want to rehome all of them, which means we are going to need another tank to house some of them in the meantime.

I'm still trying to work out the logistics of fitting another tank in our house, so we'll probably look at another 60-ish-litre - certainly no bigger than 90L. I'm tossing up between moving some of the panda cories and our 9 ember tetras to a new tank, and getting some lemon tetras to go in the current tank, or just moving the cories and getting a betta to go with them. How many cories do you think I could safely keep in a 60L with a few ember tetras or a betta?

I've been looking at and Aqua One 620 on TM but, after reading up on it, I have been put off by the number of these tanks that have broken - it sounds like 5mm glass and curved corners are not the best combination and, as it will probably be on carpet, it's not a risk I want to take!

So what small tanks do people recommend? It will be a low-light, low-tech planted tank, so I'd like to be able to set the lights on a timer. I'd be keen to have LED lights, to find out what they're like with plants, as I hope to use this as a bit of a test tank before we get a bigger tank. I'd love to be able to hide most of the hardware and I'd like as quiet a tank as possible.

If you have a small tank, what are the things you love/hate about it? Any advice or opinions would be appreciated, thanks!

[David R]

I love the dimensions of my small tank, and hate that it already looks small! :lol:

[Ira]

I hate that my tank is too small, needs to be much bigger. Maybe 1800X1000X600 would be good.

[alexyay]

I'd probably say about 6-10 cories in with a betta, or 6 cories in with a school of tetras. Bigger is better for tank size, though

Juwel tanks would be my recommendation (the Koral 60 I believe?) - they're pretty gorgeous and are relatively reliable (as far as I'm aware). However you might be out of luck for finding tanks with in built LED lights. I believe AquaManta now has a model out with LEDs but I don't know whether they're readily available - Blue Planet I believe uses LEDs but I wouldn't recommend them one bit (they're not known for being a reliable brand!). So unfortunately for LEDs you may have to be doing some DIY, but as long as you have a hood it should all be hidden. *some* tanks now have a compartment at the back where you can put your heater and where the filter is located, and it just looks like the tank back, but I haven't seen them on tanks over 30L.

I personally hate my BP 70L tall - I actually don't mind the filter but it does leak & it's in a position where I have to bring the media out and bring it over the tank water so I have to make sure it's covered so none gets in. The light lost its strength quite quickly but 2 years later it's still going. But back to the tall - long is typically better for stocking as it has a larger footprint, and I hate scaping tall tanks.

I have a little Aqua One 31L cube type tank. I hate their HOB filters. Otherwise the tank is OK (I switched to an aquamanta HOB filter - it doesn't come with much media but it's silent and smooth).

5mm glass sounds pretty thin, and if it's got curved edges it'll be expensive to replace any broken glass (I'm in the middle of dealing with the aftermath of a leaky filter & and emergency tank switch - it's not fun).

I'd say go for a 90L It'll start to feel small pretty quickly. My biggest is a 120L and it feels teensy!

However, I like my custom tanks. I know they have no hood but I don't mind not being able to hide stuff - they can look pretty clean with a nice fitting light unit. This will give you loads of other opens for LEDs and custom fit things

For them - I like where the edges have a glass cover - it's easier to place lighting units on it and I find it easier to put the glass hood on. But it can also be a pain to get into the tight corners to clean.

TL;DR just a bunch of ramblings on what I like and don't like - first paragraph are my stocking recommendations.

[stillnzcookie]

Thanks for the helpful reply, alexyay! :gpo2: I've been pondering a lot today, and I'm thinking now that I'd like to set this tank up as a mini test-version of the large tank we hope to one day have. So I think it will have to be a custom tank, as I want to try LED lighting and a Hamburg Mattenfilter. My ultimate aim is to achieve a beautiful, aquascaped, low-maintenance, energy-efficient tank, with large schools of small peaceful fish - definitely panda cories and otos, plus probably several types of tetras. I'm feeling very excited now that hubby has approved getting a second tank (still haven't figured out where it will go, though :dunno: ) - MTS, here we come!

[stillnzcookie]

SO...we spent the weekend up in Christchurch and came home with a new tank! We popped into Animates Tower Junction on the way home and they had an Aqua One Ecostyle 61, which we got for $149, and a Fluval heater for $50 (tank doesn't come with a heater). We decided that was both cheaper and easier than a custom set up - it comes with two LED strips, which hubby assures me are a standard size, so we can experiment with different colours, and the filter is in the hood, but we're pretty sure we can do a modified HMF to figure out how that might work as well.

I also spent a lot of time in Organism (I needed fish food, but any excuse!) looking at fish and working out what we might put in it. I've decided to get a school of some sort (probably tetras) - before I went, I was almost certain I wanted lemon tetras, but now there are about a dozen possibilities on my list!

The current plan is to eventually put the baby panda cories, our dwarf neon rainbowfish, some otos and a school of something in the new tank (as it is bigger than the current one) and leave the adult panda cories, harlequin rasboras, otos and ember tetras in the old tank. The new tank will have dark gravel, driftwood, anubias, java fern and hopefully some crypts and I'm not sure yet what else.

It's going to be a slow set-up, and nothing will be happening until after Christmas at least, but I'll try to get myself organised and do a tank log with progress photos this time around. Unfortunately I only have a cheap, 2nd hand camera, which is really rubbish, but I'll see what I can do!

In the meantime, there'll be lots of planning and dreaming...