Well, seems all anyone cares about are photo's so here's a tank I've done for a client that's been up and running about 2.5 years now using plain old EI, high fish load and relatively slow growers. Fish health is impeccable and Cardinals, Rummy noses, Emperor tetras, 10 different rare plecos species/3 other cats, otto cats, Corys, Rose line barbs, Large Silver hatchets, Noemacilius botia, gold dojo have been gowing and eating well for some time now.

This tank had a dosing fertilizer unit on it, but the folks there dose 2x a week and feed well, I feed and dose once a week, works pretty well.

The glass has never had any algae issues, some BBA appeared initially, adding more CO2 addressed that. There are about 900 fish in here. 500 Cards and 250 Rummy noses, 50 Emperor tetras, 5 newly added Rose line barbs(look like the rummy's for now till they grow). Plain flourite substrate. I used the green geko crypts in the front because on the larger plecos knocking most other plants loose there(it';s the only things that's survived their onslaught). There are 4 A. adonis black satan plecos in here that do extremely well as well as several awesome species of pleco(4 mango, 2 vampire, 4 P leopardus, 2 S aureum, 3 peppermint, 5 S multipunctatus, 2 long fin bushy nose, 4 Gold nugget, 4 gold spot, 4 P pulcher, several others that escape me). There are 40 Cory Panda and 6 C. adlofi. 3 Large SAE's I cannot catch or kill (yet).


The wood is alder and mazanita, the rock is the grey suiko rock from China. Wet dry filter, 1 large Ehiem canister filter, 2xCO2 reactors fed directly into the return pump. One intake in an overflow, one at about gravel level.
Water change:50-70% weekly. GH: 8, KH 5.
CO2 about 8 bubbles a second.

NO3: about 25ppm before water change. PO4 about 2ppm before water change , K+ about 30ppm before water change.








Regards,
Tom Barr

I do have to admit to loving the photos, but I read the non-illustrated posts as well!. The tank is amazing. I wish I had a larger apartment, I'd tackle at least a 180.

Beautiful job Tom.

So, you dose it just as you would a lightly stocked tank of the same size? Or do you make adjustments to the plan?

-MT

EDIT: And it's damned gorgeous!

Out of interest what are the dimensions of this tank ?

Now that’s an enclosed eco system. I also read the non-illustrated post as well but love the pictures. Feeding has to get expensive after a while, especially if they’re being feed live foods. Interestingly enough, that tank doesn’t have ada as. Kudos, everything looks great.

Can someone link me to the non-illustrated post please ?

Getting the caretakers to dose is a challenge. They canned one guy because he stopped dosing for 3 weeks(I can tell as I have maked labels on the containers to make sure! Lesson's learned the hard way, hehe, you are not going to lie your way out of this one and blame me for it! Out think the weasel and let them hang themselves when things go bad), so the tank just got a once a week dosing.
Bga and a little hair algae popped up, then the CO2 tank ran out about a day or so after I left

Such is life.
But 3 weeks later it's whipped back into shape even with 3 nasty algae species and some aggressive pruning, Excel, and good dosing for the plants.

I swapped some species around and changed the layout more so things are looking nicer scape wise, those giant 8" long A adonis black statan plecos uproot and destroy any finer rooted foreground plants. Even the Anaubias nana have a tough time.
I like them though and so does the client, so we have to work around some things and have trade offs.

Some idiots make scape comments about the tank without having to deal with the trade offs here such as the fish load or the destruction that some fish do weekly.
It's worth it and the tank still looks awesome.

The client has been very pleased for years now.


The tank is 26" Tall, 24"Deep, 96 Long, but you have a 2ft block due to the wood cab built in, which is unfortunate.

the client had talked about doing a 36" tall tank and removing it.

I'd use ADa As then.

But the tank works well and is easy to care for as is, so there's little change in the future except perhaps going to all Flourite Black.

Dosing Standard EI, 3x a week
Heavier on the traces/PO4 the day or the water change.

Food: all frozen and dry.

There's 4 larger and fast grow Rose lines, I might get 3-4 more.
They blend well.

I'd like to get some more pencil fish, they add to this community very well.

BTW, I have my own tank in the plan coming up here.
Yay!

Regards,
Tom Barr

Thanks for the info, the pics are awesome. I'd love to see more.

Tom, why would you like to harpoon the SAE's for? What are they doing?

The tank is now looking better after a few weeks of abuse.
Takes several weeks sometimes to get it back to normal.

Due to the folks not touching the CO2 or other things, if you happen to run out of CO2 say the day after you leave, then 6 days later, you come back to a mess.

So such tanks can be a challenge.

But lately, the tank is looking very good and an investor might be interested in getting a tank like this one.

I let the L aromatica grow out and fill in nice and let the Myrio and the R indica fill in more, the scape is finally coming together, the foreground gets mauled and raped by the plecos. Hard to keep anything there, so the open "dutch" approach works best.

regards,
Tom Barr