posted 02-13-2004 01:02 PM         

10 gallon #1:

1 betta, 2 african dwarf frogs, 2 emerald cats, 1 apple snail, and for the time being 1 fancy goldfish (but he will be moving to a pond in a couple months).

10 gallon #2:

26ish Labidochromis caeruleus fry. When they get to be about 1", I'll sell them to a LFS. This is the first time I've had that many at once so if I start having problems with my water parameters, I'll set up a makeshift/temp tank to lighten the bioload.

55 gallon:

3 Pseudotropheus lombardoi,2 Melanochromis auratus, 4 Labidochromis caeruleus(2 of which are juvies and I may end up selling them), 2 P. socolofi, 2 Ob cichlids, and 3 small plecos (I'll get rid of them when they get bigger). Personally, I wouldn't recommend this mix to anyone else because they are all fairly aggressive cichlids, but I got most of them before I knew any better. However, I'm lucky because the tank has been set up for about a year and other than some chasing and the occasional fin nipping (very little damage done), I haven't had any major aggression issues.

75 gallon:

1 tiger/red oscar (currently 9" SL), 1 lutino oscar (currently 8" SL), and 2 plecos.

In addition, I also breed triops (small crustaceans) as occasional treats for the oscars. I use a fish bowl to hatch the eggs in and various plastic storage bins to grow them out in.

posted 02-13-2004 03:30 PM         

I only have 3 live plants and their in 10 gallon #2 (short with thin leafs in the front right corner, long broad leaves in front of the pot, and medium height with long thin leaves in the middle of the far left side). All the others are fake.

And a little tip on getting artificial plants. You can get them a lot cheaper from the craft store (or craft dept of Walmart). Just avoid the ones with glitter or perfume. 10 gallon #1 has about $6 worth of plants in it. If I had gotten them all at the LFS, it would have cost me closer to $30.

posted 02-13-2004 06:24 PM         

For the 75, I do move all the rocks and decorations when I vacuum.

The 55 hasn't had sand very long so I haven't gotten around to vacuuming it yet. I'm in the process of making a resin rock structure so that I can easily lift it to clean then put it back w/o having to worry about trying to balance and stack the rocks.

And in the 10 gallons, I use a smaller siphon so it's a little easier to work around the decorations. They also have really thin layers of sand (>1") so it's not quite as essiential that I stir the sand every time I do a water change.

And reguarding how often I do water changes; I keep a really close eye on my water parameters, but for some as yet unknown reason, none of my tanks build up nitrAtes very quickly. So if I let the nitrAtes dictate my water changes, I could easily go 3 months w/o having to touch the tanks. But despite that, I generally do water changes at least once a month. Keep in mind, though that I am a major exception and most people have to do water changes every week.

-Chelle