So, after avidly reading Ted Coletti's articles in TFH for about 2 years, I was inspired by his article on Colony Tanks to set up my 30 gal as one. The tank itself was set up, if I remember correctly, in Oct. of 2004. Set up as an NPT tank (I'm a purist, so that should give you an idea of how, exactly, the tank is set up), it has housed various types of fish and plants. It has had its ups and downs, most notable was the "down" it had when we moved into our new house. The house required a lot of work so my tank maintenance was non-existent, except for feedings a couple of times a week.
So the tank crashed during the winter.... it was overrun by various types of algae (hair, green, BGA and something else I never identified). Finally, in the spring I was finally able to do a number of large water changes over a couple of weeks. This helped to stabilize the tank. The angelfish and bristle nose were moved to my friend's tank.... anyway, long story short, as I pondered the fate of the tank I came across Dr. Coletti's article on colony tanks and decided to set mine up as a swordtail one.
So I bought a male and three females to get the colony going. I had some female guppies going and I didn't take into accout just how much sperm females can store so now instead of a swordtail tank, I really have a guppy tank! Well, the baby guppies are going either in the tub outside (the nice ones) or are being offered as live food to the angels.
So here now, are the photos of the tank... If you look up my old posts you can see the list of the plants, but from these pictures it should be self explanatory.
Lastly, let me say that 4 years into it, the tank has shown, obviously, a remarkable ability to "self-correct" with minimal help. The plant growth is very good (vals are starting to get really long as they did 4 years ago) but slow. The fish heath is excellent. The swordtails ARE breeding and there are already a couple of fry. There are also a couple of ghost shrimp, and I plan on getting more.
Anyway, here are the pics....
Here's a pic of the tank as you enter the room....
A couple of front, center, left and right 5ank views. In pretty much all of them you can see the plethora of guppies (I think about 50 - 60 in all)....
Here's are some pics of the fish....
Well, sorry for rambling, but I hope you enjoyed!
-ricardo
30 Gal Colony Tank
Linear Mode
