marke14

Hello,

I am reconsidering what kind of tank I can "get away with" in my cubilcle.

I have jumped on board my local club's group buy and have an ADA 30-C on the way, but it's going to be too large for the cubicle, mainly because it would attract too much attention.

I am thinking of getting a very small (like perhaps 1 gal. or less) bowl, mainly for plants, but would like to have a fish or maybe shrimp in there.

Preferably, I would like to transfer my problematic dwarf puffer over there, but one concern I have (esp. if I end up with a small bowl-shaped container) is that I am really trying to avoid having any filtration or heater in there, which def. limits my selection of livestock.

So,

a) how hard is it to keep shrimp in general, and in such a small space?

and

b) what kind of fish might be OK in such a small volume? Just a beta?

If anyone knows about the dwarf puffer please let me know - s/he is eating my guppies' tails!

Homer_Simpson

I have no experience with puffers, so don't know. But I can honestly tell you that I had the best luck keeping a Dwarf Aquatic Frog and Peppered Cory CatFish in a 1.5 gallon tank at work. The frog survived 6 years and the catfish is still alive and kicking. I just added some plants a month ago. The tank is unheated but filtered using a submersible filter. I still do 50% water changes weekly and feed an algae disk every second day.

With unfiltered/unheated tanks, my understanding is that you are pretty much limited to Bettas, WhiteCloud Minnows, and Rosy Barbs, and possibly Zebra Danios. Shrimp are supposed to be highly sensitive to ammonia/nitrite spikes, so there may be a risk in keeping them in an unfiltered tank, unless you have well a tank with several plants and the plants are doing well(growing faster than they are dieing) to provide natural biofiltration. I would strongly recommend Anacharis (Egeria najas) plant for a ufiltered and unheated fish bowl as it is known to oxygenate the water and also naturally produce a chemical known to inhibit blue green algae. The floating stemless plants may also be worth considering as they are known to absorb excess nitrates.

I found these two articles really interesting and quite inspirational. You may find them helpful with re: to what you are trying to do.

http://www.petfish.net/articles/Aqua...nano_plant.php
http://joshday.com/bowlfish.htm


Now, I know with all the anti-aquababies crusaders, I am going to get flamed over this, but here goes. I had a aquababy mini-tank. I believe it holds about 8 cups of water. Many people have said that these tanks are cruel and inhumane. I placed some duckweed, no filter, no heater, no other plants in the tank with one very agressive(endler's live bearer). I did not specifically buy the endler's live bearer for the mini-tank, but ended up having to place him there as he was highly agressive towards my dwarf aquatic frog and shrimp. I believe that his pecking behaviour towards my ghost shrimp let to the death of my ghost shrimp. Using a turkey baster every week I replace 30-50 % of the aquababy mini-tank water. I feed every second day. So far it has been two months and the endler is still alive and kicking. I chose Duckweed because of it's unique filtering abilities. In a small tank like the aquababy mini-tank, it is easy enough to keep in check. Did you know that the plant is commonly used by poor fish farmers in raising tilapia and carp fish. The Duckweed is used to naturally filter the water, making filtration extensive/expensive filtrtation unnecessary, it acts as a food source for the carp at the same time, and the Duckweed replicates so quickly that there is no threat of it being eaten up faster than it reproduces. Duckweed has also been used in sewage treatment plants as a means to filter water.

http://www.duckweed.com.au/
http://www.fishfarming.com/recirc.html
http://www.ecosyn.us/ecocity/Links/M...ckweed_01.html

messy_da_legend

That's too small for a dwarf puffer, and needs to be heated for them

marke14

Thanks for the replies!

messy_da_legend, I hear you. I got a similar response over at thepufferforum.com. I guess I will have to take him back, because he's way too aggressive to keep with the guppies

Homer_Simpson: DUDE! Great articles! Many, many thanks - this is exactly what I was looking for! I found many great ideas in both of these -- I will cross post pics here when I get it set up. Good thing I have tons of Anacharis that I am constantly pulling from my tanks!

-Mark

Homer_Simpson

You're most welcome Those articles inspired me to get into this hobby.

Regards.

DelawareJim

I have a 450 ml Ikea "Rektangle" vase on my desk that is 3" by 4" by 5" high. It has a Crypt. x willisii 'lucens' and a small patch of HC growing in an inch of aquasoil, 1 female red cherry shrimp (for colour) and 1 common pond snail. Every 2-3 weeks I do about a 25-30% water change.

It's been on my desk at work for about 6 months now and the only problem I ever had with it, was about a month into having it, I killed the first shrimp by overdosing Excel when I was eradicating some BBA that hitch-hiked on the Crypt.

Now that the algae is gone, I don't dose anything and everyone's been fine.

Cheers.
Jim