epiphany

That's actually a really good point. In my 10 gal tank I have some of the Black sponge over my intake. Just cut a square of it and zip tied it on there. I've just clean it out a not of I notice my flow slowing down. Shrimp do seem to love it.

For the shrimp you'll either want a sponge prefilter or a stainless steel one. I'm not sure of any vendors in Canada that sell the steel prefilters but they do look a lot nicer and don't clog up much. Where did you get the light and how much was it if you don't mind me asking?

How much surface agitation do you have?

The address should work if you exclude the bay j part and just do 4710 - 17th Ave. SE. It's in the strip mall on the north side of 17th there, in a parking lot with a pizza hut and it's next to the giant tiger in there.

Took a look on kijiji, there's this 48" 4x65 watt fixture, which may be more light than you're looking for. They're asking $150 but you could probably talk them down. link. Also found these, each fixture is 55 watts at 24" so the two fixtures to cover your tank would be 110 watts. Asking $35 per fixture so $70 for the two of them if you don't talk them down. link.

Sunblasters. Not quite as pretty much way more for your money.

Yep, just think of it as a 50% WC since you're saving 59ish gallons of water.

I have one red honey and one flame dwarf gourami in my 35g tank, there's never been more than a charge at each other if they get too close while feeding that I've seen.

There's a nice following on those on the planted tank, seems pretty promising.

Well that's a bit of a relief. I am just running DIY co2 and am dosing Flourish, so I guess can't expect it to be as fast as those guys. I just thought that going with the special plant substrate as well as the brand new lighting, root tabs, dosing Flourish, DIY co2 etc, that I would get some really crazy growth. It's definitely helping, but having pressurized CO2 and full fertilization is what gives some people instant forests.

Got a pic or model of what you got? You can still do plants, just not heavy root feeders. My heavily planted 10g is aquarium gravel. I'll try to get some pics of it later. And if you put a 13 watt daylight bulb into the hood you'll have plenty of light, depending on planting you might even want to use 1 bulb down the line to avoid algae. Post up a thing in the livestock classifieds asking for cherry shrimp, you might get lucky and find somebody willing to sell them waaaay cheaper than a pet store, it doesn't take much to get a colony going either.

For fish take a look at celestial pearl danios imo if you want fish, small and colourful and shouldn't bother the shrimp. I haven't read anything for or against a frog with shrimp so you might want to wait for somebody else to chime in or do some more research. Is the hood one you can screw in a CFL bulb into? Air pump will probably set you back ~$10, $1 for t air connector, you'll probably want 2 check valves (one for each line after the T) which are $2 each i think. $5 or so in air tubing, $6 for each sponge. If you get the flourite free that leaves ~$20 for the rest. You can try to get plants and shrimp on here which will allow you to save a lot on those. Is the heater one that has a thermostat built in?

You mean stuffing a sponge block on the end of the AC siphon tube? Yeah, something to prevent baby shrimps from getting sucked into the filter. Yes, will likely need a bigger one for an AC20 though. You can get away without a filter but your water quality will be much better if you filter it, will also give you more leeway if you miss a water change or something dies in the tank. A decent airpump won't be noisy. I have a fusion 400 which is a 40 gallon airpump on the tank that's about 3 feet from my bed and it makes less noise than the splash of water from my AC50. You could get a whisper 10-20, connect that to a T connector and run that to 2 smaller sponge filters. I recommend going with 2 sponges so that way when you want to clean it you don't lose all your bacteria as that's where most of it will reside. You could do 1 sponge filter but you can't give it a really deep cleaning when it gets dirty or it can give you a mini cycle. You can do plants without flourite, just stick with low light plants, even low light plants will grow a lot better with a good substrate though. Another nice thing with the plants is that they help remove nitrates from your water, and the shrimp will eat stuff growing on the plants and will eat dead plant matter. As long as your office temperature is stable and not too cool you could even get away without a heater if you're just keeping cherry shrimp or similar. If you want to keep this a simple shrimp tank you need: tank, filter (up to you whether you do air pump and sponges or a HOB filter), substrate, lighting (if you want low light plants and moss you can get a clip on desk lamp with a 13 watt daylight CFL bulb in it), having a top is up to you but is probably a good idea as it will help keep evaporation lower. Other than that you just want plants, any decorations you do or don't want and some shrimp/fish.

Too bad you aren't in Calgary, riverfront is half off on plants this Saturday. They don't have the biggest selection of plants but what they do have always looks healthy

If you want to do planted I'd consider using fluorite or similar. Lighting can ne a single cfl 13w bulb which should grow low light plants like moss, ferns and anubias. An ac20 would be a great filter just make sure you get a prefilter if you're going the shrimp route.

You could go without a top and run it off the side, and figure out lighting. Or if you do a shrimp tank go with a sponge filter or two

Yeah, I'd bring the cherries up to 10-15 and they should bring the population up themselves nicely. Just make sure you've got a good prefilter if you want them breeding. If you don't want breeding you could toss a few amanos in there.

If he sticks to low light plants like some anubias he should be okay.

Since I use buckets to refill my tank I get the water to around the temperature since I have to use a faucet anyway, I don't worry about the temperature much I just try to get it somewhat near.

I would love some Galaxy Rasboras but they seem so hard to come by... Might be the season or something, when I got mine, riverfront, Pisces and big ALS all had them in stock. Call around and hope for the best

I've gotta say I wasn't impressed by Tanks A Lot when I went, I was expecting a lot more based on what a few other people had said about it.

How about some kind of rasbora? Like chili or galaxy.

Throw Pisces in there too. You've got a lot of options.

Good show meeiu! If you ever end up using two fixtures on one tank, you have the advantage of spreading them out more than a double bulb fixture would permit. I don't know if anyone following this topic has fiddled with that idea. Does an extra 4" between bulbs matter to either create or eliminate lower light zones? I don't think that would be enough to create a low light zone as these bulbs have a pretty good spread. It would make your lighting a lot more even though. If I didn't already have this big overpriced fixture I'd go grab 2 more of these in a heartbeat.

Lighting I'd go with a sunblaster T5HO fixture, a 24" fixture which should be the same length as the tank will set you back $30 or so. For carpeting plants I think you could do either dwarf baby tears or dwarf hairgrass with this lighting, but somebody else will have better knowledge on that part.