oh lord here we go again... another tank

so i was just walking around petco the other day out here in olympia and saw the cooollliest nano tank i looked at it four times while i was there and went to go leave the store only to turn right back around and buy the damn tank... lol its a 6.6 gallon bookshelf tank. i love it because its long not tall plus it came with everything. anyways now that i have it and have water in it i have no clue what the hell to put in the dang thing. i was gonna do like two hatches but after further investigations hatches only do well in bigger groups so nurp thats not gonna work. then i was looking and thought oooh guppies! but my boyfriend shot me down on that one "guppies are stupid" and sence im setting it u at his house i cant do anything he doesnt like grrrr... pain in my butt.... anyways so then i thought oh shrimp that would be awesome but i cant flipping find shrimp anywhere for the life of me and the ones i can find r spendy spendy spendy!
anyway guys im stuck i need ur help what should i do in this tank!!!
  

I always thought those were cool looking tanks. We want pics when you do get it set up!

this is the same tank I started my red cherry shrimp in that did extremely well in if you would like I can give you a few red cherry shrimp

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heres a couple pics so far. the female betta ist staying in there but shes just chilling till i get something else.
sorry for the crummy pics my cell sucks

that would be amazing do u ship at all im not in edmonds often more like never

this is what i did with the same tank. just to give you an idea. i swapped out the filter for a larger one, and bought a nice clip on LED light from ebay. the betta sure loved it, never jumped once lolz. GF was TICKED when i got rid of it lolz.
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Id want to try (as different setups) a dwarf puffer, everglade dwarf sunfish, a bunch of male endlers, ummmm my fish notebook probably has a few more probably too small to try and do some kind of river setup. BTW, I'm drooling. Looks like an epic tank and I'm low on replacement tanks and new tank funds lol good luck!

endlers r pretty much mini guppies so no to those but i do like the little dwarf sunfish ill have to look into those
but yea thanks it was only 50.00 not what i was expecting. regardless its a beautiful tank and once i get my plants going its gonna only get better

Those little dwarf sunfish are awesome, but so hard to spot! They're like tiny bettas. Another friendly fish to see might be the dwarf rasboras (maculatus, urophtalmoides, brigittae). They like to school, so they would appreciate the length of the tank.

what about a couple threadfin rainbows or would the tank be to small for them??

Yeah, those guys would get uncomfortable in there. They would need some more vertical space.

you could look into maybe doing some liquorice gourami's. its what i originally wanted to do in my setup. they stay pretty small and look like bettas. cory at the co-op has some in stock or can get em. just my two cents

not a big gourami person tho i did think or doing sparkling gouramis in the tank idk :/

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bit of an update yay its got plants and fish now
i ended up getting some cherry barbs and a butterfly loach i love him what do u all think so far??

Looks good. Me like!

I like it. Is your wood new or old? If its new you might find your water turning brown pretty quick but it looks good. Nice job with the setup.

It already went through the "brown water stage" with water changes and good filter pads it seemsto have stopped or atleast settled thanks tho

if its still bothering you, just boil it in a pot of water for awhile. make sure to change water when it gets a nice cola color. should really help reduce the tannin leeching. really like the look of the tank, have you thought about adding any nice rocks? i really think one or two chunks could really help the scape.

I have another peice of wood going in the tank working on sinking it now. I'm not a big fan of rock and wood in an aquarium for me it's one or the other. Just don't look right to me with them both imo

I really agree, rocks OR wood is that way to go, most of the tanks I see or have tried scaping with rocks and wood just don't look right... The exception is a nice angel tank I saw which had a sandstone backdrop and then mock tree roots coming in from the top. It really looked like the bank of a river with a tree growing its roots down over the side.

But anyway, I really like the look you're going for, and I think those crypts (lutea?) will do well in the lower light you have going there. Good plant choice. Not sure about the background plants, it looks like it could be bacopa and it might like more light, maybe that's why it looks a little frazzled, or maybe it's a different plant than I'm thinking. I like the substrate color too, is it just normal aquarium gravel from petco or did you get something special? usually the stuff I see there seems like just one color, and doesn't have nice light and dark accents mixed in like yours does

The top is just normal small gravel from petco the bottom is floramax substrate . The plant in the back is rotala indica the light on the tank is a light just for plants its in a pink spectrom so they alll should do ok fingers crossed. But thank you so much

Ah ok, that explains why it looks so different. I have never grown that before, and I was thinking it looks like bacopa but very stretched out. What kind of filter did it come with? Maybe I will have another HOB buddy among all these canister users   

it is a hob filter made by fluval infact its actually very nice my boyfriend being the picky fish tank person he is added different bio media to it and it seems to work awesome im going to be putting a sponge filter over the intake hose tomorrow back im getting shrimp in the mail monday for the tank
im excited i think this tank with be amazing once i get everything the way i want it lol as for hob filters its all i use so yes u do have a hob filter buddy lol excitement!!!

fishyladdy wrote:I have another peice of wood going in the tank working on sinking it now. I'm not a big fan of rock and wood in an aquarium for me it's one or the other. Just don't look right to me with them both imo

I'm a rocks and wood kinda girl...I like both in my tanks but I think tanks can be beautiful with wood or rocks or both.

Think Takashi Amano... wood and rocks can work well given the proper treatment.

Idk as sometimes it looks ok others I'm like eh could do with out

ultimately, it really boils down to... do YOU like the look?

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again im sorry for the crap pics
but heres an update
there are cherry shrimp cherry barbs and a couple snails that were added to it.
the plants are already growing like crazy and i love it!! will be adding the other piece of wood this weekend yayayay!!

I don't have any cherry barb experience, but from what I remember barbs are somewhat aggressive, and you might start losing shrimp fast... I have tried shrimp/fish tanks, and it never works well. I would recommend shrimp alone if you want them to survive