Fluval 5 gal

I bought Madness's Fluval Spec and I finally got it setup and running, It is home to two ram horn snails and some left over plants from my tank.
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Do you guys have any ideas on small fish that will do well with shrimp?

uhhmm Ill fix the picture..

Dwarf cories, dwarf rainbows, and small otocinclus

Looking good Morgan.

I was surprised It has an awesome filter! It was clear within an hour.

You could try dwarf rasboras. Maculatus and urophthalmoides would be great! Brigittae if you can find it! They give lots of mileage for the nano dollar! They would love that great setup

Good time for a road trip to Aquarium CoOp! They got nanO fish galore, stuff u may have never seen...

This set up does look good MorganEA!

Dwarf Puffers & Dwarf Cory cats! <--- my $0.02

Im not sure what plants to put in it, maybe Ill put different kinds of anubias in it.
Oh the possibilities!!  

NO dwarf puffers with ram horns, lol. For real puffers are cute but are more pain in the butt to feed. Live snails or worms. Flakes or dried food dont work for them.

why did you have to mention dwarf puffers! I saw some at my LFS and they were adorable and silly!

I have this same tank. My only complaint is the filter output is like a freaking fire house. wish I could tone it down.

I have it turned so it hits the glass, that helped a bit. I have heard of people putting a sponge over it? not sure it that would help.

Yeah tried that with a rubberband holding it. Works for a day till it shoots it off. Even aiming it at the glass I lost 2 betta's to the high power flow. How often do you find a filter thats too strong for the tank it came with lol

no kidding!! Im amazed how powerful and quiet it is.

I have a similar fluval tank and struggled with the same problem... Never did come up with a good solution. I tried the foam on the outlet as a diffuser and that helped a bit. Problem is that you need a big piece of foam (I used a 3" long section) an that detracts from the look of the tank. I put the foam on the inside of the line from the pump to the outlet... that only helped a bit. I figure that if you could build a plastic "muffler" with a wider outlet you would slow the flow (bernoulli's principle), but if you got the time/money to do that, you would be better of doing other things. In the end I angled the water towards a long piece of slate and used that to control what part of the tank was getting messed up by the flow (and to give my betta more quiet swimming space!).

Another heads up: If you get shrimp going in there, be prepared to fish for them in the filter section! Especially younger shrimp that get sucked in by the water flow alone.

Finally, one of the most amazing things to blow my mind in recent days:
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lol Your filters, media is organic now eh?

yea that's the one thing that I wasn't sure about with shrimp. I will probably only do shrimp if I can find healthy ones locally, I went to my LFS and they had tanks full of dead shrimp  

I tried to put a few ghost shrimp in a 5gal with a Thai Crowntail Betta... apparently shirmp are in their scope of dinner plan.s

Ask for shrimp here on fishbox You will not be disappointed!

(BTW, that pic isn't mine )

I have a suggestion to tame this outflow problem. I have one of these too (but not set-up as of yet) but hooked up the pump in a bucket with outflow tube attacted.
Take a piece of sponge cut it with scissors to fit IN the top end of the outflow tube (inside filter box area) BEFORE the directional out flow nozzle, You might want to use a toothpick to push it in gently. I do this with all of my nano h.o.b.'s (but are in reverse flow) and no shrimp suckin' since! Use a pourious sponge material like the black type. There is also a reduction flow adjustment on this pump as well.
Report back with results PLEASE.

Despite the obvious lack of a TARDIS or water tower, it's a good start. The way you have laid out the wood gives it a visual depth that is hard to achieve in such narrow tanks.  

Thank you SiRWesDragon for the new plants! This is the best picture I could get, the water is all mucky from me playing with the filter.
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Looks good! If your around midway, they have a nice selection of nano fish, from dwarf rasboras like the chillie and exclamation point, to dwarf gourami and nano tetras like the ember and green neon. They also have a pretty sizsble selection of shrimp.

To help combat the flow problem I've heard of people cutting a slit into the return tubing, so that water is partially diverted back into the filter. Just a thought  

well the filter isn't working now.. lol

I "adopted" 2 neon tetras for my fluval! I think they need a couple more friends though they look lonely
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So what happened with the filter and how did you get it back up?

lol that was human error, I didn't realize that the outlet it was plugged into is on the same circuit as the living room lights and they are controlled by a light switch. so when some one turns off the lights the filter would be turned off as well. does that make sense? electrical stuff is confusing...

LOL, yeah, I made that my mistake with a computer a long time ago... I wasn't happy when someone walked out of the room and turned off the computer shutting down all my important work (I believe I was a few hours into an age of empires map at the time...)

Glad to hear the tank is still going strong Happier still to see xmas lights behind it! Now you need some RCS to get really festive!

that sucks!! The top plug is controlled by the light switch but the bottom one isn't (weird!) so I got an extension cord, problem solved! Im getting paid tomorrow so Ill get some more tetras and possibly shrimp. Question do tetras school with other sp of tetra? also do I need to quarantine shrimp?

Morgan do you own your residence? If so I can swap those "switched" outlets for you

Its ok I figured out how to get around it

MorganEA wrote: Im getting paid tomorrow so Ill get some more tetras and possibly shrimp. Question do tetras school with other sp of tetra? also do I need to quarantine shrimp?

I dont believe other tetra species dont. Cause my dont. My 4 neons, 2 blk neons, 7 rummies, 2 blk skirts, 2 red serpaes, 4 red phatoms, 2 glow lights, 2 bleeding hearts, and 2 emperors. 
 What kind of shrimp you planning to buy? If red cherry buy from the craiglist guy in Issaquah his shrimps are deep red. Jettej has some of his shrimps man they are red. $2 per shrimp.  
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For a while (and through some confusion at the store) I had a lone head and tail light tetra in a tank with some harlequin rasboras (12 of them). The rasboras would school together 90% of the time, and the tetra would join their school for 50-60% of the time... So I think that rather than just tetra w/ tetra, if the fish are similar enough in shape, size and color, they'll eventually school for a while.

However, if you want the best behavior (always schooling) and the best look (a uniform school, IMHO), you would do best with a single species. Neon tetras are an awesome choice for that.

I guess I will have to put rummy nose tetras in another tank lol

I always prefer to see a single fish species in larger numbers myself. I just think it looks better visually, but of course that's a personal preference.

MorganEA what kind of shrimps are planning to buy?

Most likely RCS

Go check the craiglist ad link I provided.  Real red not like those lame  red colored ones in LFS.

Wow my glass looks really nasty   
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I love it, it looks great. Personally, I would love to see a little moss here a d there on all that wood, but, it still looks great. Good job )

It's coming along nicely!

thanks all for your comments! I really like how this tank is coming along and it is a lot easier to plant a small tank lol! I added some new tetras and so far I have only lost one! they seem to love having a larger school.

It looks really really good.   

Even made me look at a Fluval Edge when I was at the LFS ... but they just seem so small, hard to picture fish in there.

Maybe it's bigger on the inside ...

I have 6 tetras in it and they have plenty of swimming room. The tank is sitting on the side table next to the couch and its fun watching the tetras chase each other around.
Edit: just be aware that the Fluval Edge has a teeny tiny opening at the top that's why I like my Fluval Spec the top is totally open and has a lid

Morgan EA,
Have tried what I suggested in an earlier reply reguarding the out flow problem?
Chiisia,
These switch plugs are wired like that in living/bedrooms so one can turn on/off lights and don't have to go directly to the lamp itself. I just put scotch tape on the switch so no one can accidently turn it off! Yes, you can change out the plug for one that is not split to be a sw. plug, have installed thousand of these in homes!   

I did try it but then the tetras started acting funny and I got this scum on top of the water because it wasn't being agitated. The tetras seem to like the flow and I have it pointed up to help keep the scum off.

MorganEA wrote:
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Having only 3 tanks I really enjoy follow up pictures from other members. You can totally see the evolution from your 1st picture to the last. Keep the pictures coming!

I have 5 tanks    and Im not sure how that happened lol! I cleaned the fluval really well and scrubbed the glass so it looks really nice, for now...