Fluval Edge 6 gallon

[Jeff1192]

So I was hoping to get one of these for Christmas (I've had my eye on them for a while). My wife and I are currently in Syracuse and went Black Friday shopping. Petsmart had them on sale for $100 (cheapest I've ever seen them is $150). So my wife "surprised" me with one for Christmas. The problem is I'm not allowed to have it until Christmas....haha. So that leaves me some time to plan. I'm planning on planting it with some low light stuff and I definitely want to put some shrimp in there.....maybe crystal reds. I haven't decided what fish to go with and I'll have to decide on a substrate as well.

I'd love to hear your ideas on both!

Thanks,

Jeff

[fischkopp]

I just stumbled upon this:


This became possible because he upgraded the light:



Quite nice. And great idea with the LED upgrade. The standard light doesn't allow that.
More here (in german, but nice pics)
http://aquaristik.bplaced.com/
http://www.einrichtungsbeispiele.de/aquarium-von-maik-a._18219.html

[Stussi613]

Oh man, I wish I had gone to Syracuse to go shopping on Black Friday.  I wants one of these for my office bad!!

[Jeff1192]

So I finally got the tank up and running. I used media from my 90 gallon tank to avoid cycling issues with the tank. I've got 2 scarlet badis, some CPDs, Pygmy cories and CRS. I ended up going with black fluorite for the substrate and some pieces of petrified wood. Right now for plants I put some Windelov java fern, Christmas moss, a small sword, some echinodorus tellenus and some cryps. I'm planning on keeping it as a low light tank so we'll see how the plants do. I'll try to get some photos posted later this week.

Jeff

[Laura]

Sounds great - I got a few of these little beauties several weeks ago. Mine only eat microworms and I suspect are hunting baby cherry shrimp - they leave the big ones alone.

Mine havent taken to frozen food. If you find the same, Im happy to give you a microworm starter culture.

They are amazing little fish - lots of personality. In my very limited experience, I found they do better with something like CPD to break up their own aggression. There used to be lots of bullying between the 7 of them in my 10 gallon, but once I moved them to the 15 gallon with other small fish, it seems to have stopped.

[Jeff1192]

Here's a couple of shots I quickly took this morning....I'm not much of a photog (that's my wife's gig) but here they are:

Jeff

[daworldisblack]

wow looking good! Would have loved to see the Badis too:) I like the set-up! I got the black fluorite substrate as well and had to clean it multiple times to get the water clear enough but yours looks pristine. Did you notice some cloudiness when you moved the plants around? Also what do you use to provide supplement to your plants? I have Java moss too and Ancharis.

[Jeff1192]

It was pretty cloudy the first day but then things settled down. When I first put the plants in it stirred things up a bit again....but it's nice and clear now. Right now for the plants I'm just using root tabs. I'm hoping that it's all that I need as I'm not going to add CO2.

I'm ordering the LED bulbs for it. They cover a little more of the tank and use way less energy.

I tried to get a shot of the badis but they're still a little skittish right now and wouldn't co-operate. They're coming out in the open more and more often so hopefully I can get a shot of them soon.

Jeff

[Stussi613]

Hey Jeff,

Have you received your upgraded lighting yet?  I went to SuperPet in Kanata to get a bag of food for the kitties and to my surprise I saw a Fluval Edge on sale for $109.99 for SuperPet members.  After nearly losing myself in my pants I quickly threw one in the cart and snuck it in the house. I'm still not sure what I'm going to put in it, but I know I'm going to want to upgrade the lights and would love to know what/where you ordered yours from...

[Jeff1192]

I purchased 2 of these from Ebay.

http://cgi.ebay.ca/Brightest-MR11-12-V-10-SMD-LED-White-160-Lumen-Wide-Ang-/390278134904?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5ade63bc78#ht_2834wt_1002

A word of warning though. He will tell you that he combines shipping but all he means is that he puts them in the same box. He doesn't discount the shipping at all.

I have also ordered one of these to try.

The Rio Mini Sun light near the bottom of the page.
http://www.americanaquariumproducts.com/LEDLights.html#minisun

I'm pretty sure I'll be able to work it into the hood of the tank to keep it hidden. I am going to try and attach it with some zip ties and then feed the wire down the middle channel to keep it completely hidden. I want to try and angle it to light up the side a bit more as most of the light is in the middle 2/3 of the tank leaving the edges a little dark. If it works well I'm going to order another one to do both sides of the tank.

The big trick for me is that I want to add more light to the tank but keep myself in the low-light range.

The plants I have in there are growing well....but slowly....haha. Especially when I'm used to my 90 gallon with T5HO lights and CO2.

Jeff

[Hookup]

A word of warning though. He will tell you that he combines shipping but all he means is that he puts them in the same box. He doesn't discount the shipping at all.

Id have given him individual shipping addresses for each part then.  That's low and really underhanded.

On the bright side (pun intended) when do you think they will arrive?

[JetJumper]

Id have given him individual shipping addresses for each part then.  That's low and really underhanded.

On the bright side (pun intended) when do you think they will arrive?

Welcome to ebay.. lol.  99% of the places on ebay discount their prices and make up for it in shipping costs.

[Jeff1192]

They should be arriving any day. Hopefully today! 

On a side note, in all my eBay transactions that's the first time I've had someone say they combine shipping but charge the same amount. When I asked him what the point was he stated that it was more convenient for me and denied that he really saved any money.  Oh well, that's what feedback is for!

Jeff

[Hookup]

Cool... I've looked at your build, because these are pretty sexy looking setups and I want to see what and how you get it going.  Really looking forward to your process... probably not as much as you are.. haha...

[Jeff1192]

So my LED bulbs finally came today. WOW! What a difference. The tank is lit up much better. I have also added a the small Rio Sun lamp to one far side to light it up better. I'm quite happy with the lighting now.

I have also added some java moss, a moss ball, some more crypts and a couple of hygro clippings from my big tank to see how they do. All the plants there were already in the tank are growing quite well.

I also re-arranged the heater so that it is much more hidden now.

I'll try to post some photos later.

Jeff

[sas]

Nice. Look forward to seeing the pics.

[Jeff1192]

Sorry it took a little while to post some photos. I'm waiting for things to fill in at the back of the tank still. I planted some hygro behind the big rock on the left but it hasn't grown much yet. I also planted some small crypts in the back right corner that I'm waiting to fill in. Unfortunately the biggest plants right now are at the front so I'll just have to be patient for the back to fill in. It just seems REALLY slow for the plants to grow at the back when you're used to a CO2 injected tank where everything grows like weeds!

I also managed to get a photo (but not a great one) of the female Badis badis in my tank. Still trying to get a good one of the male though.

Jeff

[daworldisblack]

REAL NICE! Like the aquascape alot!

[TLe041]

Tank looks great. I really like that Windelov fern.

Are the Badis colouring up much? What food are they taking?

[sas]

Looking great!
I really like the type of rock you used.

[Jeff1192]

Thanks guys. The rocks are petrified wood. The badis have colored up very nicely. They're eating frozen bloodworm and brine shrimp. Theyre also constantly hunting baby shrimp around the 2 clumps of moss in the tank.

Jeff

[RoxyDog]

That really is adorable (you were going for adorable right? )!

[Anja]

Very nice. I especially like the petrified wood on the left.

(My pale badis is also coloring up, so I guess I have two males after all. Doh.)

[Jeff1192]

That really is adorable (you were going for adorable right? )!

I'm glad you said that. It's EXACTLY the look I was going for.....haha.

Very nice. I especially like the petrified wood on the left.

(My pale badis is also coloring up, so I guess I have two males after all. Doh.)

Mine are definitely a male and a female. The male is nice and red. While the female in the photo has some nice faint colouring in her stripes but definitely nothing like the male.

I'll keep trying to get a photo of him.

Jeff

[Jeff1192]

So I haven't updated this in a while. I just finished rescaping the entire tank. I got rid of almost all the rocks and I have no fish left in the tank now. I had moved out everything but the CPDs a while ago as I was really liking having mostly shrimp in the tank.

However, I was realizing that even with all the plants I was losing a lot of baby shrimp so today I decided to take out the CPDs and have this as a shrimp only tank.

To my surprise after I took out the THREE CPDs that I had originally put in the tank.....I kept finding more! Finally tally was 6 CPDs. So they obviously liked it in there! They are now floating in my 90 gallon waiting to go into their new home.

So now it's only CRS and RCS in the tank. Once the dust settles I try to get some new photos up.

Jeff

[jshchrtn]

How is the edge doing?

[Jeff1192]

Well now that there are no fish in there the cherry shrimp are reproducing like crazy. The crystal reds don't seem to have had more babies yet but there are 7 or 8 from the last batch that are growing quite nicely.  At the sametime I also redid the aquascape. The plants are now 3 or 4 different types of cryps, lace java fern and java moss.

We're most likely moving this summer or fall to a new house that we're going to have built. Because of that I'll probably have to shut down my 90 gallon for the time being (room it's going to move into will be in the basement and not finished right away). If that's the case I think I'll pick up a Fluval Ebi for my shrimp and make the Edge a fish tank for a couple of small favourites that I wouldn't want to lose from my 90 (eg: CPDs).

Jeff

[jshchrtn]

If ya get a chance upload a pic I'd like to see sounds pretty awesome! CPD are great looking fish!

[werehatwere]

Wow! I love the sort of rock cliff piece you have in there!