I have had a a 55 gallon in my family for going on 25 years, of course by now there is nothing left of the original aquarium but it evolved piece by piece.
my parent bought it when we were in our early teens, it moved with my brother when he moved out, then to my grand father who had it for a couple years,
when my grand father moved in with us i replaced the stand because the old petco particle board one had deteriorated pretty badly, when we started filling it the aquarium cracked so i ended up replacing that as well.
fast forward 6 years or so, the aquarium had deteriorated and the last of the fish died(15 year old pleco) and then it sat for a few months as an algae farm.
then covid happened and got to spend a few days on lock down, so I figured why not restart the old aquarium.
Cleaned out all the algae and got everything back in living condition, started cycling the tank with a dozen feeder goldfish and a couple pleco's
Then i saw the plants, and thought "I don't want to reuse the old plastic plants, look at these cool real ones"
Any way there are still a couple pieces of the original pink plant(I think it was a rotalla) and the crested java fern are still left.
i have tried:
water lettuce(gold fish ate them)
red root floaters((gold fish ate them))
anacahris(gold fish ate them)
ludwigia repens- still a few survivors
rotala Rotundifolia Red-- don't think i was ready for those
christmas and java moss-- gold fish ate them but that ones on me, they were fasting while on the quarantine trio
plants surviving now:
java fern
crested java fern
asian fern
anubias nana petite
anubias congensis
giant val
more moss
stock load:
2 oranda goldfish
4 fan tail goldfish
5 commet goldfish(the surviving feeders)
3 pleco's(working on re-homing at least 1)
The tank has definitely evolved a little over the last 2 weeks:
aquaclear 110 filter
marineland penguin 400(carry over)
60 gallon sponge filter
moving bed filter
jebao 4 station doser-- dosing flourish, flourish iron, flourish potassium
10lb co2 system(i had a co2 bottle on the side of my house for 20 years)
48"aqueon LED OptiBright Plus +(courtesy of stormvisions via scape forum)
gravel substrate with a bag of flourite mixed in- also bags of small lava rock to help with elevation
rocks are a mixture of stuff from my grandfather and lava rock I picked up at the building supply yard
and a python water changer
Welcome to the club! Goldfish and Pleco will usually destroy a decent amount of plants so I wouldn't recommend keeping them if you want a planted tank. Though there are a few plant species that will survive with them just you won't have the best plant selection.
Welcome! That is so cool how long you and your family have put into this tank. With a little care a lot of things can withstand the test of time. Tank is looking great!
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