20 tall and 10 gallon ideas

TheWalkman99 · Nov 12, 2018

so sorta bored with my convict cichlid breeding program I have going in my 20 tall and 10 gallon.
Thinking about changing it up since I started getting into saltwater.
1)Take the 10 for a QT tank maybe
Is there anything interesting and easy for a 20 tall fowlr tank. Don’t want to pay for reef lights.
2)Go with a different fish to breed maybe swordtails and stay fresh water.
3)I’ve been wanting to do something with mangroves any thoughts on that?

dantimdad · Nov 12, 2018

what is your current saltwater setup?

I was thinking maybe drill the 20 and share a sump with your other tank to minimize filtration costs and add more water volume. You could do a display fuge.

VSVP bet · Nov 12, 2018

Mangroves !!!

You will still need some higher out put light. Do you have a reef setup already? I made a thread to gather mangrove info a while ago after I brought some pods home from Florida. They have all sprouted and I have 5 mangroves now growing in my sump fuge. I need to transport them to a separate tank soon.

From what I have gathered, mangroves are easy to grow. You could use the 20 gallon as a grow tank. However, it appears that mangroves grow fastest in brackish water. Once the pods have matured, you can slowly transfer them to reef conditions. To get them to grow, apparently some type of mud substrate is the best. One of the most knowledgeable guys at my LFS said he grew mangroves over the summer and put them in a 5 gallon bucket full of soil with brackish water, and they grew like a weed in his house (they received a lot of sunlight).

This is just my suggestion. A 20 gallon tank is limited for even a FOWLR due to filtration ability. A sump on a 20 gallon is almost pointless, and any filtration options are HOB or canisters.. I'd say mangroves.

TheWalkman99 · Nov 12, 2018

I have a 40 Nuvo AIO right now in my living room.
I don’t want to plum the two together or to another system.
What could I have in a tank with mangroves? Would like archer fish but to small of a tank. Could I get some sort of semi aquatic crab?

VSVP bet · Nov 12, 2018

TheWalkman99 said:
I have a 40 Nuvo AIO right now in my living room.
I don’t want to plum the two together or to another system.
What could I have in a tank with mangroves? Would like archer fish but to small of a tank. Could I get some sort of semi aquatic crab?

You could add anything that would fit in that system. If you went brackish, any smaller brackish fish. That would likely be mollies, killifish, maybe a figure 8 or spotted puffer. Brackish inverts would be fiddler crabs or something to that degree. I live in Connecticut on the Long Island Sound ( a brackish body of water) and I had a tank with all species I caught. So if I had a brackish mangrove tank, I would catch hermit crabs and other inverts to inhabit my system. In the summer the inter coastal pools reach temps in the upper 70s, so they would be fine living at 76-80 degrees.

However, you can still go standard reef conditions in a mangrove tank and add any appropriate livestock. However, bio load would be the only issue. Filtration options are limited on a 20 gallon tank. You would likely need an over powered HOB filter and a lighter bio load.