My Fish Tank

Another hobby of mine—maybe more of a passive hobby—is my fresh water aquarium. It’s nothing fancy, and at the moment, it doesn’t even have any fish. I started back in early 2019 with a small 2- or 3-gallon tank. I had a betta fish, a few ghost shrimp, and a little two-leaf Anubias plant sitting over some gravel.

Later that same year, I upgraded to the 5-gallon tank I still have now. Since then, I’ve gone through a few shrimp, and the betta eventually passed away after about a year and a half. After that, we replaced it with four guppies.

I always wanted more live plants, but some of them can be a lot of work to maintain. That’s when I learned about low-maintenance tanks. These use potting soil as a substrate and plants that don’t need CO2. I went down that route, mixing potting soil with volcanic soil, then adding some rocks, driftwood, and plants like Bacopa caroliniana, Java moss, duckweed, Monte Carlo, dwarf hairgrass, and the original Anubias. I even tried Amazon swords, but they didn’t last long. Later, I added Anubias nana petite.

Some of the plants did okay—like the hairgrass—but it eventually became too much to handle. The Monte Carlo struggled and got out-competed by the hairgrass, so I pulled them both out.

At some point, I noticed small worms on the glass. At first, I’d see maybe one every few weeks, but after a while, I started seeing dozens every day. They were only a few millimeters long, and I’d suck them out with a pipette. After some research, I found out they were planaria, which aren’t good for the tank.

When the guppies eventually died, I decided it was time for a full reset to get rid of the planaria. By then, the shrimp had started breeding, I found about 30 of them! I saved all the shrimp and moved the plants into a small container, soaking them in an allium solution (which is harmless to plants but effective against planaria).

I tossed the old soil and gravel, replaced the filter medium, and gave the tank a thorough cleaning with soapy water and alcohol. Normally, you’re not supposed to clean a tank that aggressively—most of my water changes were just half the tank once a month—but planaria multiply quickly, so this was the only option.

After about a week, I set everything back up with fresh substrate: just volcanic soil and gravel, separated by a 3D-printed barrier. I didn’t reuse the rocks or one of the driftwood pieces, but all the plants went back in.

That was about a year ago, and it’s been running like this ever since. Last I checked, I had over 60 shrimp! Over the years, the Anubias has multiplied, and the Bacopa caroliniana always grows and spreads. The small Anubias nana petite struggled for a while, but since the reset, it’s been thriving and growing a lot too!

The nana petite was actually the last new plant I bought, and I’m pretty sure it brought in the planaria. Lesson learned: it’s a good idea to soak new plants in an allium solution for a day or two before adding them to your tank. This helps prevent introducing harmful critters.

I know there is a lot of algae growing on the glass. Honestly, it’s not a problem—it’s actually good for baby shrimp. In the future, though, I plan to get rid of the gravel. Small shrimp tend to get under and inside it, which makes cleaning the tank a lot harder because I’m always worried about accidentally sucking them up.

That’s my tank in a nutshell. I want a slightly bigger tank in the future, maybe a 10 gallon tank. Get some new fish. I really want some floating plants, specifically Frog Bit. And I want to use sand instead of gravel. If anyone I know has questions or wants to start a tank and needs some help, let me know. It took me a lot of research to get here. I would love to share it.