150g aquarium progress

On August 20th, I acquired basically a dream tank. You can see bits and pieces of my 20g in old posts but this has been what I've wanted since I got started in high school!

She just barely fit in my truck, then had a 3 hr drive from Denver but with a lot of blankets and such, she survived.

We just moved in to this house in late June so its a little bare but we love it and are slowly filling it up. Like the tank! First things first, a water test. Yes, im an idiot and did a water test on carpeted floor in a tank without an unknown reseal history. Luckily this time, nothing went wrong and she held water tight.

After the water test, we filled it up and put in some stuff I had laying around just to get an idea of what i could do with the scaping.

I have a lot of cholla cacti around so I just went for a quick hike and found some long thin pieces. I glued some El nino fern to it and let the tank go. I wasnt aware upon purchase that the lights were different colors...

To kickstart the nitrogen cycle, I added some bags of substrate from the old tank and popped the old lava rock filter media from the 20g into the FX6 filter for the 150g.

My driftwood arrived and so did some more plants. The tank cleared up super quickly! With the first water change and tests, I added 5 guppies to keep up with the ammonia needs of the cycle. They are still alive and happy in the giant tank. Each additional grouping of fish was added in this way. Check the water parameters, make sure ammonia and nitrates are safe a few hours after a water change, then if yes, add fish.

After the tank was stable for as long as I could wait, I went and got the "canary". Rummy nose tetras are so cool. I think they're goofy and flashy, and they serve a purpose. When their noses full in color, there's something off in the tank.

Said guppies. The yellows are tiger endlers and the blues are cobra swordtail endlers. I like the genetics game you can play with these guys and they provide an excellent and NEVER ENDING source of food for my micropredators.

Over time the cholla wood was taken out and more plants were added.

El Nino was reattached to more appropriate wood for the scape.

This was the day the new tank light came in. 72 inches of full spectrum LED and it still only a low-mid range light. But its the same color all the way across and the plants responded to it almost immediately.

Today, my centerpiece darlings arrived! More Apistogramma borelli. Theyre tiny little things but my adult female is so happy to have others of her species again that she won't leave them alone! Especially the gentlemen, but who can blame her. Those young bucks are gorgeous!