Your shellie tanks

[LittleMousling]

All right, all. Get out the cameras! We'd all love to see the vast variety of ways to set up a shellie tank. Anyone have one set up as a faux marine tank? Who has colored gravel? A cool background? A big shellpile? Show off your tank!

[55gSW]

My shellie tank started out like the normal shellie tank, I swear it did!! It's just that I had to move some plants around, then there was the tank ornaments from before and well, this is what it looked like about 2 weeks ago. The plants have now really taken off and are growing like weeds.

[55gSW]

Where are your pics LM?!!

[LittleMousling]

I was waiting! All right, all right ....


The 125, with similis and C. leptosoma:



The 44, although I've had to rearrange the shells (to catch fish) since this photo was taken:



The 29 paludarium, with A. compressiceps "Sumbu":



20 long "A" (L. ocellatus):



20 long "B" (L. stappersi):



20 long "C" (N. caudopunctatus "Redfin"):



20 long "D" (Neolamprologus multifasciatus):


Clearly I photograph fish better than tanks, these shots are a little pathetic. But I hope the tanks surpass the photography.

[LittleMousling]

C'mon, now, where's everyone hiding? Bueller?

[Freya]

thanks for posting those it really gives me a visual reference of what the shells look like and how the tank is set up. I am starting to feel confident that I could do that . Now I need to talk the hubby into liking the idea. He likes the idea of watching the babies grow up so I am hoping he will think shellies are as cool as I do!! He really wanted some colorful cichlids but I think these would be more interesting.

[LittleMousling]

No need to give up color - check out the gold ocellatus, they're about as colorful as it gets, bright yellow/gold with a lavender sheen. Gorgeous! I have some pics of mine (shameless plug I know, but it's convenient) in the L. ocellatus thread in the species section.

[Clint]

My Multies tank.
Sort of a standard look to all my shellie tanks.
They like to move sand,,, a lot.

[Clint]

Moi Brevis tank.
Note the new pretty shells, soon to be algae covered along with the rest. These are the shells from my beach haul.

[Clint]

And my Telmatochromis vittatus tank.
There are a few Endlers fry in there along with some very young brichardi (soon to be moved to a bigger tank)

[Mattf]

You really do have an algea problem, Clint... Might I recommend a snail or an otto? Keeps mine clean...

Are you sure those're brichardi? They almost look like pulchers, but they don't show up too well in the tank, so its hard to tell.

[fishguyeric]

You think that is an algea problem, just wait until my camera works and I can post some pics of my new brevis tank, it is horrible.

[55gSW]

You picked up some nice shells Clint!
I like your tanks too!!
Don't worry about a little algae, all of my tanks have some sort of algae growth in them....I'm one of the few that doesn't think that algae is necessarily a bad thing. (well, out of control growth, yes, but a small amount can be a good thing IMO)

[Freya]

That is really neat!! Pretty shells and I see you have them lifting weights in that tank as well! LOL I can't get over how much those sponge filters look like weights. Green stuff is bad i still have a hair algae problem in one of my tanks

[LittleMousling]

I uually get a little hair algae down along the substrate in the well-lit tanks, but it's easy enough to pull up - particularly right before photos!

The stuff that irritates me is diatons and a little green fur right on the shells in the underlit tanks. The 44 big shells get scrubbed every so often but ARGH.