My old 46g freshwater
 

I thought for kicks I'd post a pic of my 46g It has been up and running for about 4 years there is about 40 fish & 3 shrimp, 95% of them are the orginals from when I set it up. I NEVER test it or clean it :redface:
My clean up crew does a good job I add water every 2 weeks or so and vacuum the gravel twice a year if that and I have cleaned the filter once. ~*~*~ maintaince free~*~*~ which is the best kind :wink: sometimes I even forget to feed them :sad: I think I maintain a real good balance which I trying with my SW hopfully all goes well
http://www.canreef.com/photopost/dat...freshwater.jpg

What the heck a few more...... :cool:
http://www.canreef.com/photopost/dat...reshwater2.jpg

Ok, wow, that is remarkably clean. What's in there that does the bang up cleaning job?

1 6" pleco 2 little algae eaters and 3 2" aglae eating shrimp the algae on the stump has been there since it was put in, it has almost bonded to it I can't seem to scrape it off with the paint coming with it

I gotta try me some of the algae eating shrimps some day.

I wonder if my loaches would find them a tasty treat though.

I got the loaches when I had a snail population explosion. In my inexperience at the time, I thought, "Oh wow I don't want a gigazillion snails in the tank so I better go find something that eats them." Of course since then the loaches have totally endeared themselves to me and are the focus of the tank nowadays. But no more snails in this tank, that's for sure.

My plecs don't seem to do much for the algae that grows on the leaves, but the hard surfaces are clean ("cleanish" .. not perfectly shiney spotless clean). They are also incredibly silly shy. They hide under rocks, etc., you never see them unless you look for 1/2 hour. Mine are bristle-mouth or bristle-nosed (?? not sure anymore) variety.

Snail eating loaches would make quick work of any shrimp you have in your tank... I found that out the hard way :eek: . I put 3 golden loaches into my 70 gallon plant tank, which also happened to have about 2 dozen amano shrimp in there. Within a week, I didn't have any shrimp left... but my snails were also gone too :lol: .

Great looking tank Murray, reminds me of my FW tanks right now. I don't think I've done a good water change in weeks... quite a contrast to when I used to do a 40% water change every week on them :mrgreen: . Funny part is, my cichlids are breeding more than they ever have before, and my plants look pretty decent too... go figure :rolleyes:

-Richer