# Eclipse 3 Gallon Ideas



## ajkochev (May 8, 2012)

It has been a couple of years and I'd like to start a freshwater aquarium again.

A little back ground, I've been keeping aquriums on and off for the past 20 years. The last one I had was a small pico reef in this Eclipse 3 gallon. I improved the lighting in it and adjusted the filter and had a good setup going with just a shrimp and several corals, even a SPS was growing good in the tank. A severe flatworm outbreak made me take down the tank and I got out of the hobby for a couple of years.

I kept the Eclipse tank and original lighting. I'm looking for and easy to care for setup and here is what I'm thinking.

I'm putting back in the original Eclipse lighting with a transperant blue filter on the inside cover to make the light a bit whiter. I did this in the reef before I converted the hood to 13 watt power compacts for more corals.

I really don't want to mess with live plants having tried them in the past and not having much success getting them to grow. I'm going to go for a natural look with plastic plants and natural rock.

I'll be using tap water that is ran through a micropartical filter and ion/resin exchange unit for drinking water(this is not an RO filter). I figure if it was good for my corals and inverts it will be fine for this freshwater tank.

I'm definatly getting shrimp for the tank. Ghost for sure and possibly some Cherry. I'd like a few fish since I didn't have them in my reef.

My favorites are Cardinal Tetras, Plattys and Cherry Barbs. I know I'm limited with size as to how many I can have. Recently I've seen some Celesital Pearl Danios and might want to give them a try but know nothing about them.

Questions:
I'm wondering if I should put the bio wheel in the filter or leave it out.
How many fish can I have?

Any advise or comments on this future setup are welcome.


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## luananeko (Aug 27, 2010)

Even a platy is going to outgrow a 3 gallon, and that's much too small a tank for any schooling species... You're best sticking with a few shrimp or one ghost shrimp plus a betta in such a small setup.

As for the filter question, the only reason not to use the bio-wheel is if you're doing CO2 injection. Since you're not keeping live plants, I would definitely keep the wheel in.


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## Kehy (Apr 19, 2011)

I personally don't like ghost shrimp...I had some that got into a war with one of my bettas. he lost his tail, they got munched. If you get a betta, you need to have at least living moss so the shrimp have somewhere to hide and supplement their feeding on. If moss is as indestructible as some people think it is, it might survive.

I'd say of those three fish you said you liked, only the cardinal tetra would really be small enough for the tank, and neon tetras might be smaller yet. I wouldn't have more than 4-5 of them in there, although the minimum schooling number for cardinals i believe is 6. I really don't know anything about the danios, so can't help you there.


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## luananeko (Aug 27, 2010)

IMO 3 gallons is way small for a proper neon school, and cardinals get even bigger... Green neons are smaller than regular neons, and MIGHT be able to have a 5-6 member school in there, but I'd have to check my usual stocking calculator to say for sure... Aqadvisor.com is my usual place for checking stocking levels, you may want to play around with it.

Edit: Nevermind, can't even fit 5 green neons in there without overstocking it a fair bit. 3 gallons really is too small for much outside of a betta and/or shrimp.


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