I decided the terrarium in my office looked lonely, and decided to liven things up with an aquarium.

While grabbing some mopani wood at my favorite fish shop, I spotted a 10 gallon rimless cube aquarium that would fit nicely on the table next to my desk.

While there was a very nice-looking stand and light setup featured with it, I’m too cheap and impatient to buy that and wait for delivery on those, so I just picked up the tank itself.

When I first set it up, I was planning on stocking it with cherry barbs, cherry shrimp, and maybe a crayfish.

However, I don’t have any spare heaters (I rarely use them in any of my tanks), and my office is perhaps the coldest room in the house, so I took out the cherry barbs fairly quickly (at least for now).

I used a few of my typical cheap-as-hell lights from Amazon, and otherwise chose to just trust the included pump to handle the rest.

For plants, I just grabbed anything that looked sickly (and so was 50%+ off) at my local PetSmart:

  • Amazon sword
  • Rotala
  • S. repens

For the surface, I added three pieces of salvinia minima.

a cloudy, cube-shaped aquarium with a tree-shaped piece of driftwood and various plants visible

After things settled a bit, and transferring over some substrate and Süsswassertang from another tank, I moved over the fish and shrimp.

The filter media was transferred over from a well-established tank, and I figured the bioload would be minimal.

a slightly less cloudy, cube-shaped aquarium with a tree-shaped piece of driftwood and various plants visible, and a school of brightly-colored red fish

I then left things to settle until the next morning. Happily, it was much less cloudy at that point.

a mostly-clear, cube-shaped aquarium with a tree-shaped piece of driftwood and various plants visible, and a school of brightly-colored red fish

By that point, it was time to get ready for my trip to Montreal, so I let the tank establish.

When I returned, I was happy to see the Amazon sword and rotala had grown significantly, and the salvinia minima had taken over most of the top of the tank.

a zoomed-in view of an aquarium with a large leafy plant on the left, a skinny-leaved plant in the center, and tree-shaped driftwood to the right

a zoomed-in view of salvinia, a spiky-textured floating plant, on the surface of the tank

The pothos I planted in the sump had also spread a fair bit, reaching out towards my home server.

a pothos plant growing from the back of an aquarium onto a wooden desk

More to come with this tank once it’s had a while longer to settle in!