My 2.5 gallon Chocolate diamond tank

[neilshieh]

Long story short, had a scape planned out for my 2.5 gallon tank and all but got busy with college and never got around to it. Fast forward to the start of first semester, I finally get around to setting it up and decided I wanted a colony of chocolate diamonds. I originally wanted blue diamonds because i think the blues and the chocolate culls are both really cool looking but I ended up getting chocolate diamonds from soothing because the idea of having so many different colors was really appealing. Needless to say I am not disappointed! 

Anyways without further ado here are the tank specs

Tank: Finnex 2.5 gallon tank kit (the kit contains a custom stingray light and their pure-5 nano HOB filter

Heater: None (my dorm room is pretty warm) I'll probably buy one when I move out to maintain stable temps. Was thinking of a hydor 25 watt, any suggestions? 

Substrate: Carribsea taihitian moon sand mixed with fluorite black sand. 

Fertilization: few drops of an all in one fertilizer a friend of mine whipped up + micro solution every week if I remember

Here's what the initial scape+monte carlo I put in to dry start was SUPPOSED to look like 

Here it is after a month or two of submergent growth. The monte carlo was added ~1 week prior, so it's still adjusting and it's starting to creep. Monte carlo is a great option for low tech carpet because it looks like dwarf baby tears, doesn't require co2 or intense lights, or a heavy fertilizing schedule. 

The tank just finished going through its first green algae phase. The slope the main rock is on has flattened out quite a bit, I'll have to go in and fill it up again but for now I'm just letting everything settle in and grow. 

Here's a lone CRS, it actually hitchhiked in the monte carlo I got. It somehow survived 8 hours of transit in a ziploc bag of barely wet plants. It's been going strong for a week now so it's really quite amazing considering I couldn't even properly acclimate it and had to just throw it into the tank. 

Nice dark chocolate

more color variation 

it's only been 2 weeks and this really nice female is already berried  Thanks soothing! Grazing on a moss pad with bits and pieces of moss that hitch hiked. 

Here's some moss I have growing on the outflor of the filter 

and some hydrocotyle tripartita growing in the HOB. 

Everything is still relatively new and so it doesn't look like much. Will update in a week or two!  Really want to fix the hardscape since it's really bugging me. Any constructive criticism welcome!

[neilshieh]

In this tank besides the shrimp I have mini ramshorns and MTS. mini ramshorns are probably my favorite pest snail. They're small and don't look unsightly, easy to crush, do a great job on grazing down algae/biofilm (they're not great eaters, but they keep it in from going out of control) and eating left over food. Most importantly they don't lay visible egg sacs. I'm not sure how they reproduce but it's not unsightly egg sacs like bladder or regular ramshorns snails. I will crush them every few weeks and shrimps in all of my tanks love eating the bodies and picking at the shells.