Bench build a 20 gallon aquarium?

Just a thought exercise for now, mostly looking for ideas. 

But let's just say you had 2 20 gallon aquarium tanks one tall and one long, a single spinnywheel style filter that most likely needs a new wheel, and a spot to put them in in a room that stays 65-80 degrees year round. 

Which tank would you build and what would you put in it? Live plants or just decorative? Sea life or a lizard?

Goal of being minimal maintenance once everything is setup and running. 

I keep and breed fish as a hobby.

Either tank. Use the filter and light you have, no heater, home depot gravel (washed), basic plants like Valisneria and Java Fern. Toss in a handful of guppies and let them multiply until you have to give some away. When the filter dies or you get tired of buying cartridges, just get an air pump and air stone to provide water movement and let the plants filter the water.

Change about 5 gallons of water every month.

Done.

I've kept fish in aquariums off and on for a lot of years.  My biggest issue and maintenance chore is algae.  Any tank with enough light to keep live plants will grow algae.  Algae is a pain to clean.  It grows on gravel, glass, and any ornaments or driftwood that you have in the tank.  The only thing it doesn't grow on is the fish themselves.

The long as a display coral tank and the tall as a sump. Easy maintenance salt water tank I did was like that but just a mantis shrimp and a damsel that the shrimp couldn't catch. On the sump I put a ball of spaghetti algae that tumbled from powerheads. Once a month I'd cut half the spaghetti algae out and throw it away. Pods would grow in the algae and get sucked up into the main tank. The damsel would sit at the return and snack on them. Feed the shrimp hermit crabs that I bought in bulk. 

In reply to Stampie :

I take it the tops of the two tanks where the same elevation?

Too bad it's now illegal, but when I was a kid someone gave me an old 20 gallon aquarium which was sealed with some black stinky sealant that started to leak so I scraped it all out and resealed it with silicone which I must not have allowed enough time for it to cure and out gas because after putting my gold fish back in, they where all floating belly up the next morning.

I complained to my mom that I was tired of fish for a pet and being quick witted and thinking she was so smart said that I could have any pet as long as it didn't have fur or feathers. I immediately marched down to the local drug store and brought home a 10" baby South American Caiman (Alligator). Walley quickly out grew the 20 gallon tank and I upgraded to a 6 foot plastic wading pool complete with an island and heat lamp in the middle of my bedroom.

About 2 years later he mysteriously died after reaching about 2 feet long while I was gone on some school band trip. This was back when you could still go down to the local hardware store and buy strychnine or arsenic. Hmmm, Mom and Dad...

That alligator loved me thinking I was it's mom and I could pick him up and hold him and he loved having his belly rubbed. Everybody else he tried to bite if they were dumb enough to try and touch him.

I kept a reef tank for a while.

Salt water and low maintenance are mutually exclusive.

In reply to VolvoHeretic :

Unfortunately gators are in the same class as pigs and rabbits to my wife: if we keep it for a pet, we can't eat it; while if I keep to it eat, she doesn't want to see it ever. Kinda tricky to work around. 

I've wanted one. I know several pet stores I can still buy then from, but she doesn't like my plan of growing it to eating size, then making something out of it and getting another 

In reply to RevRico :

A friend had a pair of Vietnamese potbelly pigs.  His seven kids were arguing over what to name the pigs. He didn't like arguing...

When he'd had enough he raised his hand and said "Enough! I'm naming the pigs. This one is Lunch, and that one is Dinner".

The best fish tank I ever had was the one I had when I first got married.  The genius of it was that it didn't have ANY fish in it.  No plants, no snails, no nothing. Just a filter and a bubbler. 
 

It was gorgeous. Never needed cleaning, never had algae.  We'd sit there and look at the crystal clear water and listen to the bubbling.  
 

The best part was when people came over. They stare at it, and try to peek around the pirate ship and fake plants looking for fish.  They'd always spend much more time doing this than you'd ever think was reasonable. I think they were embarrassed to admit they didn't see the fish. 
 

Kinda like the Emperor's new clothes! 😂😂

VolvoHeretic said:

In reply to Stampie :

I take it the tops of the two tanks where the same elevation?

No, the top tank gets drilled with an uniseal put in. You then have a stand pipe (regular PVC) that you put inside the tank into that uniseal. You cut it about 1/4-1/2 inch below where you want your waterline. You then use PVC to feed down to the bottom tank. In the bottom tank you have a pump that pumps back to the top tank with another uniseal. It's very important when filing your water to make sure if the pump turns off it won't drain enough from the top tank to overflow the bottom. Syphon breaks (1/4 inch drilled hole) in the two pipes can help that. 

I was really hoping this thread would lead to building something like this:

I'd vote for a heavily planted neocardina shrimp tank. It can be run off of a sponge filter and I like to run one of the day/night cycle lights from Hygger on amazon. They're neat little bugs to watch and once they get going you can start selling the offspring. I've got a fairly big colony in my 55 gallon and love watching them.

In reply to Doubleoh9 :

It was actually those that got me thinking about this. But a lot of what I've seen so far has been smaller thanks or giant setups. 

In reply to RevRico :

A lot of it is the same regardless of tank size but more water volume usually means more stable parameters, and shrimp love stability. They make a specific substrate for plants and shrimp (I think its Fluval Stratum) that I use in mine and have had good luck with. Mystery snails are fun weird little guys too!

SV reX said:

I was really hoping this thread would lead to building something like this:

 

Or like a Habitrail for fish.

I just got into fishkeeping again after 20 years out of it. 

When I was younger I had some smaller South American Cichlids that died during a heater accident, and a then later some shelldwelling Cichlids that I eventually sold. 

Now I'm about $200 deep into a 20g Long and a 5g desktop aquarium, with shrimp, Otos, snails and Pea Puffers. I actually acquired a 40g from a friend with fish, plants, multiple air pumps, lights, heater and filter, and have traded my way into three tanks, two dozen critters and an hours of entertainment. 

The funny thing about this whole endeavor is that I've spent more on fish meds than anything else (aside from the puffers) - Fish meds aren't cheap! I've got nearly $60 wrapped up in 4 different types of fish meds. 

Join a local aquarium/fishkeeping group and you'll find plenty of folks wanting to trade, sell cheap, or simply rehome interesting fish. 

Algae isn't a problem with the right community. Otocinclus Catfish are cute little buggers that munch on algae all day, and snails do a great job as well. My Pea Puffers are Snail Murders, so I'm using my smaller tank a snail farm while building a good layer of algae in the main tank. 

We have an 18 gallon tank that survives despite our best efforts. We recently added a couple of mollys and replaced our deceased plecostomus with a new one after a few years. The algae level in the tank has dropped to basically nothing thanks to the combined efforts of the new arrivals. Previous inhabitants were purely tetras and they didn't care.