Fluval SPEC Aquarium Kit, 5 Gallon, White

I bought this tank to house dwarf shrimp and micro-crabs. This tank is perfect for micro/nano environments. Do not house fish that produce large amounts of waste.

6 inches front to back glass, 7 1/2 inches for the base front to back. 11 1/2 inches bottom with base to top of lid, about 13 1/2 top of light bar. 19 1/2 inches from side to side glass. 20 1/2 inches side to side base. The glass side to side measure may be off 1/2 inch because there are metal sleeves over each corner, looks to be the same material as the light bar. The sleeves are capped with small plastic clips that also have the grooves for the lid pegs.

I actually like the metal sleeves on the corners, I have never been a huge fan of looking at silicone joints.
The base is slightly tapered so I measured the widest points at the very bottom.
I did not try to take the base off because I liked it, but it looks like it can be removed if you are very careful.
The silicone work was beautiful. very clean, no smearing. It looks like machine silicone work, very precise.

The pump is very small, but powerful enough to move water in the entire tank with a decent current. The pump itself fits easily one way, but that puts the intake against the glass. Fitting the pump to face the filter to get maximum intake was a very snug fit.

I had to use a long bbq skewer to push the pump to the bottom of the well. Do not expect to use your hands, the well is only a fraction larger than the pump.

Unfortunately, to remove the pump you will have to pull it up by the power cord. Big no-no in my book but no other options unless you put a retrieval line on it before pushing it into the tank. Fishing string would work fine.

The pump outflow is on the wrong side, but the flexible hose to the nozzle still fits and did not have any issues being on the far side of the well. I highly recommend the pump be installed this way, the intake will be severely crippled if you put the pump in any other direction. I did not receive any instructions for installation of the pump.

The filter was self explanatory. Just remove the plastic bags, rinse the packets, put them back where you found them in the filter sponge, the handle faces up(obvious). The carbon will run out after a week or two, but I run a different system and will eventually replace it with more material for bio-colonies. The carbon is good for starting the tank but useless once the tank is established.

I have the tank 1ft from my head and the only time I hear the pump is when the room is dead silent, even then it is hardly a hum and it gets completely lost in the background. If you fill the water above the nozzle you will not hear water movement either..

On that note, you cannot fill this tank to the top. The separator between the pump well and the filter compartment is shorter than the rest of the tank walls about 1/2 inch. Raising the water above this will prevent the water from being filtered. I currently have the water about 3/4 inch from the glass top edge. Just above the nozzle and just below the pump wall.

I turned the nozzle to point along the glass and down toward the far corner. It creates a large amount of water movement but leaves a very big area in the center and on the filter wall side that is calm enough not to bother the tiny shrimps.

Sensitive fish like Betta would be happy in the current if it was properly angled out of the nozzle away from the center of the tank.

The filter is a nice large size which will allow the tank to run for a long time with a big bio-system. The majority of the water flows into the filter through a grate at the top, this is fine for a very light waste load, but with heavier waste the bottom will need to be vacuumed occasionally.

This grate is wide enough for babies to swim through, the filter foam does not reach the top. I recommend adding an extra piece of foam snug against the grate if you plan to have anything giving birth in this tank.

The filter housing has a small slit opening into the tank a few inches from the bottom, I suspect this has something to do with making sure the pump doesn’t burn out if the water somehow dropped really low. This is fine for adult size fish, but babies and the micro-crabs can crawl through the slit and become residents of the filter housing, or sucked into the pump.

I recommend filling the slit with a small piece of foam. The slit itself is very small, i would say half an inch long and maybe wide enough for a stick of spaghetti to fit in. Normally not an issue, but in my case from a breeder/nano standpoint the tiny hole can be a big problem.

The black part of the filter housing outside the tank is not solid black, It is a honeycomb pattern on tinted glass. Dark enough to not notice the inner guts from normal distances, but transparent enough up close that you can see the pump in case it gets clogged, and you can tell if the filter needs to be rinsed. My tank sits where light can pass through here, but I don’t notice it because it is such a small area. Putting this tank with the pump against the wall will shadow it enough that you should not be able to see through it.

The tank itself is roomier than the picture suggests. In the pic it looks very slim. I was happy to find the floor space front to back was not as slim. I have 5 fist-sized mossballs, a 6 inch crystal cluster, a 10 inch mopani wood, a 6 inch petrified stone, a 3-tube stack shrimp house and about 20 micro-plants. Also have 2x 12 inch strands of red ludwigia. All said the tank still looks very open and spacious. I used a 3lb bag of aragonite sand and it covered the entire floor about 1 1/2 inches deep. Perfect for micro plants and deep enough to look nice.

The light bar is very slim, very lightweight. It feels like aluminum, but I didn’t check the manufacturer. The lights are tiny squares with a silicone type gel poured on top of them. looks like they will be waterproof for about a thousand years.

The lights are bright enough to make the tank stand out, but not so bright that it is glaring. I put my tank in a window for the live plants because the light itself is not sufficient for high-light plants. Any low-light plants should be more than happy.

The light puts out a very small amount of heat which is mostly dissipated by the movement of air in the room. I only had the tank warm up on me once when the house itself got too warm and I forgot to turn off the light while the sun was blaring on the tank. Even then it took all day to go from 68 to 80.

I would not trust the light bar to stand up to a cat landing on it, it may bend at the elbow… it is strong enough for its purpose, but it is a little springy to the touch.The switch for the light is a small square touch-pad sensor on top of the bar. 1 touch for all lights, 2 for blue lights(1 blue light at each end of the bar.) 3 to turn it off.

The lid is a thin but stiff clear plastic. It looks much nicer than the traditional big plastic hoods. It rests on top of the tank with little peg legs to line it up to grooves in the corners. The lid also has a long hole in the center below the light that is just a bit wider than the light. This makes adding food or fishing around with plant tools easier, but if you really need to get in there the lid is super easy to put on and take off, even in a tight space with limited clearance.

The light and pump are on separate cords. Both are only a couple feet long. The light has a small box on the plug end like a cell phone. Cord length is fine for a short distance from an outlet, otherwise I have to use a multi-outlet extension to reach the plug from the shelf.

The light has a safety cord, so it came in 2 pieces. I suspect this is also to replace the outlet box without replacing the entire light bar. I like that option!

So far this tank has exceeded my expectations. With a proper biological system I feel this tank could run for months with limited maintenance. With nothing but my filter compartment and live plants the water is crystal clear and the chemical parameters stay constant. I have not had to use any sort of additives or treatments.

I do not know how the filter would function in a non-planted tank with a heavy fish load. The filter is larger than you find in most tanks this size. A small school of nano-fish, maybe 15-20 cardinal tetras or something in that range, would fair well in my planted tank, but not sure about a non-planted tank.

I would probably not house more than 4-5 nano-fish until the system had been running for at least 6 months and the bio-colonies had fully established throughout the tank. I am not one to do the constant water changes, chemical treatments, etc. This tank has worked very well for my form of fish keeping.

I will be buying a couple more of these in the future for my nano tanks. I included a couple pictures to show how much space this tank has.

Absolutely love this tank. It’s a great size for smaller fish, the light are super bright which is great for the live plants. The only thing is the air filter and pump are quite powerful even on the lowest setting so would recommend putting some filter medium over the outlet.

When I FINALLY GOT THE AQUARIUM FROM PETCO, I loved it. Now, the Amazon story: first aquarium ordered, waited a week, arrived with a broken top. That’s because of the ridiculous packaging. Fluval puts the thin plastic top in the bottom of box, under the heavy glass aquarium. Pic to show. Back to Amazon, replacement offered and requested, waited another week. The second one arrived with a corner broken out of the bottom of the plastic frame, pic to show. Back to Amazon, no offer of a replacement this time. Obviously, many customers have received their aquariums intact, but this was not my situation. I don’t know who handled them indelicately, the first leg from Fluval, or Amazon, or the good folks at UPS, but both got to my house broken.

In our frustration, my husband got online and discovered that, if we bought it at Petco, we could save $10 from the Amazon price (if we ordered it online), and we could pick it up the same day! The nice people at Petco unboxed it, at our request, with enthusiasm. It was unbroken, so I asked them to put the top in a separate bag without it having to ride in the bottom of the box. No problem. I am very happy with my experience at Petco. Amazon, not so much.

All that being said, what others have written about the tank is generally right on. The output from the nozzle is a bit vigorous, but if you keep fish that are not bettas, there’s no problem at all. In fact, they seem to enjoy the current. I’m going to get a betta, so I ordered the sponge to cover the nozzle. An accompanying heater is also in order, but I already had the Hydor from a previous aquarium. The touch light is really friendly and puts out a beautiful glow into the water. I don’t have to remove the top to feed my fish. There’s plenty of room between the light fixture and the hole in the top to drop pinches of food. The guppies that are in there now, conditioning the water for my REAL fish later on (no offense to guppy people; I’m just a betta person), are having a great time. This is definitely a keeper. So happy I found one that wasn’t broken, same day, cheaper price, someplace else.

UPDATE: My aquarium has been very healthy for the past three months and my fish are doing great. However, I developed a nasty problem with string algae that just wouldn’t clear up. Because I keep invertebrates, I couldn’t use an algaecide (sp?). I ended up cutting a small hole in the end of the sponge that covers the nozzle. It provided more circulation for the tank without having a crazy current. Also, I bought two little plecostamus (SP?), who went happily to town on the algae.

Buen producto, yo aproveche que estuvo de descuento y me costó casi la mitad fe su precio normal. Su filtro es muy eficiente pero no es bueno tener el carbón activado, es mejor si se reemplaza por mas material biológico (Biomax o Matrix). Yo apenas lo tengo en proceso de ciclado y pienso usarlo oara un grupo pequeño de gambas neocaridinas. Por su reducido tamaño solo lo recomiendo para un pez betta (con el flujo del filtro al mínimo), para peces pequeños como guppies, neones o micro rasboras.