Fluval SPEC III Aquarium Kit, LED Lighting, 10517A1

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.

While there seem to be a number of reviews that cite some of the well-documented shortcomings of this tank I think it remains a top contender in it’s size for a aesthetically pleasing tank.

Size
While only being ~5 gallons it offers a nice 17″ swim lane, making it more roomy for horizontally moving fish (most of them) than just about any other 5 gallon tank. Will it ever be as roomy as a 20 gal? No, but for what it is I think this offers one of the best 5 gallon tanks out there. It’s definitely viable for a betta, a nano fish tank (I’ve got Celestial Pearl Danios), or a Red Cherry Shrimp tank. There’s a lot of possibility with it.

Design
This is where the Spec shines – The design is a great starting point and usable as it comes out of the box but I really see it more along the lines of a modular, upgradable platform. The filtration isn’t great (the sponge kinda sucks) but there are fantastic plastic baskets that have been designed to fit in the filter slot allowing for 3 stages of filtration. When upgraded, I’ve never had clearer water. The pump isn’t great but still produces a lot of current for fish like Bettas, sometimes too much, and is serviceable for most tanks. There is no heater out of the box but many small heaters can fit unobtrusively in the pump stage and, if you poke holes in the hose, you can get nice heat and flow from it without it hanging ugly in the tank. The LED lights are nice looking but not strong enough to grow much however they are easily upgraded with aftermarket grow lights that can fit right on the tank or lid. The long, thin design of the tank also maximizes it for viewing from either side giving you more view than a traditional rectangular tank.

The one design “flaw” is the lower inlet for the pump. As many other reviews have pointed out, this is where the majority of suction comes from and it’s generally fish/shrimp height near the bottom and can easily snare any unsuspecting critter. It’s easy enough to plug with Silicone before adding water or planting in front or to reduce some of the current but it’s still not idea. The purpose is to prevent your pump from running dry in the event you don’t top off the water for a few days and it falls below the top flow section so it’s smart in theory but only in theory.

Price
It’s expensive for what you get. The lighting isn’t powerful, the filtration is not great and the pump leaves much to be desired but what you are paying for is the design and the upgradable platform that the Spec offers. No other tank can be upgraded and still look this clean so, for someone for whom design is an important element, the Spec still wins.

Overall a great tank for those willing to spend the dollars to upgrade it to what can be the finest 5 gallon tank around.

Der Filter ist auf der niedrigsten Stufe leider noch immer etwas stark für einen Betta, daher musste ich mir hier noch etwas Abhilfe schaffen. Die Beleuchtung macht auch keinen schlechten Eindruck bisher, die Pflanzen wachsen bisher ziemlich gut.