small coldwater aquarium

A bit surprised there weren't many posts about this,
After many years I'm thinking about keeping an aquarium (again). It
must be a real small one (6 gal) and if I can help it I'm going to be a
good (cheap) citizen and save energy by not heating it. There's also
the problem that heaters for such small aquariums are rare (but
possible to find). In fact I only remember seeing them sold commonly in
Japan, where people live in cramped apartments and probably keep tiny
aquariums too.
My room gets as cold as about 10 deg. C in winter when no one's around
and the heating is off. Unfortunately I understand that this can cause
large heat fluctuations which fish don't really survive? Except perhaps
for a few desert species that have to put up with the same in nature?
But they're far too exotic and hard to find.
Brings me onto the topic about what to keep in such a setup if it's
ok--of commonly available stuff, only goldfish take such low
temperature (if it's not too sudden) but they grow far too big for a
tiny aquarium. Plants are less of a problem, I'd decide on hornwort
which takes low temperatures but has to be pruned rather often in such
a small tank.

Seb

<silicono2 RemoveThis @yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1163261548.113493.172870@m7g2000cwm.googlegroups.com...
>A bit surprised there weren't many posts about this,
> After many years I'm thinking about keeping an aquarium (again). It
> must be a real small one (6 gal) and if I can help it I'm going to be a
> good (cheap) citizen and save energy by not heating it. There's also
> the problem that heaters for such small aquariums are rare (but
> possible to find). In fact I only remember seeing them sold commonly in
> Japan, where people live in cramped apartments and probably keep tiny
> aquariums too.
> My room gets as cold as about 10 deg. C in winter when no one's around
> and the heating is off. Unfortunately I understand that this can cause
> large heat fluctuations which fish don't really survive? Except perhaps
> for a few desert species that have to put up with the same in nature?
> But they're far too exotic and hard to find.
> Brings me onto the topic about what to keep in such a setup if it's
> ok--of commonly available stuff, only goldfish take such low
> temperature (if it's not too sudden) but they grow far too big for a
> tiny aquarium. Plants are less of a problem, I'd decide on hornwort
> which takes low temperatures but has to be pruned rather often in such
> a small tank.
>
> Seb
>

white cloud minnows
golden medaka
pacific blue eyes
zebra danio
rosy barb
paradise fish
gambusia
hmmmm...... not sure how happy any would be at 10deg C but theres 7 random
fish you could look into
all are tough and do well with a mere air powered sponge filter
just wash the filter sponge with water drawn from the aquarium
and avoid doing water changes of greater than 50%!!
ya should be fine
otherwise
go catch some locals from a drain
w0000t
:)