Well I got turned on to another tank by a co-worker. A neighbor of his was looking to get rid of his fish tank so I got it. Twenty bucks for a corner tank with a penguin filter. The filter itself is worth twenty bucks. The tank and stand I dunno but a heck of a lot more than 20. No I have no idea what I'm going to do with it. Yes, I won't be eating much for lunch for a long while as I save up the cash to get it wet and eventually put in fish. I may use it as a betta/cory tank.
Any ideas?
Friday, October 17, 2008
Thursday, October 16, 2008
QT Update
I decided not to wait till the end of the outage to get my sepaes. Angela pointed out that I didn't really have guppies or platys in my plan so stick to the plan. Well sticking to the plan means serpaes in the QT to begin with. Dang, I'm so broken up over that. Anyways, I got things set up. I got a big metal plate to help support the bottom and set my container on there. In went gravel, caves and then water. The water all came from my main tank, siphoned off intentionally to help the QT start off as close to my main tank as I could. Add in filter, a few el-cheapo plants, and the heater and I'm ready to go. Now for the fish...
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Bad Fishy Daddy
I really have been. Working 12 hours a day for three weeks straight with four more weeks to go has left me without much free time. What free time I do have has been taken up playing with and bathing small children, fixing dinner (some nights), and keeping up with a honey do list. Not a whole lot of time to deal with my tank.
Big mistake. I got it in my head that I could let things slip for a while until I got a good night to do it. After all I can't make nitrates in this tank if I wanted to. Even after 12 days without attention my nitrates were still only about 10 ppm. What was the problem then? In a word, detritus. In non fishkeeper lingo that's a combination of fish poo, uneaten food, and gunk. My sand was literally covered in it. This is partly because when I vacuumed my tank out there was literally nothing in it but water, fish, and sand. So I know lots this had been in there a while hiding where I couldn't vacuum, but a good bit was because I hadn't cleaned in almost two weeks. I learned my lesson, the tank gets a cleaning every Saturday come hell or high water.
Why was everything out? I'm sick of the algae. I know I know, it's part of a new tank but it's freaking ugly. It's not even a mild brown, its sickly blackish nasty brown. So I started Friday night by removing "half" of the decorations and plants from my tank. I say half in quotes because it turned out to be no where close to half. Anyways, in the sink I mixed up about a 7 to 10% solution of bleach to water. I took the plants and such and got ready to scrub. I took a plant, swirled it in the water and pulled it out to wipe down and... it was clean. I kid you not, ten seconds of swishing in that solution killed the algae and sloughed it right off. Made things go pretty quick actually. I dunked everything in the bleach then rinsed it till the slimy feel and stink of the bleach was gone then I let them air dry. Saturday night I pulled the rest of the decor and waged chemical warfare on the remaining algae. After that I cleaned and redecorated, sort of. I only put the stuff in I washed off on Friday night. Sunday night I put the stuff back in I washed Saturday night.
So the tank got cleaned and redecorated. I moved the hygrophalia around to provide more of a divider in the tank. I'm looking to break up sightlines across the entire tank, from a fish perspective. Some caves got moved. My vine is not on the right wall instead of the right side of the back wall. Gets it away from the filter flow a bit more. I like it over all, I think it'll be good for the serpaes.
Big mistake. I got it in my head that I could let things slip for a while until I got a good night to do it. After all I can't make nitrates in this tank if I wanted to. Even after 12 days without attention my nitrates were still only about 10 ppm. What was the problem then? In a word, detritus. In non fishkeeper lingo that's a combination of fish poo, uneaten food, and gunk. My sand was literally covered in it. This is partly because when I vacuumed my tank out there was literally nothing in it but water, fish, and sand. So I know lots this had been in there a while hiding where I couldn't vacuum, but a good bit was because I hadn't cleaned in almost two weeks. I learned my lesson, the tank gets a cleaning every Saturday come hell or high water.
Why was everything out? I'm sick of the algae. I know I know, it's part of a new tank but it's freaking ugly. It's not even a mild brown, its sickly blackish nasty brown. So I started Friday night by removing "half" of the decorations and plants from my tank. I say half in quotes because it turned out to be no where close to half. Anyways, in the sink I mixed up about a 7 to 10% solution of bleach to water. I took the plants and such and got ready to scrub. I took a plant, swirled it in the water and pulled it out to wipe down and... it was clean. I kid you not, ten seconds of swishing in that solution killed the algae and sloughed it right off. Made things go pretty quick actually. I dunked everything in the bleach then rinsed it till the slimy feel and stink of the bleach was gone then I let them air dry. Saturday night I pulled the rest of the decor and waged chemical warfare on the remaining algae. After that I cleaned and redecorated, sort of. I only put the stuff in I washed off on Friday night. Sunday night I put the stuff back in I washed Saturday night.
So the tank got cleaned and redecorated. I moved the hygrophalia around to provide more of a divider in the tank. I'm looking to break up sightlines across the entire tank, from a fish perspective. Some caves got moved. My vine is not on the right wall instead of the right side of the back wall. Gets it away from the filter flow a bit more. I like it over all, I think it'll be good for the serpaes.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Monday, October 13, 2008
Another Update
First off, the fry are doing well. The best we can count now there's five fry still going strong. One in particular is getting BIG. No evidence of color or sex yet, I'm going to separate boys from girls the moment I can though. I don't mind some fry once in a while but until I've got some more fish in the tank I don't think I'm going to let them breed. I can deal with one or two surviving from each drop but 5+ is dangerous.
In QT/Hospital tank news I've got all the pieces together, now its just a matter of waiting for my sponge filter to marinate and then I can set it up. I've got about another week to go on the sponge filter before I put everything together.
To keep it cycled while I wait on the serpaes at the end of the outage I may buy a couple more neons and a platy or two... don't tell my wife. It's goofy but I really love the neons. Their bright blue and red colors, the way they school together, they're just great looking fish. I've found a lot of varities of platy I'd love to see in my tank.
In QT/Hospital tank news I've got all the pieces together, now its just a matter of waiting for my sponge filter to marinate and then I can set it up. I've got about another week to go on the sponge filter before I put everything together.
To keep it cycled while I wait on the serpaes at the end of the outage I may buy a couple more neons and a platy or two... don't tell my wife. It's goofy but I really love the neons. Their bright blue and red colors, the way they school together, they're just great looking fish. I've found a lot of varities of platy I'd love to see in my tank.
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