In my newly remodelled kitchen there is some free wall-space (Thanks to the wonders of having more than enough cupboard space now to put everything (including the cats) away neatly, so I have decided that I really really REALLY want a fishtank.
I've always kept fish on and off, and spent every free minute (all 12 of them lol) last week thinking what I want to do.
Torn between Marine (expensive, delicate, unforgiving but supremely beautiful) or a classic (amazon style) tropical tank or a lake cichlid setup (would suit the naturally somewhat harder tapwater)
Anyone else keep fishies? For context - fishies will live to the left of the cat-unit 🙂
Oh, it was awesome. We actually built the tank into the front desk of the business we had, I miss it everyday. I don't miss the daily maintenance, but I miss those fish! They all had such great personalities. One of my favorites was the engineer goby we had. They look like little eels and they make tunnels in the sand by filling their mouths with it then spitting it out. Seriously one of the most amusing things I have ever witnessed.
Unfortunately all the good pictures of the tank are on an old phone somewhere, however I did find these from when we were in the process of building the desk around it. Not the best pictures in the world, but you can get a pretty good idea of what we had going on.
I love those fish you picked out! Praying that your tank arrives in one piece too, that would be such a nightmare to have it show up busted X_x
@Melissa C wrote:
1) Are those cubbies cat-shaped?!
2) Your work space is amazing. Mine is a desk set between my couch and my loveseat. We have two free rooms, but if I left, I'd never see my partner.
And I can't answer your question, I just want to know where to get those cubbies.
1) They are 🙂 They're plywood boxes covered inside and out in synthetic fur and have cushions in them. They are designed to work with Ikea shelving systems (fit them perfectly). My cats adooooore them
In the US you can get something similar on Amazon but they are rather more pricey than what I paid.
2) That's not my workspace, that's just the kitchen laptop. Those chairs are not comfy for more than a couple of hours...
@Brittany J wrote:We use to have a 180 gallon saltwater tank and the maintenance was craaaazy to keep up with. Although they are beautiful and the colors are amazing, I think you're making the smarter choice for sure.
180 gallon marine tank must have been soooooo gorgeous. Post a pic if you have one!
I had a freshwater tank that size back in the UK, loved it!
I did have a professional come in twice a month and do most of the maintenance though... and that was a freshwater, not even a marine!
Frankly if I had the space I'd go for a bigger tank too, alas, I don't, so the 180 liter will have to do! Luckily the fish I like aren't very big (So far planning a significant shoal of Cardinal Tetra, some German Rams etc... peaceful, small fish that create a flurry of colour)
Obviously some way off adding any fish at all. If I am really lucky the tank might get to me by end of the week and not be broken in transit, then planting and cycling.... 3 weeks minimum I guess although I have cycled tanks in 2 weeks before.
Oh, it was awesome. We actually built the tank into the front desk of the business we had, I miss it everyday. I don't miss the daily maintenance, but I miss those fish! They all had such great personalities. One of my favorites was the engineer goby we had. They look like little eels and they make tunnels in the sand by filling their mouths with it then spitting it out. Seriously one of the most amusing things I have ever witnessed.
Unfortunately all the good pictures of the tank are on an old phone somewhere, however I did find these from when we were in the process of building the desk around it. Not the best pictures in the world, but you can get a pretty good idea of what we had going on.
I love those fish you picked out! Praying that your tank arrives in one piece too, that would be such a nightmare to have it show up busted X_x
Hi Petra,
today I found the dreamland for your kitties ... Moooooore pretty fishies
tank arrived and I made a mess of the cabinet because I only ever read the instructions AFTER things go wrong. The instructions are idiotproof. But nothing "prooves" against an idiot who is arrogant enough to think he or she does not need them 😉
Also: Cats are not helpful while putting together a fishtank.
Special mention to my Lynca who is now sulking because she tried to jump onto what she thought was a cupboard and hit her head on the glass.
Door hinges still need something doing (I think I used the wrong door for the middle one) but the tank is on the cabinet
I have a 120 gallon cichlid tank and love it!
@Tracye G wrote:I have a 120 gallon cichlid tank and love it!
120 gallon... lots of water 🙂
Beautiful tank, I guess with those cichlids real plants are out...
progress on mine as per this afternoon:
Day 2 - main lights off, backlights going through their (programmed) sunset routine
day 3 - now fully planted, plunts just need to grow now. Yellow tint in the water is tannins from all the wood, it will go away by itself in a week or two.
One week in
Clearing nicely. Plants initially sulked but are recovering.
@Petra R wrote:One week in
Clearing nicely. Plants initially sulked but are recovering.
I wasn't goint to comment on this thread until you had the tank all set up and populated, but at this point I must say that this is a very, very pretty setup.
Not wanting to hijack your thread, but I've been keeping fish for just about my whole life, and I've never, ever, been able to keep plants alive for more than a couple of weeks. In fact, my 200-litre guppy tank turns 18 years old in a couple of months and while I have never had to drain it to clean it (my homemade filters work great), I have never managed to get plants to grow in it in all of that time.
It seems I am good at keeping guppies alive, since the oldest ones I have are older than four years, but keeping plants alive? Not so much.
@Reinier B wrote:Not wanting to hijack your thread, but I've been keeping fish for just about my whole life, and I've never, ever, been able to keep plants alive for more than a couple of weeks. In fact, my 200-litre guppy tank turns 18 years old in a couple of months and while I have never had to drain it to clean it (my homemade filters work great), I have never managed to get plants to grow in it in all of that time.
It seems I am good at keeping guppies alive, since the oldest ones I have are older than four years, but keeping plants alive? Not so much.
Hijack away, Reinier!!
The trick to keeping plants and fish happy and alive is simply "balance." To me a tank is not complete until it has both fauna and flora and is balanced in such a way that they complement each other functionally and visually. Once you get to that point it's just a matter of maintaining that balance. The aquarium becomes an almost self-sustaining micro-eco-system in its own right.
Plants need light, nutrients and CO2. Fish need clean water, oxygen, and food.
If you get it right, the waste from the fish helps feed the plants, the plants "eat" the nitrates and act as a filter, create oxygen for the fish and outcompete algae for nutrients. They also provide hiding places for timid fish and, last not least, look nice.
Most people fail with plants because they choose pretty but very demanding plants which need special lighting and likely won't thrive without expensive and difficult to understand CO2 gas injection which is hard to balance without potentially affecting the fish.
I deliberately went only for plants which have low CO2 and light requirements, because I can not be bothered with setting up a CO2 system.
ANYONE can keep anubia alive for example, all the darker green plants in my tank are different types of anubia. The Amazon swords in the background and the cute little curly things towards the right are also "easy" but do tend to "melt" a bit initially (you know how salad leaves go translucent a bit when you put salt and dressing on them? That effect) because they are generally initially grown emerged (out of water) to get them to a saleable size more quickly. As emerged plants have unhindered access to CO2 they grow more quickly and easily.
So, it's a bit of a shock to their system to be dumped in a tank and have to painfully extract their CO2 from the water. This initial "melting" can see all the old foliage die off, to be replaced by new shoots which were "born" immersed (in water) so are adapted to living under water from the start.
Get some anubia, tie or superglue (yes, really) them to some stones or driftwood (wash / boil first, leave driftwood soaking in clear water for a week or two so the tannins can leak out and it becomes fully waterlogged), and see how nice it is to have plants! Just don't plant them directly in soil or gravel, they will rot.
@Petra R wrote:How weird!
Do you have a pic of your tank?
I don't own a camera or a smart phone, but I'll see about getting a picture when my kids come around again next week. They have amazing phones that can even make and receive calls...
Petra i was observing this for a while now, and i must say pretty awesome [schreibt sich AWESOME].
Shame on me, the only thing i can keep alive is either my server or plants OUTSIDE water ....
Have you thought about maybe keeping a sorority of betta fish? I don't mean the girls that you find in the pet stores, I mean absolute stunners just as beautiful as the males that come directly from breeders.
I can also highly recommend Lake Tangyanaki frontosa cichlids but make sure you get the real ones and not the genetically modified.
Sorry guys, It's been a manic month and I've only just started to come up for air.
The tank cycled very happily, and after an initial "melt" (when plants that were originally grown out of water go into shock when submerged) the plants came back happily. There are some brown marks on the leaves of the Amazons and I should probably remove those leaves so the plants can put their energy into growing new leaves rather than the old damaged ones. Minor algae issues, as expected, which I am fighting by reducing light (shorter periods and added floating plants) as well as upping liquid CO2 to encourage plant growth (to out-compete the algae for nutrients.)
Stocking: (Small) Rainbow community.
I added a shoal of 11 tiny (really, really tiny) forktails - 2 arrived damaged and I lost them within 24 hours, the rest are thriving. I was a little p*ssed off because those 2 were clearly not right when packed (one had a deformed jaw and one a deformed spine, that can not have happened in transit, so changed suppliers. No excuse for shipping unwell lifestock.)
The forktails were joined by 3 nerite snails and two otocinclus for algae control. I wanted 6 otos because they like being in groups, but no more (healthy ones) could be found. They are all thriving and do a fabulous job keeping glass and plants clean. Just visible in the background of the pic below: freshly cleaned anubia to the left and very healthy new growth of the corkscrew sword (Echinodorus vesuvius.) The original leaves completely died off but the new growth is super pretty (very curly) and will hopefully camouflage the internal filter in due course.
After watching water parameters like a hawk for a week I added 11 juvenile Threadfin rainbows
All are doing well and the forktails very clearly enjoy having their bigger cousins about and have become bolder and more colourful as a result.
According to AqAdvisor that puts me at about 62% stocking capacity based on adult size (they are nowhere near that yet and won't be for months.) Limiting factor currently is the filter capacity rather than the tank volume. I am, long term, planning to add an external filter and remove the internal one. It does not matter right now simply because the fish are nowhere near fully grown, but neither is the system mature so I don't want to take any risks at all.
The last step will be 9 pseudomugil sp. red neon.
Ideally I'd like to wait a while, but we are rapidly heading for summer and heat. If I want to order them and ensure safe shipping conditions I should get them either straight away or wait until late September.
Wondering whether to add a handful of Amano Shrimp, (Cardina multidenta) as additional clean-up crew. They add almost nothing to the bioload and won't breed so safe with the filter (all the interesting shrimpies would breed and their babies likely mangled in filter)
Routine
Feeding: flake and frozen for the rainbows, wafers and vegetables for the otos and the nerite snails.
40% - 50% water change weekly (I've adapted an aquavac with a long piece of hosepipe so the tankwater drains straight into the shower, then remove the showerhead, adapt the temperature, attach the hosepipe to the shower's water-outlet and refill the tank. No carrying buckets, no hassle. Drain, add water conditioner, refill, done.)
Upgraded filter with Seachem Purigen and Seachem Matrix
Liquid CO2 - Seachem Excel 5 ml daily
Ferts: Seachem Flourish once a week
(Yes, I'm a huge Seachem fan)
Twinstar Ozone thingie to help prevent algae and sterilize water. Or just make cool clouds of micro airbubbles. Jury still out on whether it actually works in any meaningful way or not but it's bought and in the tank at at worst doing no harm.
So that's where we are right now 🙂
Some really nice fishies you have
I won't touch ozone generators again. Once, a long time ago when I was breeding goldfish in outside ponds, I thought sterilizing the water with a store-bought ozone generator might be good thing. Sadly, something went wrong a couple of days after I installed the system and the ozone generator started working too well, which resulted in thousands of fish dying- in fact, all my gold fish died in the space of a few hours. I don't know if there is a lesson in there somewhere, but you may want to reconsider the use of ozone.
