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Two Feet of Joy

Cheltster

Cheltster

Member
Joined
7 Oct 2018
Messages
95
Location
Bexley
Hello everyone.

I thought I'd post a journal so I can get some advice as I go along and hopefully share the journey.

The budget is virtually zero. I also have to deal with a heavily pregnant wife who is hostile to my plant and fish tank antics.

I managed to convince her to allow me to set up a two foot tank in the utility room. I previously had a 20L bowl that my father in law thought would be great for two goldfish that he bought our daughter. So I got stuck with Ben & Harry.
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Managed to get it looking half decent despite the goldfish. I managed to convince the Mrs on welfare grounds that the goldies needed more space. So I now have a small wildlife pond that is maturing for them next year.
In the meantime the goldies have been upgraded to a 2ft tank. Still too small but should do them over the winter. This is the story of that tank.
 
I started off with some balls of air drying clay.
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Then added some aquatic compost that I sieved to keep it fine and remove twigs and stuff. There was around an inch of compost and on top of that went 1-1.5 inches of 2-3mm blasting sand. I then added a rock from the garden that I cleaned up and the plants from the bowl. These were: vallis, rotala rotundifolia, bacopa caroliniana, ludwigia repens x, wisteria, java fern, anubias, elodia, aponogeton and salvinia. I then added s. Repens, bacopa compact and lilaeopsis brasiliensis.
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The water was a mix of the old bowl and rainwater from a recently cleaned rainbutt.

The light is a Chihiros A601 which is about 12 cm above the water level. It is set to level 2 of 7.

For filters I had an APS ef-150 cannister, now with the floss removed (cheers dw1305) and a Interpet pf1. This was just to up the flow and turnover.

I have been adding 1.25 ml of easy carbo daily before the lights come on. In addition I have been adding 1/32 and 1/64 tsp of monopotassium phosphate and 1/16 and 1/32 tsp of KNO3 twice a week and profito as per the bottle.

Only set it up on Friday night and did a 50%change on Sunday. So early days. Hopefully this will go well.

Budget wise the tank cost £40,the light £32 most of the rest I already had.

Thanks to this site I will be mixing my own version of TNC complete soon, once I get the other bits I need.
 
My tank had a similar start in life...
155L Goldfish Cube

...minus the heavily pregnant, hostile wife bit, good luck with that! ;)

PS - hope you don’t mind me saying but check the comment near the bottom about goldfish and ponds, just in case it does apply.
Good luck! (Following with eager anticipation)
 
Dave,

Cheers, I've read most of your journal it is an inspiration. I'm not looking to keep goldfish. I wanted some neon and a few cherry shrimp but the Father in Law done my legs.

I can't let the little guys suffer so I've tried to do the best for them I can. I think I'm doing OK. They even spawned in the bowl.
 
Does the utility room have a sink? (i guess it will) Try to do large waterchanges twice a week, the fish will love them. I believe if you have decent water from the tap ( watch out for chlorine/chloramine, ask watersupplier) the fish will be happier with large waterchanges compared to you mixing rainwater and reducing waterchanges.
 
Edvet, it is immediately to the right of the sink. However I have been using rainwater collected in a 190L butt and I normally do 50% change. I was going to aim for twice a week rather than once per week for the initial period.
 
Just mentioning that they will probably get used to tapwater so doing large regular waterchanges is more important than softening the water with rainwater and doing less waterchanges because rainwater is scarce.
( Google Python water changer)
 
Following Edvet's advice I did another 50% water change. It was starting to look a little yellow, maybe from the peat in the aquatic compost. Trimmed the bacopa compact and replanted the stems. The goldfish are now busy knocking them out again!

IMG_20181025_204929.jpg


Apologies for the phone pic. I shall try and get the proper camera out at the weekend.
 
Right, the baby still hasn't made an appearance so I spent my evening cleaning the tank. Thanks to the rain this week I had a nice rain butt full of fresh water. Did another 50% change, added some dry ferts and gave the fish some food.

I would take a picture but it's a bit messy. Hopefully it will clear over night. So far the plants look OK. I've trimmed the bacopa compact. The lilaeopsis seems to have grown.


The only casualty is the elodea. Despite coming from the old bowl, with the same water and also having easy carbo dosed as per the bottle, it has completely melted. No big loss as it was mainly goldfish fodder.

I'm still looking for new plants. I'm after some colour other than green. Was thinking of the Reni amazon sword from Tropica and some H. Polysperma Rosenvig.

Looking forward to week two. Thanks for reading.
 
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Another midweek 50% WC. Replanted some ludwigia and bacopa compact. Everything looks OK from what I can tell. The colour on the plants looks OK I think. Still keeping the lights as above.

The only change is that 1kg of epsom salts turned up so I dosed a low light weekly amount as per rotala butterfly. Have to see how that changes things.

Still no baby, it's now 8 days late!
 
Aqua360 said:
Anymore pics of the bowl and info?

It looked great!
Click to expand...

The bowl is no more. I moved all the plants into the new tank. Unfortunately the pond weed disintegrated and the vallis doesn't look much better, but thank you.
 
My amazing wife finally gave birth to our son on Monday night. He clearly had non limited nutrients as he weighed in at 10lb1(4.5 kg) and 2 ft long (62cm).

However the fish tank suffered as we spent best part of 2 days at the hospital. The goldfish celebrated by ripping the plants out. Hopefully tomorrow I will get a chance to do a water change and replant.

The plants look OK though, as they float around the tank.
 
Finally got the chance to change the water and replant the plants the goldies ripped up.
IMG_20181108_204702.jpg
The water still seems to have a haze to it, hopefully that will clear over night. I'm going to order a red amazon sword, some rotala indicia, polysperma rosenvig and ludwigia super red mini to add a bit of contrast.

Quite pleased with the way the plants are going. The rotala rotundifolia is running for the surface and the new growth has a slight pink tinge to it. The lilaeopsis is also sending out runners.
IMG_20181108_204732.jpg

Had this going for three weeks now, so early days but doing OK I think.
 
Week 4 and it's attack of the diatoms. They have broken out all over the rock and several of the plants. I've read through as much as I can and the advice RE diatoms is conflicting from cut light down to boost the light up. Any advice would be appreciated.
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Else where the bacopa caroliniana and the rotala seem to be going white at the tips. I've read that this can be due to low iron but I'm dosing profito and my water is soft rainwater so I would not have thought I had a deficiency there. Any thoughts?
IMG_20181117_193242.jpg
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