Karmicnull
Member
A brief history to-date.
Won a goldfish in a fair as a child. Put it in one of those round goldfish bowls that every house had back in the eighties. Got a second goldfish at another fair and my stepfather managed to source a sensible sized tank (about 90L). We slapped it on top of the child-height wardobe in my room, and popped the goldfish in it. All the aquarium books in the library said get an undergravel filter, so I got one. In hindsight, not the best idea with goldfish. By this time I was at 3 goldfish, a shubunkin and two green tench. The tank cracked and leaked everywhere; we fixed it. Astonishingly despite everything the fish survived, and when we moved to a new house with a pond, they all went in the pond. About a year later all but the green tench ended up as food for a very happy heron. We never saw the green tench. Apart from very occasionally from a distance when you would see a ripple circling the edges of the pond, a bit like jaws. When we emptied the pond out to clean and fix a leak a few years later, one was still there, skulking in the mud. The old 90L tank sat in the loft gathering dust.
When I grew up and had kids of my own the tank transferred into my own loft where it sat for the next 18 years until a combination of pestering from children and lockdown staycation galvanized me to action a couple of weeks back. Key requirement was that it had to match the furniture in the living room, which meant a light oak or pine stand. Turns out they are hard to come by. I looked at bespoke options, but they were so expensive that it ended up being cheaper to buy a brand new aqua oak 130L tank. So my old tank carries on gathering dust. Go figure.
Anyhow I did a bit of research and got all the paraphernalia that the interweb told me I needed to keep fish alive. Then we went to the LFS to get substrate, a couple of plants, an ornament (I had my heart set on a crashed star destoyer, but the LFS only had shipwrecks and ruins) and advice. I came back with some sand, a handful of plants and a sneaking suspicion that the chap I'd talked to in the shop knew very little more then I did. So we set up the tank and I decided to do a bit more research online.
This is the tank on 31st August after we set it up:
At this point my biggest setback was the discovery that my external filter was too tall to fit in the fish stand's cupboard. You can see the tubes off to the right. That hasn't gone down particularly well. Esp. since it's in an old plastic washbasin as I was paranoid about leaks (it hasn't).
Having done this there followed a frantic amount of research, through which I learned (amongst other things) that:
As a result...
Anyhow, here's the tank as it was earlier today. Looking forward to seeing what the next week brings!
Won a goldfish in a fair as a child. Put it in one of those round goldfish bowls that every house had back in the eighties. Got a second goldfish at another fair and my stepfather managed to source a sensible sized tank (about 90L). We slapped it on top of the child-height wardobe in my room, and popped the goldfish in it. All the aquarium books in the library said get an undergravel filter, so I got one. In hindsight, not the best idea with goldfish. By this time I was at 3 goldfish, a shubunkin and two green tench. The tank cracked and leaked everywhere; we fixed it. Astonishingly despite everything the fish survived, and when we moved to a new house with a pond, they all went in the pond. About a year later all but the green tench ended up as food for a very happy heron. We never saw the green tench. Apart from very occasionally from a distance when you would see a ripple circling the edges of the pond, a bit like jaws. When we emptied the pond out to clean and fix a leak a few years later, one was still there, skulking in the mud. The old 90L tank sat in the loft gathering dust.
When I grew up and had kids of my own the tank transferred into my own loft where it sat for the next 18 years until a combination of pestering from children and lockdown staycation galvanized me to action a couple of weeks back. Key requirement was that it had to match the furniture in the living room, which meant a light oak or pine stand. Turns out they are hard to come by. I looked at bespoke options, but they were so expensive that it ended up being cheaper to buy a brand new aqua oak 130L tank. So my old tank carries on gathering dust. Go figure.
Anyhow I did a bit of research and got all the paraphernalia that the interweb told me I needed to keep fish alive. Then we went to the LFS to get substrate, a couple of plants, an ornament (I had my heart set on a crashed star destoyer, but the LFS only had shipwrecks and ruins) and advice. I came back with some sand, a handful of plants and a sneaking suspicion that the chap I'd talked to in the shop knew very little more then I did. So we set up the tank and I decided to do a bit more research online.
This is the tank on 31st August after we set it up:
At this point my biggest setback was the discovery that my external filter was too tall to fit in the fish stand's cupboard. You can see the tubes off to the right. That hasn't gone down particularly well. Esp. since it's in an old plastic washbasin as I was paranoid about leaks (it hasn't).
Having done this there followed a frantic amount of research, through which I learned (amongst other things) that:
- plants need to be fed.
- most of what is out on the interweb is either incorrect or at best insufficiently precise.
- my lighting was probably too bright.
- my air bubbles should only be on at night
- I don't have enough plants
- the Anubais Nana that you can't see behind the purple rock probably won't ever grow big enough to make it into sight.
- I've probably got too much sand on top of my aquabasis plus
- Test kits are interesting but not the be-all and end-all.
- What I appear to be aiming for is called a low-tech tank.
As a result...
- I have made up my first EI mix yesterday and gave my first (50%) dose today.
- there is now pond lettuce jetting round in the flow on the surface of the water
- I have a couple more plants arriving this week. Everyone on these forums seems to swear by Tropica, so I found a reseller, but they're a heck of a lot more expensive than Amazon.
- I've downloaded the water reading from Cambridge water (rock hard, slightly alkali and full of nitrates. Even though my test kit is in denial about the last of these)
- I know what a stem plant is and I reckon I need to get a few.
- I have a spreadsheet of approximately 80 fish that the internet swears are hard for beginners to kill, of which 20 will actually be happy in high PH hard water and my size of tank. Interestingly different sites sometimes give spectacularly different values for what hardness a fish can cope with. e.g. Serpae tetra can cope with between 268ppm and 465 ppm depending on which site you believe, so I think the error bars on my spreadsheet are pretty wild.
Anyhow, here's the tank as it was earlier today. Looking forward to seeing what the next week brings!
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