Tropical Fish Forum
Tropical Fish Keeping Help and Advice => New Fishkeepers => Topic started by: chriswhy1967 on August 27, 2015, 06:56:55 PM
-
http://www.thinkfish.co.uk/forums/Smileys/default/031.gif
Well parted with the cash and hopefully in a week the tank will arrive. Gf allowed me to use the larger corner of the room so gone for the Juwel Trigon 350 litre tank Dark wood, local garden centre is doing free cabinet with tank offer.
so over the next week I will need to pick up some supplies. so feed back advice bring it on :)
Will have plants in so thinking substrate with a cream ish sand on top. easy care plants to begin with etc
Looking for large Sunken Submarine for centre deco, maybe large cave complex for back edge etc
Test kits what is cost effective ?
Have not tested water but water board reports
Hardness Level Very Soft
PH lowest -6.87 Average-7.24 Highest -7.60
Hardness Clarke 1.575
Total hardness lowest- 7 Average-9 Highest-14 mg Ca/l
But not tested it myself yet.
will read up more over the weekend
-
Oh wow, that is soft water! I hope you want to keep soft water fish. You may even need to add remineralisation salts to bring it up a bit.
Test kits - don't bother with those paper ones you dip in. Depending on how much you want to pay, liquid reagent ones with test tubes are much better, and Salifert (powders and test tubes) are the most expensive. On-line shops are cheaper than real ones. I use the API master test kit (contains pH, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate) but there are others makes too.
With your hardness I would strongly advise a fishless cycle. It is so low that your carbonate hardness (KH) will also be very low. The filter bacteria need inorganic carbonate (ie KH) to multiply and you have next to none. And low KH means there is nothing to prevent the pH dropping. The simplest thing during a fishless cycle is to add bicarbonate of soda, which you can't do when there are fish in the tank as with a fish-in cycle.
Since you have bought a Juwel tank, the built in filter will have a black carbon pad which you don't need. You would be much better finding a source of crushed aragonite and putting that, in a mesh bag, in place of the black sponge. Aragonite dissolves slowly adding calcium and magnesium (GH) and carbonate (KH) to the water. This may be enough once the cycle has finished and you have fish. But with such soft water that may not be enough and you may need to add remineralisation salts, something like Tropic Marin tropical remineralisation salts (be careful to get freshwater not marine!)
-
Welcome aboard and good luck. :cheers:
-
Likewise.
All sounds good. My water is very similar to yours, so you're not alone. :)
-
Lucky a lot of community fish like Soft Water... would hate to have a Hard water start up.
Not in Lancashire so not dodgy water, seems I get the water from the lake District, my house in wigan has a different water quality altogether and vary in softness from soft to hard with a higher PH only 19 miles apart.
I know that the water board can take water from different places depending on weather it is Winter or Summer, so whilst all summer you have no issues and in winter thinks happen for unknown reasons, shows the need that you do need to check and test the water supply do not rely on the last test you did.
Anyways back to my intended set up, thinking of this for the centre deco http://www.amazon.co.uk/HERITAGE-AQUARIUM-SUBMARINE-HANDPAINTED-ORNAMENT/dp/B00WJXTE5I
-
Fish will accept lots if different things in their tank. That submarine, with its holes, looks like a nice cave for them. Fish don't mind what the shape is as long as it fits their needs, ie somewhere to hide just in case some predator happens along, or somewhere to lay eggs for cave spawning fish.
We lived in Lowton in the 1980s. I didn't think about what the water was like there as I didn't keep fish then. But I do remember that one summer they started taking water from some bore holes rather than the usual source.
And as far as I'm concerned, Wigan is in Lancashire. It was only moved to Greater Manchester 1974 ;D
-
Air pump and bubbles should I add these, extra safe guard if the filter stops etc
-
The main use of bubbles is aesthetic.
Bubbles can help if you ever have sick fish as some treatments can lower the oxygen content of the water (and with whitespot medication you have to increase the temperature as well, which also lowers oxygen). Oxygen doesn't get into the water from the bubbles themselves but they churn the water up allowing more oxygen to get in at the surface.
And if the filter fails, yes the bubbles will help churn up the water to help keep it oxygenated but they won't help remove ammonia and nitrite
-
The tank is now here, it was heavy lol arms took a day to recover. sand not here till Monday tho:(
-
You can start cycling a bare tank ;)
-
I might wait tho, how ever hard it is. picking up the co2 stuff tomorrow and another bag of plant substrate. some rocks, do the sand Monday once I finished work, only have about 4 hours work in Blackburn Hospital and then fish tank time.
-
It's very exciting isn't it.
The planning stage, then the actual doing.
I like that submarine by the way, got lots of little hidey holes by the look of it.
I take it they'll be photos of the finished tank?
I'm getting the urge to do something to mine now!!