Tropical Fish Forum
Think Fish Tropical Fish Forum => Welcome to our Tropical Fishkeeping Forum - Please Read => Topic started by: Aquamaid on August 30, 2014, 09:55:07 PM
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Hi everyone, i'm so new to this i haven't even got water in my tank yet lol and reading about new tank syndrome etc i nearly gave up before i started, but i saw Sue's article "Fishless cycling, new method, how to do it" whilst doing one of many Googles, and it seems so straigh forward (in theory anyway) and comprehnsive, that i decided to join you all. You can look forward to some typical newbie questions as i get started, but i promise to search the site first before asking lol : )
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Welcome to thinkfish Aquamaid! And dont worry it can seem daunting at first but once u start adding fish it will all be worth it!
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hello aquamaid :wave: welcome to the forum and feel free to ask any question you like , we have all asked it before :cheers:
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Hi Aquamaid :wave:
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Hi Aquamaid :wave:
Welcome to the forum! You have shown exceptional taste and judgement in choosing this site ;)
Ask away...everyone is happy to help, (some of them may be a little mad :rotfl: ) but they know loads of stuff.
What size/type tank do you have? What fishies are you fancying?....Oh yeah...we're quite nosey too ;)
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Hi Aquamaid, :wave: you probably won't hear much from me cos I know nowt about owt, but welcome anyway. I have found this forum so useful and everyone is very patient with us newbies!
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Thank you all, i have purchased a "Betta Li,fespace 90ltr tank with T8 lighting and trickle filter, so be it, good or bad, that is my starting point lol. Afraid my arty farty side has got the better of me and i am concentrating on the interior decoration at present, i fell in love with the Marine tanks with the coral and fish in, so i'm attempting to recreate that for freshwater, using what i have been told is "fish friendly products" it is a bigger project than i aticipated but whilst i am in process i can read up on lots of things in preparation for the "adding gravel and water day" I intend following Sue's fishless cycle plan but it all sounds very frustrating getting the balancing act sorted. Well i've posted a couple of newbie questions, and i'm sure there will be more. I must say i have encountered a very negative attitude to my new persuit from most everyone iv'e spoken to about it at home and work etc, all i get is "don't do it" it's dirty, smelly occupation, fish die and your electric bills will soar, but despite this i see it as a challenge and am going ahead, and nice to have fellow enthusiast with knowledge to help, so thanks again : )
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Hi and welcome!
Lol at your electricity bills soaring! Don't listen to them, I recently did a calculation of running costs of one of my tanks, albeit the smaller unheated one, and it was negligible.
Don't worry about cycling, the method on here spells it out pretty much and there are people here to give advice when your tank doesn't play exactly by the rules! My tank was cycled in about six weeks, so alow at least that amount of time for researching species of fish, plants and invertebrates. If yours turns out to be quicker, then great!
Tbh I've no idea why I didn't get into fish keeping a long time ago, as a biology graduate who loves sciencey stuff and has A level chemistry, it seems an ideal hobby.
Good luck with your aquascaping, are you going to post photos?
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Thanks for that, if and when i have a fake marine tank established with happy fish, i will certainly post pics, mm so that might be a Christmas posting :-\ lol
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I think if you try to set up a fake marine tank, that is exactly what it will look like - a fake! There are very few freshwater fish that will be comfortable in the sort of open, brightly-lit, plant-free environment of a marine style tank. One reason why people like Malawi cichlid tanks is because both the tanks and the fish rather resemble a marine set up. Fish welfare should be the first priority, before the tank as a piece of interior decoration, and that means giving freshwater fish something resembling a freshwater environment.
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Thank you for advice, i know it is hard to envisage, but the fake coral is aranged and two rocks with a piece as a bridge, and i have one large plastic plant with lots of fronds for hiding hopefully pump and fish. I also want to place some live plants behind the main rock so, i guess i'm not going for authenticity, but hopefully a happy compromise :-[
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After keeping fish for 18 years, I finally have all live plants as of a couple of months ago. I was spurred on by all the photos of planted tanks on here. So as a recent convert, I would say definitely get some live plants in there even if it spoils the marine look ;D
As long as the marine decor is fake, they should be OK. Thinks like real coral will alter your water chemistry. Richard likes natural looking tanks so even non-marine decor like sunken ships and dayglo 'no fishing' signs are bad to him. But he is correct in making the fish feel safe. Their instincts tell them that as long as there is somewhere to hide when that predator comes along, it's safe to come out in the open. If there's nowhere to hide, they'll be looking out for the predator all the time and this stresses them, which in turn makes them more susceptible to disease.
As for your lighting, I see from google that your tank does come in a marine version which would have marine lighting. Can you look at the tube and tell us what the writing on it says. Then we could be sure you have freshwater lighting rather than marine.
One of the reasons I like fish forums is the opportunity to chat to other people who like fish. My husband thinks they are a waste of time, the only good fish is on a plate with a handful of chips. And I made the mistake of using the word bacteria early on so now he's convinced I'm going to catch some dread disease and die. If I splash tank water anywhere I have to clean it up with antibacterial spray or I never hear the end of it. If this is likely to happen to you, use the word micro-organisms instead of bacteria ;D
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We'd be in a right mess without bacteria in the world, or in our tanks. "Bacteria" and "chemicals" two words which seem to strike fear into the hearts of the uncomprehending e.g. "I only use sea salt because ordinary table salt has CHEMICALS added!", even after I point out that their sea salt naturally has more of those same chemicals than the table salt. And what is salt anyway, if not a chemical?
To get back to the point, bright light to me includes ordinary tank lighting with little or no shade, while most fish prefer more subdued light. That's one of the reasons I like to have floating plants in my tanks, but they are definitely inconsistent with even a fake marine look.
Of course, the fish contribute as much to the look of a marine tank as the décor, with all those amazingly coloured and patterned coral reef fish. I can't think of many freshwater fish that have this look, and none that would fit in a 90 litre tank. Some male gouramis (honey or dwarf) are about the nearest.
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Haha thanks Sue, just me and the fish, so no one to explain anything too. My lights are fluorescent T8 20w i have exchanged one for blue moonlight bulb allthough now see it has a couple of little led blue bulbs in it. My main priority is of course happy healthy fish, if the fake coral with a few real plants is a bad idea, i do quite like the "Mangrove tree root" look with maybe more real plants, and little caves, but i will give coral a go first if possible, its taken lot of time and effort lol.
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Richard doesn't like fake mangrove roots either, be warned ;D But I have plastic twisted roots in my tank, they look fine covered with java fern. They are much easier to find a place to tie pants like that onto than real wood. But I have recently discovered redmoor wood. That is tangles of thick bits and lots of spikey branches sticking out at all angles. It seems to be the current 'in' thing in Maidenhead Aquatics. If you have a branch near you, pop in and see what you think of it.
If the lights are just standard fluorescent, that's OK. I just wanted to make sure you hadn't got a version of the tank with marine lights fitted.
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Well my "great barrier reef" project may have to be scrapped anyway, as after lots of time and effort, i thought the heavy resin ornament i used for ballast would hold it down,but apparently spray foam filler is far more buoyant than i imagined :yikes: so unless i marine sealant it to tank bottom it won't stay submerded lol and i don't want it to be permanent fixture (not sure how permanent sealant is) Oh dear, back to drawing board :( Thanks for the input
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Well my "great barrier reef" project may have to be scrapped anyway, as after lots of time and effort, i thought the heavy resin ornament i used for ballast would hold it down,but apparently spray foam filler is far more buoyant than i imagined :yikes: so unless i marine sealant it to tank bottom it won't stay submerded lol and i don't want it to be permanent fixture (not sure how permanent sealant is) Oh dear, back to drawing board :( Thanks for the input
Ah - it's OK now, 'cos if you keep up with current trends, all you need to do is cover your Great Barrier Reef model with a load of mining spoil for it to look authentic.... and that'll hold it down!
Read all about it..... here (http://www.dw.de/dredge-spoil-will-speed-decline-of-great-barrier-reef/a-17878275).
Excerpt: The Australian authorities have approved the dumping of dredge spoil from the planned Abbot Point coal port inside the marine park.
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Oh no Colin, that's not good news! I hardly dare read the article. I spent four days on a diving boat in the GBR and it's so beautiful. I'd thought of Australia as one of the nations most likely to try to conserve it's natural assets!
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On the contrary, Australia and Canada have two of the worst environmental records. Both are heavily exploiting and exporting their resources, coal, iron ore etc for Aus, while Canada is busy extracting as much oil and gas as possible from the Arctic. Neither country has signed up to any of the agreements on climate change. Money talks, the high standards of living people in both countries enjoy are so dependent on this that no politician will dare to make any critical comment.
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How sad, you'd have thought it was the developing countries that were the worst polluters and exploiters of their natural resources, for understandable reasons.
When I was over there the environmentalists found themselves uncomfortably on the same side as the far right in wanting to limit immigration. There's just too many people in Australia for their delicate ecosystem to cope with.
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The present Australian authority are a bunch of Climate Change denying, xenophobic, homophobic, rich men who think anybody worse off than themselves deserves it. (I have this from an Australian who lives on the west coast in one of the 5 towns where they're proposing to build the mega-ship terminals from where they will export the coal and dump the waste.)
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"There's just too many people in Australia for their delicate ecosystem to cope with"
Hardly! Virtually all Aussies live in cities, their population is a fraction of ours in a country many times larger. They just want to keep all the money from exploiting their resources for themselves.
Developing countries are far and away the least polluting, the richer the people the more their country pollutes.
The UK is no better, I'm presently involved in an ecological survey of a site full of wildlife interest, but it is sure to be developed because the developers promise 8,000 jobs will result. Which politician will vote for environment over jobs?
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The UK is no better, I'm presently involved in an ecological survey of a site full of wildlife interest, but it is sure to be developed because the developers promise 8,000 jobs will result. Which politician will vote for environment over jobs?
Exactly. I live on the HighSpeed 2 rail route - right in the middle of the Chilterns, an AONB. The HS2 is ploughing through many SSSIs and fragile ecologies, but strangely looping round George Osbourne's constituancy. Our MP is Conservative, but somehow absented himself from the vote.
I wonder how many politicians will end up as 'non-execuctive directors' on the HS2 board afterwards?
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:-[Oooh err, these discussions can certainly get "in depth" can't they, well all i can say on the matter now is, Money and Power will usually win over everything else, and sex and religion will always cause problems at every level. As for my fake coral reef, i'm already on plan B. :)
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Sorry Aquamaid, we do have this tendency to go off topic, I'm afraid. Sometimes these meanderings do throw up some good info ;D But we'll try to get back on topic now.......
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I don't know the details, but the conservation workers I was volunteering with felt that Australia was overpopulated. Most of the country is desert, so comparing it with ours is perhaps not relevant anyway we dramatically changed our environment hundreds of years ago, perhaps these Aussie environmentalists were hoping not to do the same over there.
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Sorry Sue!
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:-[Oooh err, these discussions can certainly get "in depth" can't they, well all i can say on the matter now is, Money and Power will usually win over everything else, and sex and religion will always cause problems at every level. As for my fake coral reef, i'm already on plan B. :)
A warm welcome to the "Off-topic" police. C:-) It's nice to have some company, the rabble in these parts just doesn't understand discipline I'm afraid! :rotfl:
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Well it all adds to the interest of the site :)) thanks all
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Well it all adds to the interest of the site :)) thanks all
Excellent - welcome aboard! We can learn a lot from off-topic stuff so don't worry about Steve, he's cute and cuddly really, though he pretends he isn't. ;)
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A fake great barrier reef to xenophobic Aussies to HS2 to political corruption - only on ThinkFish!! :rotfl: