Introduce Yourself!

Hello Think fish people!

My name is Heinrich and I'm 17 years old. I live in Pretoria, South Africa. I have a great passion for motorsport and aquariums. I hope to learn a lot from you guys & gals!

I currently "own" one tank but we have 4 tanks in total as a family.

Mine- 225L Semi aggressive community.
1 Rainbow shark (still small)
5 Tiger Barbs (still small and soon to be 6 or 7)
6 Red eye Tetras (already had them so had to stick with them)
2 Bronze cories (soon to be 4)

I plan on adding an Opaline gourami and live plants soon.

My sister's- 60L Random.
7 Mixed danio (glofish, zebra and leopard)
2 Black Kuhli Loaches.

My Mom's- 13L Betta
1 Betta Splendens

My dad's- 20L nano Reef
1 Clarkii Clownfish
1 Bicolour Blenny
1 Spotted Cardinal Fish
1 Red fire shrimp
Various Hermit crabs and snails.
Live plants of different species I have no clue what they are!

So there you have it! I hope you enjoy my posts and I look forward to learning with and from all of you!

Just thought I'd introduce myself as I'm new to the forum. Like many others, I'm returning to fishkeeping after many years, my previous experience being as a teenager to early twenties, tank given away by parents when I finally left home …........ a common story, I expect. This summer I was given an empty 65 litre tank, stand and equipment by a friend who was moving away. Subsequently I have bought four more tanks, all used from EBay, a Rio 125, another slightly smaller, a 75 and a 65 litre. I decided to completely reorganise a room and disposed of some fairly useless furniture, so making room for these tanks. I decided it would be easier to do everything in one go. One tank came with a few fish, the others all empty. I've replaced some filters, heaters and light tubes, but as I only paid £113 for the four tanks I bought, the total hardware costs come in at well under £200, considerably less than the Rio 125 alone would cost new.  Last weekend I set up all of the 4 empty tanks and planted them, only the one I bought with a few fish being operational before that. Thank goodness none leak!

 I read a great deal from books and the internet over the past few months before deciding how to set up these tanks. However, the greatest influence was undoubtedly Diana Walstad's book “The ecology of the planted aquarium”. I myself work as a self-employed ecological consultant, specialising in surveys of terrestrial insects and other invertebrates but I also get to survey a lot of ponds, plus occasional streams etc. This made the scientific side of the book extremely interesting, and convincing, to me. I am therefore, to a great extent, planning to follow the Walstad method. The tanks have a bottom layer of soil as substrate, topped off with gravel/sand. I have planted heavily, about 50 plants in each of the larger tanks, 30 in the smaller ones, but keeping to “easy” plants. I plan to wait a good while before adding any fish, none before the new year i.e. about a month after planting, so that the plants have a chance to get going. I hope that I'll then be able to follow the “silent cycle” method.

As far as fish are concerned, I like fish that look like fish! I don't want “oddballs” or overbred fish, so no guppies etc. I'm sticking to reasonably small shoaling species i.e. smaller barbs, rasboras, danios, tetras and Corydoras, in groups of 5 or 6 (Corydoras and barbs) to 10 or 12 for the smaller species. That still leaves an enormous choice. My water comes out of the tap moderately hard (pH 7.3, hardness 13 gdh, nitrates 6 mgNO3/litre) and so I'll be avoiding the real softwater specialists.

Anyway, that's about it and I'll update here as things proceed, which I hope will be of interest.

I'm looking forward to hearing how your tanks get on Richard. I also read Diane Walstead's book, and loved it,  but because my science background is more physics, I wasn't brave enough to stray far from what has become conventional fish keeping. However, my 240l planted tank has been experiencing reduced maintenance closer to Diane's method since I had a baby in February!

That was quite a baptism you had. Freshwater tropicals are much more straight forward by comparison.

Be careful with shop advice though. Some good ones still give the odd bit f bad advice when it comes to which fish to buy. Check on here are Seriously Fish to make sure they go in your water, and with each other.

  Great to see you here Michael - I'm sure someone will have an answer for you soon, alas, I'm but a techie - I am learning mind , watch this space!

 

Resa ia quite right. You need to change the water that the fish is in very slowly till it is used to the softer water. Though again, is it a species that needs hard water and won't be happy in soft? Fish like Rift Lake cichlids or mollies, for example, would not do well in soft water.

Assuming it will be fine in the softer water once you have acclimated it, do you have a quarantine tank, as a smaller volume would be easier than 300 litres? But whatever tank you use, you need to do frequent small water changes, say 10% a day, using the softer water until the hardness finally drops to similar to the 110 litre. I know that when you buy fish from a hard water area to keep in soft water you have to acclimate them much faster than that, but in that case there is only a bag of hard water not a tank full. Going slower will be easier on the fish though it does mean more work for you.
When you have the fish in the 110 litre, you said you wanted to give the 300 a makeover - will it be running with harder water again? If it will, and you intend keeping the filter bacteria fed and building up more of them, you'll need to bring the hardness up slowly again so you don't shock the bacteria, though you'd be OK 'hardening' the water faster than you softened it.

Hi mfritz,

Good luck with transferring your CAE to his new home
I'm looking forward to seeing your Amazon set-up when it's done. If you have the time, you could post on here as you're doing it...stage by stage, for anyone else interested in doing something similar.

hello all
iam in the process of buying my first tropical fish tank after six months of looking around and researching and failed bids on ebay.
looking forward to getting my first tank and my adventure into keeping fish.
not to sure on the exact types of fish i would like to have yet althow i have some ideas,
i like the plecos and i am quite keen for some shrimp.
fingers crossed for a winning bid on ebay soon 

iam currently looking at a 5 ft tank that has recently come up for sale , i have been looking at both 6 ft and 5 ft tanks 

yes after a fair bit of thort i decided that was better to start big and have less fish in a bigger tank that start small and try to get to many in a small tank or have to upgrade.