Cycle slowly starting
30th January 2012
I came home from work this morning and did my daily test of the tank to see if any of the Ammonia had started to convert to Nitrite. After getting a mild purple yesterday indicating about 0.5ppm Nitrite I got a much stronger purple today of maybe 3-4ppm. The Ammonia level doesn't appear too different but it has to be lower since Nitrite is there. I thought this might all be a sign that the mature media I picked up from my LFS was actually doing some good, however after looking at other peoples data my tank has reached exactly the same stage as one with no seeded material in.
Today I have purchased some used filter floss from a member on Tropical Fish Forums which I can put at the bottom of my tank which really should have some good bacteria in. That should arrive on Wednesday so I can pop it in before I go back to work and hopefully speed things up.
Tank is in and filled
22nd January 2012
After finally getting some days off I managed to get my tank in place and ready to go. The cabinet was actually about 6cm too tall for the location we wanted to put it so I removed that with the help of a router which made a nice clean straight edge. Once the base was built and in place I put the black sticky backed plastic on the black of the tank and then my wife helped me lift the tank onto the base.
Next up was getting the filter and heater connected up. Both are external so as to keep a nice clean inside to the tank. Then came the joyous task of washing the sand to put in the tank. At 4ft long and 40cm deep I needed just over 35KG to get a nice 2" layer on the bottom. Once that was complete I could finally add some water which took what seemed like forever and was VERy cold at this time of year! Once finally full I got some mature media from my LFS to put into my filter and then added some Ammonia to get my cycle started.
I dosed up to 4ppm ammonia and have now left the tank to its devices. The heater is running to try and keep the water at a bacteria friendly 29c so in a few days I'll do an ammonia test to see if the mature media I put in has had any impact at all. If it has then some of that ammonia I put in will have been turned in to nitrite, If not then the ammonia will probably all still be there.
In addition I have also sold the Fluval 305 filter that came with my tank to my father-inlaw. The tiny filter that came with his 60l christmas present just wasn't coping with either the stocking or feeding or both that it was being subjected to. I also found that his tank had very high ammonia levels and low nitrite levels. That showed that while his filter was converting SOME ammonia into nitrite it wasn;t nearly enough and there wasn't enough nitrite eating bacteria to convert it to nitrate. We did a 40% and then 80% water change and got the levels down to safer levels.
While buying the supplies for his new filter I took the oppertunity to look at more fish in my LFS Maidenhead Aquatics @ Croydon. What particulaly caught my interest were the Panda and Adolfi Corydoras as well as the Pearl Gourami. I'm looking to possibly stock 2 female and one male Pearl Gourami as well as an unknown number of Cardinal Tetra and Corydoras. I'll also probably add some Malaysian Trumpet Snails in which will help keep the sand free of anerobic pockets. I also managed to get a chance to talk to one of the main women who works there which was cool.
Some of my bogwood is soaking and I need to redistibute some of the sand but here it is for now. Hopefully next weekend I can make some more progress however It's likly going to be at least 4 weeks until I can add fish.
First entry on the Aquarium blog
19th January 2012
I've wanted an aquarium for a while but I've never really known where we could put one in our house. After my Father-in-Law got one for Christmas it piqued my interest again and during a conversation with my Wife she suggested that we move some Blu-Ray racks and put an aquarium in the alcove.
Over the next few days I had a hunt around trying to gather as much information about things as I could and eventually settled on a nice 4ft long Fluval Roma 240. The cheapest I could find it online was £440 including a cabinet but a chain of shops called Maidenhead Aquatics had it on sale for £410 and also had 20% off until the end of that weekend. Off I popped and here it is!
It does come with a filter and a heater but I purchased replacements for a couple of reasons. The heater I have replaced because I wanted an external to keep as little in the tank as possible, and the filter so that I had more capacity over the stock model. I've also bought some black sand to use as a substrate, various test kits to check the water parameters, etc etc. It all gets set up on Saturday so there will be plenty of images to share after that!
I've also found that Tropical Fish Forums is a cavern of useful information and helpful advice so will be spending a lot of time there.