Shy Fish

I am accustomed to wild-caught species of aquarium fish showing a tendency to be shy. I believe even domestic discus can be shy as well, rushing off to a corner or turning to face the back glass of the aquarium when the tank is approached. My own wild leopoldi angels got over this, at least with me and my family, though they never showed themselves when I had guests.

Recently I hosted a meeting of my aquarium club, the Central Virginia Aquarium Society, and a good group was in attendance. My normally gregarious and frantic-for-attention orange-head Tapajos were sedate, almost tan in color, and were not looking like they usually do - this went on the entire time I had guests. I knew my leopoldi angel would hide - he always does, but I did not expect the geos to act this way. They didn't hide, but they did not look as glorious as usual. They appeared mildly stressed.

Last night I was looking at them, and the males had iridescent blue/white mustaches, vivid orange heads, iridescent blue stripes mixed in with the deep red stripes on their fins, and the sub-dominant males and females had the spangling and stripes one associates with this species - they were stunning! The mustaches on the males looked artificial - like they had been painted or lit from within like a neon sign.

I wish they'd had this appearance when I had company, but mainly I am intrigued by their response to visitors. Most aquarium fish seem quite oblivious and you assume they don't recognize you, their keeper, but maybe they are smarter than we realize. My wild angel is certainly very discriminating when it comes to being in open water versus hiding in his special cave formed by driftwood pieces. People who don't live with me but are very frequent visitors, like my sister, get to see this beautiful fish. Anyone else can only glimpse a stripe or two in the dim cave in a rear corner.

This is why I need photos and videos to showcase these amazing creatures!

My goldfish, my half domestic angels and my puffer do not seem to discriminate - they never hide or seem shy in the least. They're just always hungry so any being with thumbs is fair game for begging. My Denison's barbs, the lone occupants of my 125 currently, seem to recognize me and come up to the top corner where I usually feed them when I approach, but it took them a bit of time to figure this out. They do not seem to do this with visitors, but rather continue their endless cruising in mid-water.

Maybe it has to do with how many generations away from wild the fish are, but I'm almost certain the Figure-8 puffer was wild caught, since I don't think they're typically bred in captivity, though I might be wrong about that. He's just so desperate to eat that he doesn't seem to care who is doing the feeding, and will shamelessly beg. He's in a very busy part of the house, the kitchen, where two hallways intersect, with frequent foot traffic close by his tank, and I definitely think he prefers this to where his tank used to be, in my office, where there was much less activity.

The Angel Shuffle

Yesterday I added 3 juvenile angels, 50% wild x 50% domestic silvers, to the 150.

The single leopoldi angel rushed out to see, obviously excited to see angels that look similar to him. He has been interacting with them in a semi-aggressive manner, rushing toward them but never coming in contact. I think he is checking them out to see what they have in mind. They pretty much completely ignore him! They continue to poke around, eating voraciously, and don't seem to mind this giant angel getting into their business. I'm still watching things because this wild angel, who has been the only angel in the tank for quite a while, may not take kindly to conspecific interlopers. It might help when I add the extra two tonight, bringing the group of newcomers to 5.

I will then add the rest of the angels from the 45, which will be seven, to the 125 to grow out. Incidentally, when I used an aquarium volume calculator I determined that the 120 is in fact a 125 gallon, so I'll go back and edit my previous posts for continuity. I've got a SCHWEET piece of driftwood, a stumpy, branchy thing, soaking in my pool and I'm eager to get it waterlogged and in place in the 125 as a central feature. I really like how it looks now:

However, I simply must have this stump in the tank so this temporary scape will have to go. I never planned on keeping this arrangement, but was using the rocks from another tank as seed material, and the driftwood along the back is very nice that I collected from the James River, so I'll keep that, and some of the plants. I'll post pics once I get this stump in place.

I'll be adding Acarichthys heckelii (threadfin acara) to the 125 for the bottom. I was going to have them, then I wasn't, and now I think they'll be a good choice for this setup. I'll give up on the rooted plants, I think.

Then I'll have the 45 to empty out and redo. Am thinking about loaches and/or gouramis for that tank, since I have not had an Asian setup since my dwarf puffer tank. I know there are Denison barbs in the 125 (for anyone who is even remotely paying attention to this....) but I still consider the 125 to be essentially a SA tank.

More to come..

Flirting with Ferts

I've decided to start dosing my low-tech tanks with some simple ferts. I have no plan and am only using what I have on hand, which includes:

Seachem Root Tabs
Seachem Flourish Excel
Seachem Flourish Iron

I'm using the package directions and we'll see if I can detect an improvement in plant growth. My tanks have good lighting and no algae problems, so we'll definitely be able to determine if the ferts cause an algae outbreak or if the plants suddenly respond with new growth. I'm too lazy to calculate exact ratios of each specific nutrient and mix up a batch custom for each tank, so we'll see what happens.

If it seems to be helping then to save $$ I will likely need to go back to bulk ferts that I mix up myself in specific ratios, like I used to do when I had high light CO2 injected setups. That was a bit of a pain and, obviously, I gave it up for the time being, but we'll see. I'd like to see my plants look just a bit healthier.

The Trouble With pH

There's no trouble with pH, just kidding!!!

Well, sometimes there is. When you're importing your wild caught Altum angels you're probably going to be using R/O water and keeping your pH at 4-5 because these fish will keel over at the mere mention of neutral pH.

All kidding aside, some species, especially those collected straight from the wild, need to have the pH matched to their habitat to maintain them comfortably or to have them spawn for you, but oftentimes they can adapt slowly to the pH of your tap or well water.

However, for all the rest of us folks who mosey down to the LFS and admire the offerings, with plans to add them to our tank, or to set up a new tank with them, we don't have to worry about pH. I very, very rarely even test for it. When I was dosing CO2 into a high light, heavily planted tank I did measure pH as a way to monitor my CO2, but otherwise I don't test. I don't need to. I do plenty of weekly water changes (see the end of my last post for details about water changes) and this helps avoid Old Tank Syndrome, so I'm not worried about my pH dropping over time. It WILL drop over time in the presence of nitrogenous waste, and our tanks are a nitrogenous waste factory. Keeping up with the debris and excess nitrate will prevent a buildup of decaying material that acidifies the water, dropping the pH, and rendering the tank unstable. We do NOT want this!

So often I hear at pet stores or read it online that people need to adjust their pH. A customer will bring in a water sample to determine why the fish aren't doing well, and they always test the pH. The conversation goes like this: "Oh, I see your pH is at 7.4. We need to get that down to 7. Here's a product you can add to your water and it will take care of that for you. This is your problem." I have to speed walk out of there when I hear that, because I just might blurt something out involuntarily.

On the web I have read this type of thing as basic instructions for setting up a tank, or doing water changes. "Prepare your new water going into the tank with water conditioner for chlorine and chloramines, and then use your pH adjuster to get the pH to 7."  Click. I'm out.

Most currently available species of fish you'll find at the pet store or from your local hobbyist can do just fine in whatever pH your tap water might be. Honestly.

Years ago, in the early 80's when I was new to the hobby, I was told upon arriving at my new home in South Florida, with my fancy goldfish in the Coleman cooler after a 14-hour journey, that the tap water there was moderately hard and had a pH over 7, so it was not good for aquarium fish and would kill them. Wow! I had no idea! I collected 3-4 plastic 5-gallon water cooler jugs (the water was not safe for people, either! Wow!) and even used one glass 6-gallon carboy to tote water home from the grocery store water dispensing machine ($$). I am strong like bull and I did that for 9 years. I actually sold those goldfish when I moved back to Virginia, them having come from Virginia with me originally. Great fish. What I didn't know was that most aquarium fish are bred and raised in Florida, and, in fact, the water in Richmond, where I came from, is moderately hard and has a pH of ~7.4. Boy. I feel like a real dummy now, but, as mentioned in a previous post (kids, brace yourselves) there was no internet in 1984 and I relied upon the information provided in books and from the LFS. (People also did not carry cell phones back then, but I don't like to overwhelm anyone with prehistoric facts so we'll move on)

So, the upshot is, use your tap/well water and see how it goes. You'll need to test it for things like Nitrate (NO3), since excess nitrate is not uncommon in many water systems and even in wells that are close to farms, and that can cause algae problems and even health problems in the fish if it is at high enough levels. The pH is probably fine, and if it is on the alkaline side more's the better, since it will be easier to keep it there. When you start adding pH reducers then you're what we like to call, "chasing the dragon" and that means fighting the natural tendency of the water to creep up to a more alkaline level. Unstable and variable pH is harmful to fish, much more so than a steady higher pH.

I have kept, and still keep to this day, wild caught Leopoldi angelfish from the Rio Negro in Brazil in pH of 7.4 to 7.6 without any problems. I know they won't breed for me at that pH, and that's fine, but it does not affect health or vigor. They were adapted over a period of months and it went just fine.

At this point in my life, with young children at home, it would be too much of a pain for me to try to maintain tanks with low pH, with R/O systems and mixing vats, etc. It is doable, and plenty of people do it with great success, but I don't have the time to fool with it. Right now I am able to maintain 6 large tanks at home and 3 at work with straight tap water PWCs (Partial Water Changes) and everyone's happy and healthy, with an easy regimen that does not take me very long at all.

That's why I'm so glad that I can keep most available species of fish in my tap water just like it is without worry. You probably can too. This is the KISS principle. Keep It Simple, Silly.

Feed Those Hungry Bacteria

I was doing a search on the web recently, trying to collect data about the exact process of seeding a new tank with bacterial colonies. I wasn't looking for information on HOW to do it (I've been doing this for many years) but specific measurements of when and if ammonia and nitrite are measurable, or do they never show up at all, and how many hours/days before nitrate shows up in a new tank that's been properly seeded. We all consider this to be "instantly" or "silently" cycling a tank, and I've never bothered to actually measure the process and see if I can measure anything happening, or if it is truly and indeed silent. My fish don't seem to be affected negatively and the tank seems to be cycled right away, and off I go.

I came up empty in my search, however. There was an abundance of information about seeding a tank, why it was a good idea, and how to do it, but no data collected in the process after it is done, and how long it can take.

What prompted this post was some disappointing advice I found being given over and over on general advice sites like Ask.com, and it is something I have run into frequently on the fish forums I frequent. People new to the hobby who are setting up a brand new tank have enough information to know that the tank has to be cycled, and they know the probably should not do it with fish, and it is at this point they are told to "seed" their new tank. Friends who have aquariums offer to help, and the new person will announce that their buddy is giving them a sack of gravel from their tank and they will pop that sack into their new tank, wait a couple of weeks for the bacterial colonies to grow, and then add their new fish. Another advice site had a person giving out lots of recommendations, since she said she had quite a few aquariums, and she said that you needed to set up your tank and let it run for a couple of weeks without fish to allow the "bacterial colonies" to establish before putting the fish in. She assured the reader that if they had any questions at all about their aquariums she'd be more than happy to help. Bless her heart.

I don't pretend to know everything about the freshwater aquarium hobby. Far from it. The more I learn the less I seem to know. I have killed a lot of fish from pure impatience or ignoring what I know to be true, thinking that maybe this time I can fudge the natural progression of a tank settling into stability. The good thing for me is that there was no internet when I was new to the hobby so I could not embarrass myself too badly on the worldwide web with my ignorance, because I'm arrogant enough to spout off at the mouth without really knowing what I'm talking about. Now I do it on my blog, where I'm allowed to spout whatever the heck I want! LOL!

However, I do know a few things, and one of the few simple truths about an aquarium is the nitrogen cycle. Ammonia produced by fish and inverts or decaying food will foster the colonization of bacteria that consumes this ammonia, which is extremely harmful to fish. The waste product of those bacteria is nitrite  (NO2), and another species of bacteria colonizes to consume that nitrite, which is also harmful to fish. The waste product of those bacteria is nitrate (NO3), which is harmful to fish but less so at low levels, and it is the NO3 that we control with water changes.

So we've got two sets of bacterial colonies that we must wait on to get their act together and make the tank inhabitable for fish. Every established tank you see, with fish swimming happily about in good health and eating well is loaded up with bacteria that render the fishes' waste harmless to them. It can take quite a while for this process to finalize itself - in experiments I've done it has taken as long as six weeks for a fishless cycle to complete. There are other factors, such as temperature and pH that affect the cycle, and different bacteria colonize in brackish and saline environments. It can be frustrating to wait, looking at this glass box of water that has no fish and no apparent purpose. If you don't have a source of seed material then a fishless cycle is the way to go, and that's what I'd do if I found myself with no other tanks and no friends with tanks. Just settle in and wait, and it will eventually happen, dosing the tank daily with pure ammonia. Ammonia is food for the bacteria and is mandatory for the cycle to happen.

What people with more than one tank have done for years is to "seed" the new tank with bacteria from the old tank. The bacteria in the filter of an established tank is a precious commodity, and we take care to protect it. We clean out our filters carefully, avoiding sterilizing techniques and being sure not to use chlorine-laden tap water to rinse out our sponges and pads.

I'm very glad to see lots of advice being given on the web about seeding a new aquarium to avoid New Tank Syndrome. This is great, and I'm glad this bit of news is getting out to newbies right off the bat, since it used to be you had to learn the hard way.

When I started keeping fish in the very early 80's as far as I knew there was no such thing as a "cycle," and ammonia removing chips were my friend. I was constantly battling ammonia spikes, cloudy water, and fish gasping at the surface. The advice I was given at the pet store was the following:

• You have to remove the ammonia with Ammo Chips in your filter. There's no other way to remove it, and if you don't your fish will die (this part, at least, was true).
• Don't do too many water changes - just top off the water when it evaporates for best results. Changing water screws up the natural balance the tank has achieved.
• If your water is even slightly hard out of the tap you can't use it for your aquarium - it will kill your fish. 

So, times have changed and the information has slowly tricked out there, so even though I'm still hearing pet store employees advising people to use pH adjuster to get their tap water to 7 (that is for another post, please don't get me started on that now....), for the most part new people to the hobby are starting out with more knowledge than I did.

What's wrong with the information provided about seeding a new tank? Well, the very important fact that the bacteria needs to be fed to stay alive. It will die (I wish I had a reference for you) within hours without a source of ammonia. When you get that sack of gravel from your buddy be sure the gravel was collected from only the surface, because lower than a few centimeters you've got anaerobic bacteria (reference goes here) and the bacteria we need for cycling a tank is aerobic bacteria (reference goes here). Once you get that gravel it will be better utilized, since the bacteria is aerobic, to place it in a filter, or at least hang the bag in front of the aquarium outflow, so water flows over it. Lying in a lump at the bottom of the aquarium, in a corner where there may be very little water flow depending on the filtration and flow you have in your tank. it will likely do you no good, the bacteria dying without access to the ammonia in the water column.

This is why the advice to set up your tank and run it for a couple of weeks to let the biological bacteria accumulate is nonsense, because in the absence of ammonia, which I presume is the case in a newly set up aquarium, no bacteria will grow. Bacteria needs to be fed, and if you don't have your fish at the ready that seed material is going to go to waste. High or low temps will kill it as well, so be careful when you transport it from one tank to the other.

Think of it like a heart transplant - have the needy patient (your new tank of fish) ready and willing to accept the gift of the new heart (bacteria) and while no ambulance or police escort is required, put the dirty filter material or gravel seed material in a cooler or other container that will maintain the tank temperature and conditions until you can get it into the new tank, where it can go right to work oxidizing ammonia. If you've got your own established tank then you can just walk it over to the new tank and get it in place quickly for the best results. You can start your new tank filter on an established tank for at least two to four weeks to get it seeded, and be sure the filter material has brown goop on it - that's the good stuff! I tend to run at least two filters on most of my tanks so I can mix and match, swap and reap the benefits of bacterial colonies at the ready.

I know that as long as there is the World Wide Web there will be all kinds of information supplied, and it is up to us to do our own research and determine whether the source can be trusted. I'm sitting here polluting the Web with my own opinions and experiences and some may disagree with me (please comment if you do - I'm a big girl and can handle it, and it would let me know that someone out there is reading all this crap I write), but I have achieved some degree of success by doing a few things:

• Protect your bacteria - it can be delicate. Feed it and provide the proper environment for it to thrive and don't disturb the tank much at all for a few months after the cycle is complete. A well intentioned gravel vac on a brand new setup can cause a mini-cycle. Even your betta bowl is cycled, so when you dump it out every week (yes, every week, the betta will thank you for it) don't scrub the sides or the substrate too much. Your bacteria is there doing God's work for you. 
• Change your water. Every week. Even if it is only 10% do it regularly. Once I began doing water changes like clockwork my tanks became very stable, without illness or water quality problems of any kind. This might be the best thing anyone can do to maintain a healthy tank. 
• Overfilter
• Change your water.
• Be patient in all things Aquarium. 
• Stock carefully and pay attention to your fish and their behavior with each other. Remove anybody causing problems. When you remove this troublemaker now you can set up another tank! Yay! 
• Change your water. Every week.
• Plants almost always help keep a tank stable, if you have fish that won't eat them. There are several species of plant that don't require substrate and are hard to kill for all you people out there who think they have Black Thumbs. I'll bet you can do it. Try, anyway. A little bit of fluorescent or natural light and some fish to provide nutrients and you're probably going to have success with plants like Java fern, Java moss, Anubias sp., water sprite and even duckweed. Crypts are pretty easy too, with low lighting requirements for the most part, though they are heavy root feeders and need a good layer of gravel or sand. 
• The final recommendation, if you do NOTHING else, change your water. 

The Silent Cycle. Sort of.

My plans are coming together and it is time to put some fish in the 120. I will start with some Gambusia, or mosquito fish, which were collected locally and live in a large tub on my deck, eating mosquito larvae. This has definitely made a dent in the mosquitoes we encounter outside.

I put 7 full-bodied females in the tank, and the next day I took the gunky Filstar XP3 off the goldfish tank at work, which is a 45 gallon and houses 5 fan-tailed goldfish about the size of walnuts or ping-pong balls. I figured the filter, which has not been cleaned in a while, would have more than adequate biobugs for the Gambusia. I brought it home and removed one of the clean XP3's off the 120, swapping it out for the dirty one from work. I then put the clean one on the 45 at work for the goldfish.

Typically in a well established tank you can literally replace the filter completely with a brand new one without showing signs of a cycle. I would not do this on a tank that was set up less than 6 months ago, though, because it is easy to cause a mini cycle by this type of disruption. I have even created a mini-cycle by being too aggressive cleaning substrate in a tank that was younger than 6 months. The 45-gal at work has been set up and stable for a year.

Cut to 12 hours later and I tested the water. I typically don't do this when I seed on a massive scale like this (using the whole filter off of an established tank with a heavier bioload than the new tank), but I was having a discussion about silent cycles and seeding new tanks on the CVAS forum, so I wanted to document how a silent cycle might progress. To my surprise, I found 0.25 ppm NH3, or ammonia. There was zero NO2, or nitrite, and 5 ppm NO3. The fish appeared perfectly normal and happy, and the water was crystal clear.

12 more hours pass and I'm getting the same readings. I started to wonder about my so-called "silent" cycle, and was surprised that I was seeing the ammonia, though a low reading. I don't like seeing ammonia at all, since any exposure at all can be permanently damaging to the gills of a fish (Reference Here). I decided to take action, though I could have waited another day, perhaps. I think this kind of thing is typical, but since when I do my usual seeding procedure I never test the water and everything works out peachy. I go by the appearance and behavior of the fish, and have never had a problem to date, so it never occurred to me to test the water right after the new tank is seeded.

Anyway, I took some gunky filter sponges off my snail tank filter (AC30) and squeezed that goop into the 120, which clouded everything up, of course, but, lo and behold, 12 hours later I was showing zero ammonia, zero nitrite and 5 ppm nitrate. The cycle is done!

However, this is not the time to stock willy nilly. Patience is required, especially at this delicate point. The tank is very vulnerable to a mini cycle now and I must be careful not to disturb the decor, substrate or filters for several weeks, at least - the longer you wait the better. I will add stock, though, since I'm not going to keep the Gambusia in this tank - they're needed back outside. Our warm weather can linger well into October so mosquitoes will be with us for a while to come. I'll be replacing the Gambusia with the Denison's Barbs soon, since the ones I'm looking at are about the same size as the Gambusia, and will have almost identical bioload.

After they're settled in for a couple of weeks I'll add a few angels, but I might add about 6 angels at once and add more seed material at that time for insurance. These angels are still small, about quarter to half-dollar size in the body, but when it comes to cichlids they can be territorial, so adding one, then another, then another later on might be a bad idea - the newcomers will almost certainly be bullied by the ones already there that have set up a territory.

Since I have so many established tanks up and running right now it won't be hard to get more seed material when I add the angels. MTS is paying off!

Stocking the 120

One of the most enjoyable parts of a home display aquarium is planning. What to use for substrate, what to use for hardscape and decor, planted or not planted, biotope or not, lighting, filtration, etc. I love every aspect.

For this 120-gallon I did not have to decide much about the equipment, substrate and decor, because I'm determined to use what I already have to keep my costs down. Having so many different setups over so many years I have quite a collection of equipment and supplies.

A word on filtration:  This tank came with two Rena Filstar XP3 filters, and this is one aspect that made me choose to answer this particular ad on Craig's List. I have several other Filstar filters, including an XP4 on the 150, an XP1 on the 45, and an XP3 on the 45-gallon goldfish tank at work. One great thing about these filters is that the hose connection is identical on all different sizes, so I can take the body of the filter away and put another size on the tank and the connector will fit - plug and play, so to speak. I had been using the XP1 on the goldfish tank at work (it came with the tank) but that is inadequate for a filthy goldfish tank of that size, so I simply left the hose connector assembly on the tank when I removed the body of the XP1, since when you lift the handle to remove the hoses from the body of the filter it closes a valve, so you don't lose your siphon in the hoses. I brought an XP3 in and connected it under the tank, and away we went. I put the XP1 as extra filtration on the 45 at home, and it snapped right on. This is a very handy feature of these filters.

Also, since the two XP3 filters on the 120 are both brand new with all clean media, I can take the well cycled, gunky XP3 filter off the 45 at work and bring it home and it will fit right onto the hose assembly of one of the filters on the 120, and take the clean filter body to work and snap it into place like it was there all along, thus seeding my 120 (when fish are added). Another great benefit of having multiple tanks with similar equipment!

Back to planning:  The main thing I need to decide is what to stock in this tank. As previously mentioned, I had plans for a native tank, which I have always wanted to do, and I feel that a large tank is required for most native species. However, after researching the natives I decided they were not really what I want right now.

In keeping with my desire to set up this tank with things I already have, I'll plan on putting in some of the angels growing out in my 45. They're getting some size on them now and since there are 11 of them in this tank I'll need to remove some pretty soon. Some are destined for the 150, but I can't keep all of them in that tank, either. I'd like to retain a pair for the 45, but no more than that. These are great-looking wild-type angels with impressive finnage already.

Next, I'll put some of the Geophagus "Tapajos" in the 120 as well, maybe just 3 or 4. When you look at the bottom of this tank it is not really all that much room, not like a 5 or 6' tank would have (which is really more appropriate - most species want lateral space rather than height), so I don't want to load up the bottom. However, I DO admire the Geophagus altifrons, which is a larger species but very impressive, and I could have a pair in this tank. I'll start out with some red-head Tapajos since I have them on hand but I will plan on the G. altifrons at some point in the future.

Now, we need some sort of dither fish, don't we? I was inclined to stick with what I have and put black neons and rosy tetras (H. bentosi, H. rosacea) but I wanted something different, and I found it. I'm going to add some Puntius denisonii. These are NOT true to the biotope by any means, coming from India, and are expensive and large schooling fish, but this is a species that I have wanted to keep for a very long time. I just love their markings and they truly do school very well. They get about 6" long, so you need some space for them, and I think they will round out the stocking of the 120 very nicely.

The angels are the only wild cards here, since it is impossible to determine in advance whether a group will get along, since pairing is inevitable and a pair of angels can be a problem, even in a large tank. We'll have to wait and see. Fortunately, I have the two other tanks where I can shuffle the angels around, or sell some off if  I have issues.

Denison's barbs, aka torpedo barb, redline shark, roseline shark, etc. are peaceful for barbs, and are apparently endangered in the wild. They are not cheap, either! I saw some on Drs. Foster and Smith for $38 per fish. My local PetSmart has them for $9.99 and I think that is a bargain. I've seen some that did not look so hot there, but they were very small and may still have retained some juvenile markings that I did not recognize, but they could have been hybrids. I'll save my money and bide my time.

Once I decide to stock the tank I'll be able to move the filter over from the 45 at work and hook it to the hose assembly for one of the XP3's on the 120, and take the uncycled filter off the 120 and put it on the tank at work. That tank is mature enough to handle having a new filter, and the seeded filter will jump-start the cycle on the 120. I'll probably start with some of the Denison barbs to get thing started with the seeded filter and once I'm confident we've got a cycle completed (a silent one, I hope) then I'll add some of the angels.

This is fun!

Enter the 120

It's here, it's here, it's here! A few days ago I picked up a pristine 120-gal aquarium with stand and canopy, and got a very, very good deal through Craig's List. It came with TWO Rena Filstar XP3 filters, along with an Emperor 400 HOB, plus media, fitted hinged glass tops, and a 4x36w (?) T5HO fixture made by Solar Systems Lighting, a company with which I am not familiar and I can't locate any information on them online. There was also quite a few other items that were sent along with the tank, including a large pirate ship wreck bubbler decoration, a skull decoration, a large cave decoration, air pumps, powerheads, plastic plants, a 5-gal bucket of gravel, etc., etc.

This is a 4' tank so it fit quite easily into the intended location, and the space looks meant for it. The tank is completely unscratched (erm, at least it was before I took ownership.....) and is a great dimension, being 25" front to back and 24" high.

The cabinet was brought in, and then Rick and my next door neighbor, Paul, who was kind enough to help, brought the tank in. Interestingly, as indicated in my post below, 30 Gallons, Shmerty Gallons, the tank holds 30 gallons less volume than my 150 (amazing feats of mathematical wizardry, I know!) but the glass is thinner than the 1/2" glass of the 150, and it weighs half as much empty, at about 200 pounds. This is a huge issue in terms of moving a tank this size. I guess going up that 30 gallons plus being longer, at 5', means it required thicker glass and a glass brace. I don't know, but am glad this tank is almost as big and nowhere near as heavy. Rick is happy as well.

Rick then began working on leveling the tank and being sure it was sound, and there were no issues - I think we found the one single piece of floor in our house that is actually level.

Meanwhile, I began scrubbing out the XP3's that I would use on the tank. I'll save the Emperor 400 for another setup or sell it at our club auction. The filters had been drained out but they were still wet, stinky and gunky with mulm, so the pads and ceramic rings needed a lot of rinsing with the hose set to "power wash." I noted that the previous owner did not utilize much in the way of mechanical filtration, but both filters were loaded up with very coarse gravel and ceramic rings. The tank used to house oscars so I know they were right on target to have so much filtration, of whatever type. I will use a bit more in the way of mechanical filtration to polish the water, with regular poly floss. It requires a bit more attention but is worth it.

I then decided to take the second black acrylic overflow box out of storage, which used to be siliconed to the inside of the 150 (a drilled tank when I got it) and park it in the back left corner of the 120 to hide my filter intake and outflow, similar to what I did with the first box in the 150. For that tank, I cut slots into the acrylic corner box to permit flow of water to the intake, but that tends to clog with bits of debris and the subwassertang and java moss plants that sometimes go rogue on me. I decided to drill holes into this box, and that's what I did. The box is just two sides, meant to be siliconed to the side of the aquarium to create the box, but I just prop it against the side of the tank so I don't have to commit to the location.

I spaced the holes and put what I consider to be enough of them to permit flow of water, eyeballing their placement more or less evenly, and placed it in the tank, hiding the equipment, which is my goal in life when setting up an aquarium. It truly is the foundation of my aquascape and that's where I always begin. The design of the setup always kind of declares itself, in a form follows function sort of way, once I determine what I will use to hide the hardware.

It is important to hide the hardware, but at the same time care must be taken not sacrifice proper flow of water to the intakes and not block the outflows, though the intake is much more important. The outflows will blast the water no matter what you've got jammed up against them.



In this pic you see the holes drilled into the short side, but there are also holes drilled in the long side as well. I did pretty well eyeballing the grid pattern! I am SO impatient and could not be bothered to lay out a grid before drilling away. I got lucky this time, but recommend careful planning to anyone - this is something you'll be stuck with for a long time so it pays to do things right.


Next I gathered up the substrate, which in this case, as in most all of my tanks, sand. I just love the way it looks, and since this tank will most likely house eartheaters of some species or another, I'll stick with sand to be safe. If I keep natives they encounter sandy bottoms in their natural habitats so it won't hurt there, either.

Aside:  I am almost against the idea of natives for this tank now. I know I had plans to turn a large tank into a native setup, with sunfish, darters and whatever else I might find, but mainly sturdy sunfish of some description. In my research I'm just not feeling excited about them, though the pumpkinseed and blue spot sunfish are very appealing. I just don't know how to discern where to collect them locally - all we seem to have are bluegill, and I'm definitely not a fan - something about their faces! I think I'll start out with a few of the G. red-head Tapajos I already have, some of the angels I'm growing out, and, for a schooling species...... I'll get into THAT later.

I dug around in my eaves where I store all my aquarium equipment, past and present, and found a sack of clean, dry cichlid sand, which is black and white, like salt and pepper. I also had a sack of clean, dry Aragamax sand from my friend, Deborah, who had some extra and gave it to me for this tank. The two collections of sand, blended together, make a nice mix, so I added that, and it is just about enough. It took remarkably little sand to cover the bottom. I think for eartheaters I'll need a bit more for them to play with, but I can rob more out of the 150, which has too much sand. I also have more Aragamax sand up in the eaves that used to be in the 37-gal stored up there.

The tank came with some Mopani driftwood, which is always nice, and I took some leftovers of my own and propped them with some rocks against the overflow box. I have A LOT of rocks in my possession, after a few very fruitful collection trips to the mountain streams in Bath County and nearby.

I think I will go on a hunt for more driftwood, or, more specifically, a small stump that will still have branchy roots. Or, at least something pretty branchy and not slab-like, which is what you typically find commercially available for the aquarium trade. After that I will plant some valisneria and maybe cabomba, with rocks protecting the rooted bases from the geos, and call it a day. I like the simple and clean look this tank has, and I'm not going to jam it up with cairns or rockwork and plants stuffed everywhere, like in the 150 and the 45, which is so cluttered up I honestly don't know if I'll keep it like that. I'm picturing some moody dim lighting, sand, and round, smooth river rocks, plus driftwood. If I can have some branchy pieces of wood that go from the surface down to the substrate, it will mimic a SA river, like Rio Orinoco, for instance, which doesn't have much in the way of plants but has reeds and branches submerged. Rick commented that the tank looked "Zen-like" after I placed a few round rocks and a single valisneria plant, and I'm going to try to keep it this way. Try. It might be hard, as my tendencies are to move the aquascape up and down and all around the tank, but I'll really make an effort!

I forgot to mention that this tank came with a canopy that matches the stand. The canopy is simply a frame that rests on the top rim of the tank, and is open on the top in front, closed in the back, so apparently you would reach into the opening at the top to lift the glass top to feed, etc. Well, for someone who is 5'0" tall this is not very practical. The stand is not terribly tall, not nearly as tall as the stand for the 150 (this is why that tank looks so much more imposing than the 120) but adding this canopy, which is not hinged and does not lift away from the tank easily, makes it more of a challenge for me, and I'd have to get on a stool every time I wanted to feed the fish. I won't use it now, though maybe someday in a different location I will. I'm keeping it in storage, like everything else! It is in perfect condition so it will prove useful someday.

As for lighting, the fixture that came with it is a 36" fixture, which is short for the tank from a visual standpoint, and it has a silver polished aluminum surface like a Coralife fixture. It has 4 CF straight-pin bulbs, 2 actinic and 2 6500K. I am not using the actinic and will have to replace those for FW use.

 I have a Current Nova Extreme fixture that is 48" long, 2x54w T5HO and is slim and black, with legs, which would look nicer on this tank. This fixture is essentially new, sitting in storage for years, but the bulbs were burnt out so I've ordered new bulbs and when they come in I'll try that on this tank. The tank is viewed from a distance in the kitchen so you really notice things like the light fixture propped on the top, so I'd like it to look neat and tidy. The 150 has a hinged hood that hides all sorts of things, so it doesn't matter much what I put up there for lights, or how I attach them.

Here's a pic right after setup and filling, and you can see the shims on the floor, which have since been chiseled off flush and the ends of the shims colored in with brown magic marker to make them less conspicuous against the floor. The tank is a bit cloudy right now with some sand dust, but that since cleared.

The rocks and wood are not in their final position. More to come....