Third Fish

Just got my third fish a lovely little Bristle Nose Catfish

Its still pretty small ~6cm, its not exactly a oddball but it is a little different and it does a great job of clearing up any algae or tit bits of food left by the other fish.

Next will be either some other rainbows or my Brown Ghost Knights!!!

-- Eddy

Second Fish

Saturday came and it was time to trundle down to Farnham Maidenhead Aquatics and look for some tank mates for my spotted perch and tire track eel.

After having (as i usually do) a chat with one of the assistents I was advised to look at Rainbow's to add a little bit of excitment to my midwater and draw out the other fish in my tank.

I decided that i would get 6 fish, as a personal rule this is the maximum i would introduce at once.

3x NAME TO BE ADDED SOON
3x NAME TO BE ADDED SOON

Alas within 23hrs one has gone (or is keeping very quite somewhere). I have some concerns that either the eel or perch have had it but there was one which isolated itself as soon as it entred the tank so i guess it must have been on its way out. I have checked my aquarium water chemistry since and will make daily checks for the next few days just to make sure i dont have an issues.

-- David

Water Chemisty

My water chemisty info is now being published thanks to google docs

Take a look here

Current Aquascape

Aquascape Evolution

So here is my (slightly modified) current view of my tank:

11/03/07

I spent a few hours rebuilding it this weekend and i think the new look is better. This did involve removing all my fish (to a bucket) which was a pain in the a$$ but i rewarded them with some live food and they forgave me :-)

Future changes will be to add some more bogwood, plants and obviously fish!!!

Plant wise there is currently only Java Fern because i wanted to get it established early on the bogwood i have (top left corner).

-- David

Stocking

Using the Practical Fish Keeper - Density Stocked i got this stock guide::


System type
Tropical freshwater aquarium
Dimensions
100 x 40 x 45cm/39" x 16" x 18
Surface area
0.4 sqm/4.31 sq ft/ inches sq in
Volume
180 l./40 gal. (47.55 US gal.)
Probable volume
162 l./36 gal. (43 US gal.)
Stocking density
36"/91cm (built up gradually)
Maximum density
72"/183cm (theoretical maximum)

My goal is to include these species::

2x Brown Ghost Knife Fish - 20cm - (not yet bought)
1x Tire Track Eel - 90cm
1x Spotted Climbing Perch (Leopard Ctenopoma) - 15cm
6x Rainbow fish?? (not yet bought)
1x Catfish?? (not yet bought)

This gives me a current total of:: 120cm of adult fish

Althought this already excees the suggested density the tire track eel is only 15cm at the moment. Lets hope it never gets to be 90cm :-)

-- David

First Fish

Where the hell
do you start...?

On of my earliest post I outline what my key species would be, the beautiful Black or Brown Ghost Knife Fish. So my question to my local aquarium was what can i put into my new aquarium as a start up species?

This aspect is at the moment the hardest part of setting up my tank. There is always the problem that something you put in as a starter species might inevitably become food for a species later down the line. In fact I believe it might actually have been easier for me to start up if i had just put some "bait" in my tank but i didn't.

Instead i decided to take some advice and got two different species both of which i was assured would be hearty enough to cope with the changing environment. I got:

• 1 x Tire Track Eel (£5)
  
• 2x Spotted Climbing Perch (Leopard Ctenopoma) (£9 each)
  

This wasn't a cheap start up group of fish so i did wait nearly 3 weeks to make sure the water chemistry was correct and have been checking every few days since i introduced the fish. So far so good.

Question now is.... whats my second fish?

-- David

The Build - part 2

And so it continues...

Two weeks after the initial start up i have been able to get my hands on some Lake District slate. This stone is going to be the building material for my tank.

As part of my aquarium design i have a vague idea of what i want to do. I'm going for a general triangle display, with the left side of the tank containing the high and the right being a bare ground/ grass planted area.

Rather then glue my slate together, even though some of it is heavy i have decided to build it up in stages using gravel between slate flakes.

Several holes and caves have been constructed for some of my nocturnal fish to hide in.

In addition i have added some bogwood which will be populated with plants such as Java fern.

The current (because it will change) layout looks like this::

Its not been a bad start but it feels unnatural so i feel a change will be afoot.

-- David

Disaster

So I did the stereotypical male thing and didn't read the instructions when setting up my tank.

There is a black plastic base the tank is supposed to sit on - after an email to Hagen i was told that having it setup without the plastic i would invalidate my warranty and could be compromising the structural integrity.

So.... it was time to empty everything!!!!! and start again.

This was a very messy and painful process as it took me all night and destroyed beautifully laid out substrate. All in all its not really caused massive problems but it was a 3hr pain in the a$$.

Note to anyone out their make sure you put the black base support on before you fill your tank!

-- David

The Build

The day came for the big build, 17/02/2007, I decided to ask a friend over to help me purely because of the size/ weight aspect of this tank 200l of fluid is a lot and filling this on your own will take a while. After building the stand we slid the tank into place using my hand drawn plan decided how best to start adding substrate. You can see my plan here I wanted to use a mixture of substrates:

• Red Sea Flora Base Plant Aquarium Substrate
• Pea Gravel
• Brown shale gravel
  

I started with a general layer to the planet area of flora base substrate and then covered it and the rest of the base with shale. The building area (to the right) was then covered with pea gravel. Even though i had to wait over a week for my slate to make the built section i still added the pea gravel so it would help the tank settle and the filter mature.

After the gravel we added the filter intake/output pipes and the thermometer.

Then it was the simple task of adding the 180 or so litres of water and then HUD. A tip i would like to offer is to use a pan sat on top of a large plate this will help when minimise displacement of your substrate when you add your water. Using the Hagen 205 external filter the water returned to its gin clear colour within 12hrs, it is a very good filter!!!

On day two i added 3 potted Java Ferns but this really was to add a bit of colour for my sake and build up the bacteria in the filter. In the future these will be added to wood or some of the stonework to add some much needed colour.

Once everything is settled in place then it was a simple task of sit and wait... 2 weeks for my slate.

Cencepts

I bought this book::

Aquarium Inspired by Nature - P.Hiscock (2003)

I wanted a book to give me some ideas about what i could do with a little planning, this book offered a lot of advice with some amazing examples and inevitably a aquascape i fell in love with.

I decided to attempt this::

Congo Whitewater River

I decided on this for the simplicity of the planting (as i already have a heavily planted tank) and the use of slate. I love slate and as my family have a place near a slate quary i would have an abundent supply of building materals.

Next... the build

-- David

Tank Chemistry

Organise Your Statistics Online

As part of a new setup i will be publishing my tank water chemistry - this is as much for me as it is for any reader.

Using a blog is a great way to recording your tank stats and keeping an eye over the historic data.

I'm using Google spreadsheet which is a free service and offers both word processing and spreadsheet functionality. You can publish your work to others or do a join project sharing with key users. This beats having a scrap of paper with the info on which i find i have often regrettably lost.

I have can publish my data here it contains NO2, NO3, NH3/4, pH and temperature.

I'm hoping to have a update linking to this thread when i do my test and fingers crossed some charts.

-- David

Aquascape

How it all started

Over the past six months or so I have been trying to decide how I could improve on an excising aquarium. After weeks of indecision I decided to stop messing with what i consider to be perfect and buy a new tank.

So I decided to buy a few more books and look at what type of aquascape i wanted.

This is the start of the chicken and the egg situation i got myself into...

Do I want a certain aquascape?
or
Do i want a show piece fish?

I decided that i would have a key species, a species which will be my show piece::

Apteronotus albifrons
Black Ghost Knife Fish

Above is a link to the profile for these wonderful oddball fish.

-- David

Aquarium Setup

Its pobably best to start things off with the equiptment I'm using, so here goes:

Fluval Duo Deep 1000 extra Aquarium Set
- 1 x Fluval Glass Aquarium
- 100cm (W) x 40cm (D) x 45cm (H)
- 180 litres / 39.5 UK Gallons
- Double Light Canopy - sorry unsure of the wattage...
- 1 x Fluval Tronic Heater
- 1 x Digital Thermometer

205 External Filter
- 680 LPH for aquariums up to 200 litres
- Instant Prime
- Aquastop feature (eliminates leaks & mess)
- Clog free intake strainer
- Ribbed hosing
- 2 x Foam, 1 x Carbon (70 g), 2 x Biomax (200 g)

Welcome

This is my second attempt to write a blog on my fish keeping hobby.

Hopefully I'll keep this one up a bit better then before :-)

You'll see a bunch of post off the bat basically due to the fact that this is a little bit of a retrospective blog at this point.

More to follow.

David