Tank before/After + Filtration question

[Ramius]

Ok, this is the before, playground sand substrate with a little tiny bit of small gravel on the right hand side..

Problem is, the two draogn goby's would muck the water up by throwing so much sand around.. it looked bad and I was afraid for damage to my filters.

SOOOOO, heres the after pic



I bought a 20 gallon Tall tank and scooped out the fish for temporary placement, drained the water, carried the fishtank outside (if your wondering how... I called my neighbor up, told him I had a six pack of beer left over from the weekend and wasn't going to drink it.. asked him if he wanted it, he was on my porch before I could hang up.. so I slipped in the "Hey man, since your here....." routine. Worked like a charm.

Anyways, pulled the tank outside, hosed it out really good, scrubbed it down and whatnot, then drug it back inside. I bought 2 bags of flourite, 50 pounds of black gravel and 25 pounds of white gravel, after a thourogh rinsing I layed the flourite down first, then mixed the black/white together and layed them down on top.

I filled the water back up, inserted my plants and a few decorations and added some of the fish back in.

After I got the tank back up and running though I had a couple of delimas.

1, I developed a case of mts I swore i would never get... the 20 gallon "temporary" tank is now a permanent fixture in my bedroom and

2, I decided to take this opportunity to clarify the direction of my tank.

More to come in next post.

[Ramius]

Re: Tank before/After + Filtration question

Ok..

First off, the 20 gallon tank, I do not have pictures yet (was busy) but heres the breakdown on it.

I have my whisper 40 filter in there for now, I also put in one of those triangle sponge filters that you ram an air tube into.. but I'm waiting for it to load up before I pull the whisper back to the big tank.

There are two plugs of mondo grass but this will not be a planted tank. I actually let my wife have full reign over it (except for the technical stuff and dirty work, bleh!)

So she chose green rocks, two frogs on a mushroom for one decoration and an octopus on a rock for the other. The tank is stocked with 2 blue gouramis, 2 red platys, 2 white mollies 2 black mollies and "mr snaily" the oversized snail. The PH on this tank runs between 8.0 and 8.2, thats what comes out of my well. I really don't have any plans for this tank except for adding on some sort of lighting in the near future.

[Ramius]

Re: Tank before/After + Filtration question

Ok, now back to the big tank, it's a 135 gallon oceanic.

I'm in the process of restocking the tank but I'm going slow until everything can 'settle back in' and I can get my whisper 40 back in there.

Some things you can note from the picture, even though the rocks aren't as soft as the sand, the gobys are still digging around in them, although instead of clouding out the tank, they just move the rocks around instead. The dip at the front of the tank on the left hand side is where the small goby likes to 'sunbath' he lays in that dip like an ol' lizard lays on a rock and he hangs out there quite often. The older dragon goby hangs underneat that rock on the right hand size and the pleco hides inside the mossy stump.

The plants are looking 100% better since the addition of the C02 system, you can see some of the pipework for that system on the right hand side of the tank, the bottle is beside the tank and the reactor is that box on the inside of the tank.

On the filter, I was going to wrap that hornswort plant around the stem that goes into the water, it hides it really well and the plant is longer than what the picture gives it credit for, I just didn't have enough time.

The lighting is two of the $7 wal mart specials with 6700k bulbs on the very front/very back strip and two 18,000k bulbs in the center strips. I had four 6,700k bulbs for the benifit of the plants but switched them out with the other after I noticed how much of a difference they made on the colors of the fish.

[Ramius]

Re: Tank before/After + Filtration question

As for the fish..

My ph is around the 6.8-7.0 range due to c02 injection, so I have to be somewhat finiky in finding fish that like this type of environment, which immediatly ruled out most of the brightly colored fish (cichlids) that I would have normally picked.

I was looking for advice on fish that would thrive in an acidic climate and not wreak too much havoc with my plants. There were some great suggestions and I'm in the process of following through with some of them (some will take time to get in)

However, heres what I've got

3 bala sharks (they have become extremely shimmery and shiny lately.. they look very very slick and glossy.. is it the food?)

1 chinese algae eater (this guy is really somethin... always wired up like he's on redbull)

2 dragon gobys

2 angel fish

5 green tiger barbs

5 long fin rosy barbs

2 Bolivian rams (thinking about adding one more)

2 Clown loaches (one was born with only one eye, there isn't even an eye hole on the other side)

1 ugly plecostimus

1 Serpae tetra (This was my original first ever fish, he was bought to cycle the tank but I have grown very fond of this little guy, he gets along with everyone and tends to show the new fish around the place)

1 head/tail light tetra (he's only here until I can catch him)

My plans for the future are to aquire 3 each of those fish from A&M that come in either pink yellow or orange. (if they like my ph, haven't checked yet)

A couple Blue Rams

A small school of giant neons

A couple more different color angelfish

Maybe a couple normal rosy barbs too.

I don't want the tank to get too crowded, so I'm going to be slowly metering these in to see how many I can fit, but thats the game plan I'm running with so far.. There are some others I'm considering but have to read up more on them before I make a decision one way or another.

[Ramius]

Re: Tank before/After + Filtration question

Now.. I'm also in the process of upgrading my filtration on a wet/dry system.

I'm going to get either the AGA or Oceanic

The Oceanic comes as either an oceanic 1 2 or 3

The AGA comes in either a 1 2 3 or 4

only problem is, I have no information on the capacity of these different systems. Only information I have is the cost.

Does anyone know where I can find information about the capacity of these two systems?

[Ramius]

Re: Tank before/After + Filtration question

Ohyeah, I'm going to be adding plants plants plants and mooooooooooore plants.

Dunno the names of all of them yet, but I know what they look like. Will be giving some updates on that, but truthfully, the aquiring of plants is a higher priority for me right now than the adding of fish.

[JLawson]

Re: Tank before/After + Filtration question

It looks like you've done a good job with the tank... here's a link for AGA's MegaFlow sump filters:

http://www.all-glass.com/products/featured/megaflowsump/

[Ellen]

Re: Tank before/After + Filtration question

Are you having problems with the tiger barbs and angelfish?

Ellen

[jbicb3]

Re: Tank before/After + Filtration question

Your tank is looking very nice already. I love the black/white gravel. Visually, it's a major inprovement over the sand. I also like the omission of the background picture. Those always seem too distracting to me.
Where are you going to be getting your plants? Village Tropical has a good assortment, but a little pricy. Fish-r-Us in Conroe has a good selection too. Someone on one of the posts on this board was talking about someone on AquaBid who lives in Houston, and has a great assortment of plants at good prices. I can't remember his name on there.
On the Tiger Barbs, every time I had any, they ended up being fin nippers. But I never had them in a tank that big either.

Jerry

[Ramius]

Re: Tank before/After + Filtration question

Thanks for all the comments,

As for the barbs.. All my fish are pretty small, but those are tiny, about one inch long. So far they've stayed to themselves and just kinda roam around the tank, however I am going to keep a very close eye on them, if they do start to cause problems with the angelfish, they have to go. I love their colors but my daughters fish gets priority =)

As far as where I get plants from.. well really for anything, I have been shopping pretty much exclusively at Just Fish, and I have 2 reasons for doing this, least importantly is it's close to my house, as in, a couple blocks away close. Most importantly is the store itself, first thing I noticed when I walked in was how clean the tanks were. Then when I talked with the owners I was really impressed, they have been involved in the trade for a long time and are very knowledgeable. They are also friendly and act like they really appreciate the business.

One other reason too, is it's a new business (I think they've been around 9 weeks now, give or take...) and I really want to see them take off well so I try to buy as much from them as I can. They might not have everything I need in the store at that day, but they can order anything and they are building up inventory as quick as they can to have stuff on hand.

I might go look at other stores to see what they have (because I really really do not know what all is even out there) But if I can possibly help it I'll spend my money with them, I know there are other great stores out there but I got attached to them =)

[Ramius]

Re: Tank before/After + Filtration question

Ohyeah, thank you for the link on the AGA filter..


Does anyone have any experience with either one of these brands? I'm not a brand-person, I just believe in buying what works, and if I can get the same quality from AGA as I could from Oceanic I don't mind buying from them instead.

Also.. One thing that I'm most .. well I dunno if the word would be paranoid or anal or whatever.. but to me filtration is my biggest concern, and when I buy this sytem I was going to buy one rated for 200-240 gallons capacity which is basically double what I actually have. Would I be wasting my money by overshooting this or would there be a benifit that would justify the extra $100?

[eklikewhoa]

Re: Tank before/After + Filtration question

i believe in overfiltering as well....

my plant tank has a turnover rate of 6x, pleco close to 8x the tank size and my frontosa tank is pushing around 19-20x

[Ramius]

Re: Tank before/After + Filtration question

At least I'm not alone in that thinking then =)

So far what I've been learning is the oceanic sump is all glass, and supposidly is a pain to mess with. This came from here

http://www.aquariumpros.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1315&highlight=oceanic+sump

So that got me to thinking... it's just a filter anyways, the casing isn't half as important as it's filtering ability... so I would probably be better off spending the same amount of money to buy a higher capacity filter from AGA as opposed to buying oceanics..

[Ramius]

Re: Tank before/After + Filtration question

Actually, the more I look at that allglass sump, the more I like it.. Yup, I think I'm gonna go that route.

[eklikewhoa]

Re: Tank before/After + Filtration question

the all glass ones look good to others i have seen, i think when i set up my next tank im gonna go with the all-glass as well.

i have an Amiracle wet/dry and its been problem free for over ten years now but i dont see the same or similar design anymore.