Your current Fish tank Setups!

UTmaniac said:
To me, the focal piece (bogwood) is too central, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder! They used to say place focal point around 2/3rds to one side.

I'd try the bogwood rear-right on the diagonal, tall single rock in middle on diagonal, flowing into the three smaller rock pieces front-left.
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Thanks for the input, I'll have a play around on the weekend.
 
DEL 707 said:
I know my water is very hard, when I had my shrimp tank, I bought RO water and used a shrimp product to remineralize it.
I'm not sure whether to use a similar product for the new tank, or cut it 50/50 with tap water.
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Going off my own experience i'd say dont fight your local water parameters to much, find fish that suit them otherwise your just fighting a loosing battle every water change and the stress it puts on the occupants.
 
LizardKing said:
Going off my own experience i'd say dont fight your local water parameters to much, find fish that suit them otherwise your just fighting a loosing battle every water change and the stress it puts on the occupants.
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We take the chlorine out, but other than that just put things in that can deal with our water, at least in the freshwater tank.
 
I use an HMA filter to remove chlorine etc and don't add anything except plant food. Don't try to change the water chemistry, it won't stick anyway and it will prevent it finding a natural balance.

Infact I don't even do water changes much now, maybe once a month. Not had any illnesses or deaths for a long time and plants grow like crazy.
 
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The water around my way is about as hard as it gets in the U.K., basically almost everything that is captive bread is fine.

It’s only wild caught or really finicky fish that are a problem and you can’t get anything like that at your typical fish store.
 
Nasher said:
I use an HMA filter to remove chlorine etc and don't add anything except plant food. Don't try to change the water chemistry, it won't stick anyway and it will prevent it finding a natural balance.

Infact I don't even do water changes much now, maybe once a month. Not had any illnesses or deaths for a long time and plants grow like crazy.
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Same here. The plants and biofilter sorts the water for the most part. I only add plant food. The plants are growing at a staggering rate, fish and shrimp all doing well.

Sadly losing the torch coral in my saltwater tank, I think the corals are attacking each other. First coral loss in a year though, but all the others are thriving :(
 
DEL 707 said:
Still slowly buying stuff for the tank and looking at plants, but I'm wondering how to tackle my water.

I know my water is very hard, when I had my shrimp tank, I bought RO water and used a shrimp product to remineralize it.
I'm not sure whether to use a similar product for the new tank, or cut it 50/50 with tap water.

I tested my water the other night an API kit and both the GH and KH were off the scale.
They only go up to 12 drops, which means 12ºdKH, or 214 ppm. Where as my water took 18 drops to change the GH test colour, I think the KH test, took 16/17.

I know that plants like hard water, but I'm concerned about my future betta.

By the way, how does this look? Does it look too busy?

f5MYlPU.jpg
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I was once told by a local fish store that people worry too much about their water hardness etc. Your rarely buying a fish that doesnt come from a seller local to you so therefore it makes sense that they are breeding their fish using similar water parameters to yours. I tend to ask the seller what type of water they have been kept in, one thing is your harder water would be great if you ever decide to go down the African Cichlid route. I have to buffer my water loads to get to the right parameters, yours is coming from the tap :D
 
DEL 707 said:
I would love an African Cichlid tank, but at the moment I don't have enough room for a decent size tank. Don't think i'm gonna fit many in a 10g. :p
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you could get some shell dwellers at some stage which stay small, really great behaviour in them as their tank is basically just sand and a load of snail shells they will totally scape the tank themselves and stay small. Neolamrplogus Multifasciatus or Multis. If i ever replace one of my 20g tanks thats what ill go for some shellies or Tanganyikan cichlids

www.aquariumcoop.com

Care Guide for Shell Dwellers – Smallest African Cichlids

If you’ve always wanted to keep African cichlids but don’t have the space, try shell dwellers. They’ve got the same fiery personality in a 2-inch package.
www.aquariumcoop.com www.aquariumcoop.com
 
CaptainRAVE said:
Same here. The plants and biofilter sorts the water for the most part. I only add plant food. The plants are growing at a staggering rate, fish and shrimp all doing well.

Sadly losing the torch coral in my saltwater tank, I think the corals are attacking each other. First coral loss in a year though, but all the others are thriving :(
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For filter in my tropical tank I just DIYed big hollow block of sponge with a pump at the top . Seems to work just as well as anything else I've tried. Filter media is massively oversold :)
 
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It entirely depends on what you are using and what you are trying to achieve.

Doing something like 10cm of sand is a recipe for disaster, it compacts down and creates anaerobic pockets where toxic gas builds up which can nuke your tank if released.

Using something like Tropica Soil in a placed tank which is 3cm at the front and slopes back to 10cm at the back is fine, its nice and loose and water slowly circulates through it. You'd need a pretty deep tank to achieve that sort of slope though but the bigger the slope, the bigger the perception of depth.

In a small tank you probably want as little as you can get away with, 1-2" is plenty.

I've got this tank below and one 12L bag of Tropica soil is just about enough, I didn't bother opening the second bag I bought.
www.fishkeeper.co.uk

Aqua Oak Slim 100cm Aquarium & Cabinet

Delivery of this aquarium to your chosen UK mainland address can take up to 2 weeks, during this time you will receive a phone call to arrange a suitable delivery window. Weekend delivery is not available. The courier will drop the pallet on the curb closest to your home, it is advised to have...
www.fishkeeper.co.uk www.fishkeeper.co.uk
 
A good setup is 1 inch of soil and 2 inches of sand apparently. People run planted tanks like that with no filter.

You can use just sand, but only stem plants will grow well in it.
 
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I did soil once, never again. It’s also risky as you don’t know what’s in the soil and it can leach huge amounts of ammonia into the tank from decomposing material.

The whole filter thing isn’t anything to do with the soil, the substrate is irrelevant. All a biological filter does is add surface area for bacteria to grow. So as long as the tank has enough surface area in total or has enough plants to take up the ammonia, you don’t need a ‘filter’.

You absolutely do need some method of circulating water though be that a pump or air stones.

The size of the filter needed for a fish tank is usually grossly overstated on the internet.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
I did soil once, never again. It’s also risky as you don’t know what’s in the soil and it can leach huge amounts of ammonia into the tank from decomposing material.

The whole filter thing isn’t anything to do with the soil, the substrate is irrelevant. All a biological filter does is add surface area for bacteria to grow. So as long as the tank has enough surface area in total or has enough plants to take up the ammonia, you don’t need a ‘filter’.

You absolutely do need some method of circulating water though be that a pump or air stones.

The size of the filter needed for a fish tank is usually grossly overstated on the internet.
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We’re using some kind of special volcanic soil balls or some such. We did get an initial ammonia spike, but it’s since gone away after a big water change. Our new cleanup crew seem to be doing the rest.
 
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I use the Tropica version of that, it’s good stuff, no ammonia spike either unlike the ADA version. Both are excellent products, I just use the tropics stuff as it’s a lot cheaper.

What Nasher is referring to is using actual top soil or compost, like you’d use in the garden. I think it’s referred to as the Walstad method after Dianna Walstad who basically invented it. I’m pretty sure she wrote a book on it.
 
I could have cried when I came back from two weeks in America...

charged my father in law with feeding the fish as he has been working on a property just down the road from us for month so could pop by every other day and feed the fish / check the tank, he has had tropicals before so should know what to do but nope, seriously over fed the tanks and now everything is dead :( kids are in bits as they had named all the fish and shrimp, the only thing left was an Assassin snail and one Zebra snail. we had 10 cherry shrimp and 12 guppies when we left! :(

Time to start again i suppose, stripped the tank out and cleaned the thing with white vinegar to make sure nothing biological was left full set of new media and started the cycle on friday with nothing but the snails, hopefully this time we can keep them alive!
 
Sorry to hear that, I don’t let anyone look after my fish for this reason.

But I also like to go on holiday so I’m limited to stocking what can cope with being fed via and auto feeder (which is most tropicals in fairness), I’d definitely recommend one.

Sometimes if good to start over when this kind of thing happens, mix up the tank decor etc.

You can get away with doing a few big water changes over the course of a few days and restocking slowly but it depends on how bad the tank was when you got back to it.
 
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