Fish Keeping/Aquariums etc

[Turvey]

Any fish keepers among us? I used to keep fish in a variety of tanks over the years but house moves and kids forced the sale of the last one a few years ago. Anyway we went away to Inverness last weekend and while killing time in Pets At Home I saw a Biorb 30 on special offer and decided to buy it. 

 

I've got a filter upgrade kit on order, hopefully going to order plants this week yet(poor local selection) and start to cycle the tank. In no big hurry to stock it, no heater means I'm limited a bit to a few White Cloud Mountain Minnows really and maybe a few shrimp later on. 

 

I would love to get a 'proper' tank set up again but cost and the fact that any room we could set it up in needs to be renovated over the next year or so means I'll have to put it on hold. So in the meantime I'll get this set up as a bit of a feature in the dining room. 

[iantt]

I used to keep tropical fish, used to have the 4 ft tank in the living room. Sat on a cabinet that came with it. Sold it when I lost interest ( in the throws of getting divorced ) and didn't know where I would be living next. 

Very recently I've been looking at having another one, not got room for another large one so got to be around 2ft this time. 

[zain611]

Nice. My tank the heater I have never worked since I bought it however the cold temperatures we have never drop the water temperature to low numbers. Generally in hot weather that's when you may have to keep an eye on the temperature. I used water bottles in the freezer to drop the temperature. Here's my 130 litre tank. 

@iantt about 2 feet wide mine is but about 72cm tall

[Turvey]

@zain611 nice tank 👍 real driftwood or resin? 

[zain611]

2 hours ago, Turvey said:

@zain611 nice tank 👍 real driftwood or resin? 

Real driftwood 👍. Soaked it in a bucket of water for about a week before I set my tank up to remove the tanins which would stain the water.

[Turvey]

Set the tank up a couple of days after the original post so hopefully starting to cycle now with the filter upgrade I put in. Ordered plants online as local selection is quite poor and they got delivered today so got them planted when I got home from work. 

Couple of lessons learned today.

1. The gravel/media isn't the best for a novice to plant stuff in but hopefully they'll take.

2. I could really do with proper aquarium tweezers to place plants.

3. I'm no aquatic gardener! 

Going to hold off getting any fish for a couple of weeks to allow the plants to, hopefully 🤞, establish. Might get a couple of snails and/or shrimp but again local selection is poor, and postage on shrimp etc is more than the actual goods can be 🙄

Actually found a 30 inch tank chucked out over the weekend and took it home. Would like to try my hand at building a terranium/paludarium. Started gathering stone and wood etc for scaping. Just need to find a small pump and I'll be good to go 😃

 

[jace1969]

Like that ...Turvey....looks good all set up but you have made me think as I did have a big tank and did go a bit overboard on it as I had another small tank by it for the little ones born.

It was tropical ones and 1 tank was I think a good 6ft long one and a small 1 foot one under it, I ain't got a clue now as your going back a good 25 to 30 years, but they're great

to relax you watching them, got to say the catfish was mad and saved me a bit of work but I had the angel fish/neon/2 catfish/and more so the colour was great but was a novice at it.

[Turvey]

Time for a wee update 😃

6 White Cloud Mountain Minnows

4 Zebra Danios

3 Corydoras

and about 6 or 7 shrimp, at least 1 of whom is pregnant/berried. 

 

Didn't realise how much that some of the plants have grown in the time.