Community

[MyraVan]

I just need to wait for the tank chemistry to settle down after putting a heap of bogwood in there...

Nah, don't bother. As long as your ammonia and nitrite are 0, plunk them in! (I mean, gradually aclimatise them to your water chemistry, etc...) If your water is anything like ours, the bogwood won't make any difference. Our tank is also pH7.8, and adding a fair bit of bogwood didn't change anything. Even mixing in 1/3 rain water into the water I used for water changes hasn't made any difference! And even if the bogwood manages to make any difference, it will be very gradual, enough so that the fish will adapt to it with no problems...

Let your tank be fishless no longer!

[DervMan]

Heh! Well, bare at the moment, I was discounting future growth.

At the left hand side there's one Twisted Vallis plant that's already got one growing shoot, and one more in the go - it'll grow and then some. We've also got some bogwood. I suspect I'll reposition the bogwood and Java Fern in due course but at the moment the Twisted Vallis is there to hide some of the technology in there.

Our tank isn't as brightly lit as some, we've only got 80 watts over a 60 US gallon tank, which is quite a lot ratio. This will limit what plants we can grow.

As for the water chemistry, well the pH was 8.0 before adding carbon dioxide and bogwood. Now it's 7.2... Still the alkaline side of things. Still on the Platy side of things...

I can't decide if I want to get Platy or Zebra Danio as the first fish. I like both (our local store has some gorgeous greeny / orange Platys). The temperature is currently set to be 75°F; this can be moved.

Charlie and I are getting some fish on Saturday. Our preferred store shuts at six and I'm only usually approaching York by then...

[osteoporoosi]

I have to recommend danios, platys might get sick in too soft water, if you harden the water for the platys, you can only get other fish that like alkalinous and hard water(livebearers).
With danios you have better options for the second fish!

[MyraVan]

To clarify, I wrote:

So in some circumstances, it seems that one can set up an aquarium where you don't vacuum the gravel, and the nutrients are recycled. I am willing to give it a try.

I heave read more of Diana Walstad's book, and I am no longer going to give it a tryi! She makes it quite clear that this doesn't work unless you've got good plant roots in your gravel to stop the collected junk from going anaerobic and releasing toxins. I do have plenty of plants, but not all of the bottom area of the tank is planted, so I'll have to keep vacuuming the unplanted areas to keep the gravel clean. So, no surprise, Simpte was right. It takes time to learn all this stuff!

So it looks like I'll have to find other ways of getting more nutrients to the plants. Probably I'll go for some commercial aquatic plant fertilizer.

[Mr Aquarium]

Ok, I'm going to go out on the limb again,,,,,Don;t follow these water condistions to close to the fish you should have,,,,
I have a 75g, never tested the water this last time from the set up,,,,I cheated and helped the cycle along also>
Anyway, I run Two Hat mag 250 can filtrs on it, do 15-20% w/c every week, it have 40 watts of light,
bunch of hornwort and a mess of willow moss, "adding a pack of ea of the plant bulbs from wally world today"
the temps kept at 75*-79* unless I happen to get ick.....Now here is the kicker, No salt, no of that plant stuff, no injections of any kind,,,,,just use Aqua Safe for the w/c,,,,and we now have added more fish,,,,so the list now looks like this,

13 Pulcher Kribs
5 White Clouds, 4 Zebra Danios, Glow Light, Head Lite Tail Lite,
2 Neons, "B=Pleco - Brissle or bushy nose which ever you wanna call it"
2 Angle Fish, cory cat, Spotted Ralphiel, 2 guppies, 4 bettas
2 Mollies, 2 Platties 2 Blue Gouramis

I have not had a single fish die eccept a danio after a w/c a couple weeks back, and an angle acted like it was going to but came out of it and is just dandy now......
Like I said myI don;t test water,,,don;t plan to anytime soon,,,,
IMO,,,,when you start to follow the water parameters to close, it;s to easy to make problems worse.
I'm not saying you shouldn;t do this, but if you get a tank that is well established, then the troubles of following things to the letter just sort of go away, in most cases, some fish do reqire more of better water, but none of the community fish I know of really need anything special so to speak....

[MyraVan]

So what fish did you get?