Hi everyone, quick situation explanation!
So this summer my daughters 2 goldfish died while being cared for by a neighbour (freak occurance I believe as he has had a successful freshwater tropical setup for several years now).
I cleaned everything up and was going to sell it all and decided last minute to redo the tank, and do it properly this time. So I currently have a 14litre (3.7gallon) plastic tank doing a fishless cycle. I used Tetra Safe Start in my homemade external canister filter on Ehiem Bio-Spheres. As I don't have any liquid ammonia I'm dosing with food, not very accurate but currently after approx. 2.5 weeks I have "stable" readings of between 1-2ppm of ammonia and 0ppm of nitrites. The tank is visibly cloudy especially in the last several days and has cleared a little over the last 24 hours. I soaked a piece of bog wood seperatly for several days and it is now only lightly tinting the water but the carbon in the filter should be sorting that.
The plan was to have this small tank with a handful of minnows or danios with maybe 2/3 amano or cherry shrimp. But I got hold of a 2ftx1ftx1ft 54litre (14.25 gal) glass aquarium for dirt cheap. I already have wood bought to build an ADA Style stand and have had black 3mm acrylic cut and drilled to make an AIO tank.
This will give me a 40.7 litre (10.75 gal) 'display' with a built in 5.5 litre (1.45 gal) sump. These figures allow for substrate displacing water, equipment and headroom below tank rim.
My question is should I now just use the small tank to get a cycle established and soak my remaining bio-media left over from my canister build, then once the larger tank is mounted and kitted out, transfer the substrate (will require additional substrate), wood, all available bio-media and cycled water to kickstart the larger tank?
I do want to do this properly this time, i.e. scheduled water maintenance and care, not just when I had the time or tank looked shite! The larger tank will sit in the kitchen/dining room adjacent to the dining room table/back doors and will hopefully be just a nice little feature to watch during breakfast/dinner or while having a coffee!
Thanks in advance folks! :thumbsup:
So this summer my daughters 2 goldfish died while being cared for by a neighbour (freak occurance I believe as he has had a successful freshwater tropical setup for several years now).
I cleaned everything up and was going to sell it all and decided last minute to redo the tank, and do it properly this time. So I currently have a 14litre (3.7gallon) plastic tank doing a fishless cycle. I used Tetra Safe Start in my homemade external canister filter on Ehiem Bio-Spheres. As I don't have any liquid ammonia I'm dosing with food, not very accurate but currently after approx. 2.5 weeks I have "stable" readings of between 1-2ppm of ammonia and 0ppm of nitrites. The tank is visibly cloudy especially in the last several days and has cleared a little over the last 24 hours. I soaked a piece of bog wood seperatly for several days and it is now only lightly tinting the water but the carbon in the filter should be sorting that.
The plan was to have this small tank with a handful of minnows or danios with maybe 2/3 amano or cherry shrimp. But I got hold of a 2ftx1ftx1ft 54litre (14.25 gal) glass aquarium for dirt cheap. I already have wood bought to build an ADA Style stand and have had black 3mm acrylic cut and drilled to make an AIO tank.
This will give me a 40.7 litre (10.75 gal) 'display' with a built in 5.5 litre (1.45 gal) sump. These figures allow for substrate displacing water, equipment and headroom below tank rim.
My question is should I now just use the small tank to get a cycle established and soak my remaining bio-media left over from my canister build, then once the larger tank is mounted and kitted out, transfer the substrate (will require additional substrate), wood, all available bio-media and cycled water to kickstart the larger tank?
I do want to do this properly this time, i.e. scheduled water maintenance and care, not just when I had the time or tank looked shite! The larger tank will sit in the kitchen/dining room adjacent to the dining room table/back doors and will hopefully be just a nice little feature to watch during breakfast/dinner or while having a coffee!
Thanks in advance folks! :thumbsup:
