Wanda hornsey
Fish Crazy
Lucky for us over christmas new year we were given a very large very heavy and VERY DIRTY tank.
we struggled it home in 3 trips yes its that huge
) and set it in the garage I was at a total loss so in early January whilst searching for help I discovered this place 
and asked for help. well here's a pic of what the glass part looked like....
Ewww was that a stinky nasty thing to clean and it took hours and hours of standing in a cold garage scubbing to get it clean. and as for the built in filters look!
.
well after measuring it all up, the glass alone is 48" long 28" front to back and 24" high, and moving all the furnature in the downstairs of our tiny house we squeezed it through the front door and into place. I measured the tank up and then came on here to ask advice you all told me where to go
and its helped a lot 
I read the articles on fishless cycling and asked about a zillion questions and while I tried to get my head around it played with my bits of bog wood in the tank to see what would look good....
and yes it took ages to find pieces i liked that were big enough not to look simply tiny in the tank I also wanted a varity of textures and colours and am happy with the result. then we took pics of how we wanted the wood and after yet more cold wet hours washing gravel and sand we put the in the tank and started to fill...
and so far 3 months in its seems fine. because of the built in filters (bottom weirs) we had to have gravel at the sides when the waters taken in, but because of my love of plecos I wanted a good amount of sand. Then when it was half full with the pictures for reference we put the wood back in place and contiuned to fill. well 5 hours later it was full of 130+ GALLONS of VERY COLD water.....
After a huge search for ammonia we got cycling and for 2 weeks amused ourselves looking at a virtually lifeless tank the only movement from the bubble curtain at the back. Interestingly tho a tiny plant did grow on one piece of bogwood....
and after what seemed like for ever the stats looked like this....
we did a 70% water change (100 Galllons) and planted it up with a plant package from Java...over night we let it warm up and I did one more test and added our first fishes...some guppies and mollies
all seemed to be going fine and looked fab...
I got in from work 3 days later to a nightmare of dead and dying fish...our tank was mini cycling....I was online in a flash looking for help and water changes were suggested as the best cure so twice a day for 6 days we changed water ...not that quick and easy with a tank this big..but it gave us good practice
a couple weeks after all was settled I got my lovely plec's and 4 apple snails and they settled in just fine, the plants grew well and then we got some Rummy noses (or Plague fish as we now know them) they bought a dose of whitespot so that was costly to treat as had to get the snails some where to live while we treated the tank to 1/2 a bottle of No6 a time!
but that and the UV filter and were now all fine we finished our tank off last weekend with 2 clown loaches to help with the millions of small snails we now also have and hopefully in a couple of weeks the Apples can go back in.
So other than Growning the plants and giving away the endless baby mollies, guppies and zebra danios we now have, life is good ....
I want to say thank you to everyone who has helped and answered all my cries for help and also my stupid newbie questions
we struggled it home in 3 trips yes its that huge
) and set it in the garage I was at a total loss so in early January whilst searching for help I discovered this place and asked for help. well here's a pic of what the glass part looked like....
Ewww was that a stinky nasty thing to clean and it took hours and hours of standing in a cold garage scubbing to get it clean. and as for the built in filters look!
well after measuring it all up, the glass alone is 48" long 28" front to back and 24" high, and moving all the furnature in the downstairs of our tiny house we squeezed it through the front door and into place. I measured the tank up and then came on here to ask advice you all told me where to go
and its helped a lot I read the articles on fishless cycling and asked about a zillion questions and while I tried to get my head around it played with my bits of bog wood in the tank to see what would look good....
and yes it took ages to find pieces i liked that were big enough not to look simply tiny in the tank I also wanted a varity of textures and colours and am happy with the result. then we took pics of how we wanted the wood and after yet more cold wet hours washing gravel and sand we put the in the tank and started to fill...
and so far 3 months in its seems fine. because of the built in filters (bottom weirs) we had to have gravel at the sides when the waters taken in, but because of my love of plecos I wanted a good amount of sand. Then when it was half full with the pictures for reference we put the wood back in place and contiuned to fill. well 5 hours later it was full of 130+ GALLONS of VERY COLD water.....
After a huge search for ammonia we got cycling and for 2 weeks amused ourselves looking at a virtually lifeless tank the only movement from the bubble curtain at the back. Interestingly tho a tiny plant did grow on one piece of bogwood....
and after what seemed like for ever the stats looked like this....
we did a 70% water change (100 Galllons) and planted it up with a plant package from Java...over night we let it warm up and I did one more test and added our first fishes...some guppies and mollies
all seemed to be going fine and looked fab...
I got in from work 3 days later to a nightmare of dead and dying fish...our tank was mini cycling....I was online in a flash looking for help and water changes were suggested as the best cure so twice a day for 6 days we changed water ...not that quick and easy with a tank this big..but it gave us good practice
a couple weeks after all was settled I got my lovely plec's
and 4 apple snails and they settled in just fine, the plants grew well and then we got some Rummy noses (or Plague fish as we now know them) they bought a dose of whitespot so that was costly to treat as had to get the snails some where to live while we treated the tank to 1/2 a bottle of No6 a time!but that and the UV filter and were now all fine we finished our tank off last weekend with 2 clown loaches to help with the millions of small snails we now also have and hopefully in a couple of weeks the Apples can go back in.
So other than Growning the plants and giving away the endless baby mollies, guppies and zebra danios we now have, life is good ....
I want to say thank you to everyone who has helped and answered all my cries for help and also my stupid newbie questions
we refill by buckets of warm treated water lots and lots and lots of buckets
