waterdrop
Enthusiastic "Re-Beginner"
For those of you following the Oliver saga...
Oliver's Replacement Tank survived the first night last night with a half-tank of tap water. Last night I cleaned and assembled the new stand, reattached leveling shims and fine-tuned the leveling. Then I cut a sheet of black 6mil poly to go between the tank and stand - this turned out to work easily by using the glass tank lid as a template to assist guiding the box cutter for the shape of the bowfront curve. If I'm lucky, this will add a bit of moisture protection for the new stand.
Without really thinking I then began dribbling the first bucket of old gravel into the clean tank, but only until I smelled the stink! The gravel had been sitting in 3 buckets, untouched, since the previous tank broke a few days ago.
Suddenly I realized what had happened. Even though gravel had only been in the tank a very few days, it had gained bacteria and a small amount of dead plant material. The bacteria had obviously died and all this was enough to generate that familiar fish tank gravel stink! As far as I could tell, it was almost as strong as from a mature tank - kind of a surprise.
So, out came the gravel, to be rinsed and out went the tank to the back yard to be rinsed, sigh. Then in went the tank to be dried, then in went the gravel. At some point I was breaking a sweat and wishing Oliver didn't have so much homework!
Finally, by his bedtime, we had a new stand, a new tank, clean gravel and a half tank of fresh tap water and even a light and to our eyes it was a beautiful sight. Disappointingly, this one doesn't have a mirror as the back wall because they didn't have any of those and I didn't want to persue or wait for that, but Oliver's wall is blue and it made the water a bit blue, which looked nice for tonight.
The poor bacteria had to spend yet another night out in the cold shed, poor babies! I lost a bit more sleep thinking of all the electricity that Hydor was sucking to keep the bucket warm, but whenever I check, the thermometer is right on 84F! The tests last night showed my bacteria are still dropping ammonia and nitrite to zero and I'll feed them more ammonia this morning. Naturally, mother nature decided to send us a cold snap just for these days! The plants, though, seem to be loving their bucket and keep growing up out of it toward my 24hour workbench light - maybe they'd rather stay out there!
Glad to be able to start a "Happy" thread for all my wonderful TFF friends - couldn't have made it this far without you!
~~waterdrop~~
Oliver's Replacement Tank survived the first night last night with a half-tank of tap water. Last night I cleaned and assembled the new stand, reattached leveling shims and fine-tuned the leveling. Then I cut a sheet of black 6mil poly to go between the tank and stand - this turned out to work easily by using the glass tank lid as a template to assist guiding the box cutter for the shape of the bowfront curve. If I'm lucky, this will add a bit of moisture protection for the new stand.
Without really thinking I then began dribbling the first bucket of old gravel into the clean tank, but only until I smelled the stink! The gravel had been sitting in 3 buckets, untouched, since the previous tank broke a few days ago.
Suddenly I realized what had happened. Even though gravel had only been in the tank a very few days, it had gained bacteria and a small amount of dead plant material. The bacteria had obviously died and all this was enough to generate that familiar fish tank gravel stink! As far as I could tell, it was almost as strong as from a mature tank - kind of a surprise.
So, out came the gravel, to be rinsed and out went the tank to the back yard to be rinsed, sigh. Then in went the tank to be dried, then in went the gravel. At some point I was breaking a sweat and wishing Oliver didn't have so much homework!
Finally, by his bedtime, we had a new stand, a new tank, clean gravel and a half tank of fresh tap water and even a light and to our eyes it was a beautiful sight. Disappointingly, this one doesn't have a mirror as the back wall because they didn't have any of those and I didn't want to persue or wait for that, but Oliver's wall is blue and it made the water a bit blue, which looked nice for tonight.
The poor bacteria had to spend yet another night out in the cold shed, poor babies! I lost a bit more sleep thinking of all the electricity that Hydor was sucking to keep the bucket warm, but whenever I check, the thermometer is right on 84F! The tests last night showed my bacteria are still dropping ammonia and nitrite to zero and I'll feed them more ammonia this morning. Naturally, mother nature decided to send us a cold snap just for these days! The plants, though, seem to be loving their bucket and keep growing up out of it toward my 24hour workbench light - maybe they'd rather stay out there!
Glad to be able to start a "Happy" thread for all my wonderful TFF friends - couldn't have made it this far without you!
~~waterdrop~~