i'm not happy, i don't like it and i can't get it finished till tomorrow (i'll explain later)
but
on the bright side, i think i'm going to like this fish
he is very pretty, even has a lovely wee face. he's got character and personality and likes to interact (i swear he was toying with me when i was trying to get his photo)
just incase some of you are wondering why i never seem to cycle a tank here's the reason why
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one of them is the rather large external filter on the goldie tank, the other is the internal that i put in this new tank. as you can see there is no problem for me to fill a small internal filter with media without making much of a dent in the amount of media used from the external. i take from a different layer in the external everytime i pinch a bit, this way i know it will be fully matured and not maybe just put in the last time i pinched a bit.
i got home with the filter, deco's, plants, rocks and of course my paradise fish
first thing was to float the bag my boy was in, in the tank to start aclimating, then tane everything else out the bags, removed tags etc and unboxed the filter. dumped the media that came with the new filter as it was carbon/charcoal and i refuse to use them in my tanks, i've always got spare boxes of media as you never know when your gona need it
washed the new filter and media through with ordinary tap water then pinched media from goldie external (at which point i got some lovely dirty water out of the big filter too) rised the new filter & media through with this water, replaced what i had tane, got the big filter running again and popped the new filter in the wee tank and started it. the switchout only tane about 15/20 min.
at this point i added a wee drop water from the new tank to the boy's bag
next step was the plants, all aquascapers may wish to look away now. this is not one of my strong points.
i bought myself some seed trays as every time i try to put a plant in my tank it
will insist on floating away, i've found the easiest way round this for me is to pot them up with some gravel, then just drop the pot into the tank and hey presto plants added
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as you can see, i have no problem with cheating when it comes to plants. the pots/trays have holes in the bottom so that if the plant lasts long enough the roots can grow out the bottom and the gravel they are planted in will just act the same as the tank gravel in the mean time. so, washed the trays, washed the plants (wasn't too careful about this as apparently the paradise fish is prone to munching down on a few snails) tane as much of the stuff that's round the roots off as i could (but didn't manage it all as i was starting to rip the roots). potted them up, poured the dirty water over the trays, most of it came straight through but hopefully there was a wee bit of yuck got stuck for the plants to start feeding (?) on as it's a new tank with one fish it may take a while for other yuck to build up. placed the trays in as close to the back of the tank as poss.
i'm quite pleased with the plants i got, i think they are lovely, especially the wee clover like one.
i did mind to keep the tags to list what they were for anyone that's interested
but i forgot to check which one came out of which (i
did say plants weren't my strong point
) i got 2 of each of the following, hydrocotyle/ tripartia, limnophila/sessiliflora, myriophyllum/mattogrossense.
another wee drop of water into the boy's bag
now for the rocks............. that were supposed to sit in front of the plants to hide the trays. this is where it all went wrong.
i checked with the lassie in the store but no-one knew what they were but i was assured they would not affect my water par's (fingers crossed).
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these are actually quite nice aswell, very interesting, lots of nooks and crannies in them. got out the toothbrush and began to scrub........well!!!! the amount of muck that started coming off them was unbelievable! the thought that ran through my mind was "i need a bigger brush". it appears to be a kind of clay that's stuck to them, then i discover that there is holes running through the rock which are all filled with clay aswell, that was it, games a boggie, they went in a pail to steep over night, i may take them down to my folks place tomorrow and stick the powerwasher on them
i moved on to the deco's. i got some nice ceramic corals, i quite like these and incase you haven't noticed i don't do 2 tanks the same, i like to think of it as each tank makes it's own statement
as always my tanks always seem bigger in my mind when i am buying stuff for them than what they actually are, so once again i got too many. scrubbed them a bit easier with the toothbrush and just dropped them in, no point trying to decide what to put where as it will all change when i get the rocks ready to go in.
netted the boy, released him in the tank and dumped all the water from the bag down the sink.
this is how the tank looks now
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he is actually in there, just above the coral and inbetween the filter and the start of the plants. hopefully the plants won't take too long to grow a bit and i'll get the rocks in to hide the seed trays.
pics of my boy (they are not too great but hopefully i'll get better ones or a video once he's had time to settle a bit)
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at the top left hand corner, this gives a rough idea of his markings.
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this gives a better view of his shape and fins
it's prob tane me an hour or two to type this, been keeping an eye on him and he seems to be swimming about fine so far
i can see the wee
icon getting used quite a bit in conection with him.
