Lets face it, fishkeeping isn't exactly cheap, but sometimes it doesn't need to be as expensive as it looks. I thought I'd put a thread together to try to highlight some of the tricks of the miser fishkeeper, who refuses to pay top dollar for a product because it has aquarium written on the side of it and instead walks around the corner and picks up the same thing from the local hardware store or corner shop for half the price. Hopefully this will save some of you some money, and, even better, make some of you post some ideas I didn't know about and you'll save me some money. In advance my other half and bank manager thank you I'll try to give credit for ideas, if I can remember where I heard them.
Substrates
1. Cat litter
Yes, cat litter, it makes a great substrate if you get the right one. A lot of cat litter is sawdust or chemicals or other horrible things you wouldn't want to put in your tanks. Some of it though is baked clay, which happens to be a great planted media as it holds fertilisers well. Here in the UK the main brands we'd be looking at are tesco low dust and sophisticat pink. Apparently you have to wash it very, very well, but I'm lazy so I washed it a bit and dumped it in a tank with a filter running floss for a few days.
Cosmetically there's no getting around the fact that it's pink (once you've managed to ignore the algae and the stand, it's my hidden away ugly tank), but it's not a terrible colour and that 1 bag did a 30" x 12" base to the thickness you can see in the picture. It's also beloved of bonsai growers who have saved me the trouble of telling our international friends where they can get hold of the right stuff.
2. Play sand
A more cosmetically pleasing result if you like pale sand, again needs a lot of washing, but simple play sand does a good job of safely covering the base of your tank. Don't use builders sand, they don't bother taking the limestone bits out of that stuff3. Soil Good old garden compost. Otherwise known as mud to the aquarist. Great for growing plants but is as messy as it gets if your fish dig. Big Tom has used this well on a beautiful scape but does advise that it can raise the water hardness and pH from some it.
Hardscape
Lets face it, hardscape is rocks and wood generally, with the occasional helicopter. Rocks and wood are fairly easy to come by, helicopters less so. Rocks are relatively simple. You need to avoid anything very soft (that will break down in your aquarium and therefore release what may be on the inside that you can't see) and anything that you don't want affecting your water chemistry. As a rule of thumb the harder the better, so granite is good, slate is also good. Sandstones can wear away although the old hard stuff is usually fine, and shale can break down when wet, releasing a muddy mess. Limestone is an odd one, in a hard water tank such as a malawi set up the buffering effect of limestone will be beneficial, in a soft water tank it'll be a nightmare. If you want to identify rocks then there are geology guides out there in great numbers, but basically, you need a metal blade to scrape them for hardness and a strong acid (vinegar isn't a strong acid, no matter what people tell you, try limescale remover if you want to see the fizz you're expecting). Wood is slightly more complex, you want to avoid sap, so nothing freshly killed, so it needs to be properly dried out (or possibly waterlogged from a long immersion in say, a bog) and bark free. This is why we use bogwood so much, but any hardwood will work (such as oak, beech and alder, although people tell me that ash is toxic). Generally soft wood such as pine and yew is avoided unless it's been dead for so long that there's no chance of sap at all and it does break down faster which can be problematical. The general rules then are dead, dry and throw some boiling water over it a few times (or you can get creative with Milton solution) once you've scraped all the bark off and scrubbed it down thoroughly. Then it either needs soaking so that it's waterlogged and some of the initial tannins have had a chance to leech out or attaching to something (such as tieing it to a rock) so that it doesn't float. I've got a big lump of apple soaking in an old water tank in the garden, along with some nice elder and willow. I know Big Tom has good results with heather and hawthorne that's been dead for a while. He also uses things like spruce and ivy, which scares the hell out of me, but he has magic fingers anyway and I suspect he's getting away with it because he knows to get the properly dead and dried stuff.
Lighting
1. Daylight tubes if you're just growing plants, and you don't want too "white" a colour, then there's no reason you need to buy the expensive aquarium tubes. A quick scour of the internet can find you a daylight tube that gives out 6500K light for half the price of those costly tubes, and with fluorescents needing fairly regular replacement (although with properly ballasted electronic controls this is a point of debate as well) this saving can add up quickly.
Food
1. Mosquitos and bloodworms
Depending on where you are in the world these wee beasties are naturally occurring. I have a wood soaking trough in the garden that has more black larvae than my fish can eat, although a simple bucket will do, partial shade and still surface seems to suit them. Shallow bowls seem to grow the bloodworms better.
2. Daphnia
Eats algae. Got an old goldfish bowl type tank that you shouldn't really put anything in? Stand it on a sunny windowsill (where you really wouldn't want a tank normally) and add your live daphnia and they should hopefully multiply for you.
Extras
1. The HOB refugium.
An idea I heard from Lljdma06, a simple HOB filter, with the media taken out, serves in the stead of a far more expensive hang on refugium. She seems to have used an aquaclear for this task, but they don't seem to retail in the UK.
Plants
1. Pond plants.
Dwarf hairgrass, E. acicularis, is often grown emmersed for ponds, and comes with a sensible priced tag for a huge bunch compared to what you'll buy from aquarium sources.
2. CO2.
Considering a cheap pressurised CO2 set up, consider the bottles. They're generally quite expensive to replace and, in the long run you may be better off going for a refillable system.For the smaller tank, there's always the DIY yeast approach. With the household items of fizzy drink bottles, water, sugar and bread yeast, along with a diffuser and some CO2 line gives you a ready supply of the gas. It doesn't have the convenience of the bottled gas systems, but they can be the most expensive to run on replacement prices for the gas bought. It's not an area I've worked on much and I'm sure a thread will appear soon for me to link to.
3. Dry fertilisers.
The largely unsung hero of the cheap high techer, but in longer term usage the hero of anyone economist. If you buy liquid fertilisers then you're paying for the shipping costs of the water as well as the chemical. There's no great secret about how to mix these for yourself that a small set of accurate digital scales such as jewellers scales won't take the fear out of. While we're talking chemicals, remember that Magnesium sulphate is Epsom salts and calcium sulphate is gypsum.
4. Planting tools.
The invaluable tools of the aquascaper, but, let's face it, they're scissors and tweezers. I personally can't tell the difference between the planting stuff and medical single use kit or the tweezers used for feeding things like snakes and big lizards, which come without the aquarium price tag.
Filter media
1. Biological
There are people out there using perlite, well beloved of gardeners as a biomedia/polisher, bit of a write up here
http
/www.fishforums.net/index.php?/topic/395905-perlite-as-a-fiter-media/
Substrates
1. Cat litter
Yes, cat litter, it makes a great substrate if you get the right one. A lot of cat litter is sawdust or chemicals or other horrible things you wouldn't want to put in your tanks. Some of it though is baked clay, which happens to be a great planted media as it holds fertilisers well. Here in the UK the main brands we'd be looking at are tesco low dust and sophisticat pink. Apparently you have to wash it very, very well, but I'm lazy so I washed it a bit and dumped it in a tank with a filter running floss for a few days.
Cosmetically there's no getting around the fact that it's pink (once you've managed to ignore the algae and the stand, it's my hidden away ugly tank), but it's not a terrible colour and that 1 bag did a 30" x 12" base to the thickness you can see in the picture. It's also beloved of bonsai growers who have saved me the trouble of telling our international friends where they can get hold of the right stuff.
2. Play sand
A more cosmetically pleasing result if you like pale sand, again needs a lot of washing, but simple play sand does a good job of safely covering the base of your tank. Don't use builders sand, they don't bother taking the limestone bits out of that stuff3. Soil Good old garden compost. Otherwise known as mud to the aquarist. Great for growing plants but is as messy as it gets if your fish dig. Big Tom has used this well on a beautiful scape but does advise that it can raise the water hardness and pH from some it.
Hardscape
Lets face it, hardscape is rocks and wood generally, with the occasional helicopter. Rocks and wood are fairly easy to come by, helicopters less so. Rocks are relatively simple. You need to avoid anything very soft (that will break down in your aquarium and therefore release what may be on the inside that you can't see) and anything that you don't want affecting your water chemistry. As a rule of thumb the harder the better, so granite is good, slate is also good. Sandstones can wear away although the old hard stuff is usually fine, and shale can break down when wet, releasing a muddy mess. Limestone is an odd one, in a hard water tank such as a malawi set up the buffering effect of limestone will be beneficial, in a soft water tank it'll be a nightmare. If you want to identify rocks then there are geology guides out there in great numbers, but basically, you need a metal blade to scrape them for hardness and a strong acid (vinegar isn't a strong acid, no matter what people tell you, try limescale remover if you want to see the fizz you're expecting). Wood is slightly more complex, you want to avoid sap, so nothing freshly killed, so it needs to be properly dried out (or possibly waterlogged from a long immersion in say, a bog) and bark free. This is why we use bogwood so much, but any hardwood will work (such as oak, beech and alder, although people tell me that ash is toxic). Generally soft wood such as pine and yew is avoided unless it's been dead for so long that there's no chance of sap at all and it does break down faster which can be problematical. The general rules then are dead, dry and throw some boiling water over it a few times (or you can get creative with Milton solution) once you've scraped all the bark off and scrubbed it down thoroughly. Then it either needs soaking so that it's waterlogged and some of the initial tannins have had a chance to leech out or attaching to something (such as tieing it to a rock) so that it doesn't float. I've got a big lump of apple soaking in an old water tank in the garden, along with some nice elder and willow. I know Big Tom has good results with heather and hawthorne that's been dead for a while. He also uses things like spruce and ivy, which scares the hell out of me, but he has magic fingers anyway and I suspect he's getting away with it because he knows to get the properly dead and dried stuff.
Lighting
1. Daylight tubes if you're just growing plants, and you don't want too "white" a colour, then there's no reason you need to buy the expensive aquarium tubes. A quick scour of the internet can find you a daylight tube that gives out 6500K light for half the price of those costly tubes, and with fluorescents needing fairly regular replacement (although with properly ballasted electronic controls this is a point of debate as well) this saving can add up quickly.
Food
1. Mosquitos and bloodworms
Depending on where you are in the world these wee beasties are naturally occurring. I have a wood soaking trough in the garden that has more black larvae than my fish can eat, although a simple bucket will do, partial shade and still surface seems to suit them. Shallow bowls seem to grow the bloodworms better.
2. Daphnia
Eats algae. Got an old goldfish bowl type tank that you shouldn't really put anything in? Stand it on a sunny windowsill (where you really wouldn't want a tank normally) and add your live daphnia and they should hopefully multiply for you.
Extras
1. The HOB refugium.
An idea I heard from Lljdma06, a simple HOB filter, with the media taken out, serves in the stead of a far more expensive hang on refugium. She seems to have used an aquaclear for this task, but they don't seem to retail in the UK.
Plants
1. Pond plants.
Dwarf hairgrass, E. acicularis, is often grown emmersed for ponds, and comes with a sensible priced tag for a huge bunch compared to what you'll buy from aquarium sources.
2. CO2.
Considering a cheap pressurised CO2 set up, consider the bottles. They're generally quite expensive to replace and, in the long run you may be better off going for a refillable system.For the smaller tank, there's always the DIY yeast approach. With the household items of fizzy drink bottles, water, sugar and bread yeast, along with a diffuser and some CO2 line gives you a ready supply of the gas. It doesn't have the convenience of the bottled gas systems, but they can be the most expensive to run on replacement prices for the gas bought. It's not an area I've worked on much and I'm sure a thread will appear soon for me to link to.
3. Dry fertilisers.
The largely unsung hero of the cheap high techer, but in longer term usage the hero of anyone economist. If you buy liquid fertilisers then you're paying for the shipping costs of the water as well as the chemical. There's no great secret about how to mix these for yourself that a small set of accurate digital scales such as jewellers scales won't take the fear out of. While we're talking chemicals, remember that Magnesium sulphate is Epsom salts and calcium sulphate is gypsum.
4. Planting tools.
The invaluable tools of the aquascaper, but, let's face it, they're scissors and tweezers. I personally can't tell the difference between the planting stuff and medical single use kit or the tweezers used for feeding things like snakes and big lizards, which come without the aquarium price tag.
Filter media
1. Biological
There are people out there using perlite, well beloved of gardeners as a biomedia/polisher, bit of a write up here
http
/www.fishforums.net/index.php?/topic/395905-perlite-as-a-fiter-media/
