The Ups And Downs Of Fishkeeping

[coolie]

I guess it must be coming up to a year now since I bought my second hand 240 L Juwel and got going for the second time in my life on tropical fishkeeping.
 
When I bought it, I was thinking, last time round with no internet in existance, there were difficulties, surely this time everything, breeding, growing plants, growing live food, will all be easy.
 
Don't get me wrong, the internet has really helped, especially forums like this. Not to mention all the cheap kit you can get on eBay.
 
(think how I found out I was being ripped off buying non-aquatic plants for all those years from local fish shop!)
 
 
Anyhow, tonnes of knowledge does not get you everything, and with limited space and budget, not everything has gone to plan;
 
Live food - I've had three crashes of Daphnia population and am thinking of giving up - I think you need a large out house or outdoor area with multiple tanks after tryting 3 times and reading multiple resoiurces.
 
Live plants - going fairly well with homemade CO2, my bottle lids keep leaking and keep going for periods without CO2. Half my plant stock has died over all. The blanket weed treatment seems to have killed or finished off elodea densa, (which it should not) . But I have moderate success with some species including one I collected locally.
 
Breeding - the breeding tank I set up on day 1 is still running devoid of fish. All the tetras I planned to breed are still not quite up to breeding age. I really didn't know that this would be such a long process.
As growing my own live food for the breeding program has failed, I don't know if the second tank was all a waste of time. I've had this second tank running a whole year - I should shut it down. Tetras were never going to be the easiest.
 
 
To sum up, I wanted a "productive tank" where I could breed something or even grow plants to offer out into the community rather than a tank where fish grow old and die and that's it. I'm hoping to still get there, but these ups and downs of fish keeping haven't made anything easy as I thought.
 
 
 

 

[techen]

Oh man, If I had a quid for everyone that bought a fish tank and got what they wanted I'd be rich
 
You can't control nature, Sums up everything you said above
 
Glad to see you are still going at it though :3

 

[mike455555]

the hobby would be no fun if it dident have challenges, iv found some plants to a pain in the ass, but there the ones i love to try to grow (i always have a stock out of water. if i can)  like DHG, it does not grow in my fish tank, but it grows fine in my pond / out of the water... but it became one of my fav plants because i cant keep it alive same with blyax japonica 
 
as for Daphnia, im about to try my hand at that... so i hope it doesn't fail to badly... 
 
co2, my system used the rubber bung things for wine making with silicone tubing tops, could break the seal each time and it would reseal. just an idea, i never liked just silconing it together (let me know if you want more info on what i used) 

 

[PrairieSunflower]

I'm currently trying to figure out how I might take a vacation that is longer than a week (not sure I will be taking one) when I have no family/friends who could handle changing the water in my two tanks. 

 

[mike455555]

you can miss water changes for week or 2, and if it food your worried about, buy some live food, and stock the tank with that, it should stay alive in the tank without changing the water to much, long if it doesnt get filtered out, or its food does, your fish can just nibble when they find something

 

[snowflake311]

Breeding is hard you need lots of time and space. Not worth it for me. But plants are easy once you find the right kinds for you. I have been growing and different kinds of moss and I have made some money on them.

Work on your plant keeping skills and you can being growing and selling in not time. It just takes some time to understand what plants need. After that they become weeds.

 

[coolie]

Thank you for all the comments. I did think of one possibility, turn the 33 litre breeding tank into a kind of warm humid vivarium for growing plants
with few if any fish and a few inches of water. The plant I have in my main tank which is static (as most my plants are with broken down CO2 diy system)
is JUNCUS REPENS, it's a type of rush which apparently can grow fully submursed.
 
I wonder if this would grow well in shallow water? Does any one have any tips on starting a vivarium plant aquarium? Can you use a powerhead to kind
of shoot the water up into a water fall type arrangement? Also would java ferns grow semi submursed like this?

 

[CezzaXV]

I'm in the process of converting from tropical to marine, and pretty much everything that could go wrong, has gone wrong!

I wish now I had drilled the holes in a different place, messed up my pipework not once, not twice but three times, had to remove the weir and ended up in hospital because I cut myself, siliconed the weir back in and now it's not watertight and I've got to do it again, I bought a water butt to store RO water in and it's leaking in two places, the list goes on!

I swear this marine tank of mine is not meant to happen, but I'm determined to show the universe that it's wrong!