After months and months of water changes, cleaning the gravel, testing testing testing, the tank looks to have recovered from old tank syndrome. The PH is good (I’m using water through a water filter which has a little bit of backing soda to keep it near 7.0), ammonia is zero, every other measure is in the good zone, except nitrate, which is still a bit too high, but, that should be no problem. The big fish you see, two golden gouramis and 2 Australian rainbowfish, have been there through it all. I had lost one rainbow. I got rid of the really big plant, was taking up too much space and leaving lots of dead debris. Replaced it with smaller live plants (left side near center.) Made sure the bubbler is working well. Getting a bit of algae buildup, including on the live plants, but, better some algae than none).
I added 3 small tiger barbs (can just see one in the bottom right, one is hiding behind red plant and the other is behind a rock in the back) and one pleco (up on wall). When I tried putting in fish previously they died within an hour. So far so good.
Looks fantastic!
Great news!
Looks really great!
Congrats!
I too when I was a young man bred fish to sell to many different stores. Today my home has a large koi pond in the back yard and we still have a 55 gallon freshwater tank and a 150 gallon salt water tank which is a beach to take care of and rather expensive to keep the lighting going to keep the reefs in healthy.
Having said that the first thing I noticed about your tank is the planter base. If it is terra cotta then your fine, but if it is plastic make sure it has the safe triangle mark on it with the 3 arrows meaning it wont leach chemicals into the water.
Another potential source of problems for a tank is the lighting. Bulbs should be changed every 3 months as they normally lose all their health benefits in a very short time. However 6 months is fine.
If you continue to have problems: I am assuming your using out of tank filtration I would consider Power heads. These are devices that use under gravel trays and suck the water through the gravel into a dead zone under the gravel and then propel it back into the tank. This constant swirl keeps the tank alive and prevents dead zones where bacteria can breed in the actual living area of your fish.
IF you choose to do this it is important to use fine grain, aquarium safe sand at least 2 inches thick on top of which you can then put your colored gravel. The idea is the sand itself acts as a filtration system the yucky water then creates a biological garden in the dead zone under the sand, gravel which breaks down the bad stuff, leaving only the good stuff.
Now either filter works. I just am fond of the under gravel filters because they are usually a fix and forget system and usually my wife and I clean her fresh water tank about once every 18 months.
As for the filtration method…All your survivalist know of the Coyote Well? Well the under gravel filter works the same way…the sand in your tank cleans the aquarium for you.
Thanks, folks.
Yup, terra cotta for that planter. Others were purchased at Petsmart or Petco. I change the filter about every 3 weeks, and have a Biomax filter media in the pump. Lighting is LED.
I was considering putting in an under-gravel if I had to dump it and restart. I was replacing at least 2 gallons a day and vacuuming the gravel as I did it. Now about 2 gallons a week, will vacuum half the gravel each time.
Before, I was just replacing the water that evaporated, and the old big plant caused a big problem with dead leaves.