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well, I am back.I haven't been on the website properly for months, had stupid internet problems followed by huge amounts of stupid work. really been neglecting my tanks.

I spent all of yesterday moving the fish tank from one side of the room to the other!

I woke up late for work this morning and completely forgot where I had put everything!!!


I was going to restock but watching them all tonight I thought no,I am far too attached!

this is an early picture of the tank from about a year or more ago, when I used sand as a substrate



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Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself.
Harvey S. Firestone

you see once upon a time it looked pretty nice.....

but then well, life happened! and frankly I am not suited to sand AT ALL. it got everywhere, I have glass sliding doors on the top of the tank and the sand used to make them impossible to open, it was in the carpet under my nailsI loathed it with a firey passion.

and eventually it ended up like this.

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Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself.
Harvey S. Firestone

the sand killed the plants, so I added some gravel to help them - didn't work and made the tank look just AWFUL.

we had the short black algae, the hair algae and all kinds of slime growing on the glass lid........

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_______________________________________
Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself.
Harvey S. Firestone

so action had to be taken!!!!

it really was so bad, in my defence the hair algae grew in the hornwort and then took over the heater..........

So this sunday I caught the fish and the salvaged some hornwort and begun to empty the tank. It took hours....... the sand was black in parts, I couldn't believe what the sand could keep hidden!!

at my lowest point on Sunday it looked like this.

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_______________________________________
Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself.
Harvey S. Firestone

that was after I had cleaned slime from the lid, algae from the sides and moved most of the sand out.

I begun to sieve the sand - to remove the gravel to be reused. After the burning pain in my back started I decided to give that idea up. I felt seriously guilty about the complete waste of water. and the mess I made in my Mum's bathroom.

this is the gravel I am using - such an exciting picture I am sure you will agree!!


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Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself.
Harvey S. Firestone

Well after the excitment of the gravel picture, I suppose I should explain my plans.

I really need a low maintenance tank to start with. simple low light plants, stick to driftwood and a couple of natural looking caves.

eventually I would like to experiment with different plants and CO2, a friend of mine was telling about tablets you can add (my attempts with a coke bottle and yeast went very wrong...tablets are right up my street!)

Unfortunately in the moving my double light socket thing seems to have gone wrong - it blew all but one of my bulbs, so the lighting is a bit hopeless.

After Christmas I will get a Fluval 205 external filter and a new light set up - will need to do some investigating.

I am pretty much over stocked so I guess I will have to get rid of some fish - this tank is a mixture of my two tropical tanks and nothing really matches - two guppies, five mollies, one golden nugget pleco, two clown loaches, one keyhole Cichlid, and two Cherry Barbs. Poor fish, they really have had a rough time of it.

tonight, watching them I can't remember the last time they were so active. the Sand was absolutely and literally killing the poor sods.

I only have one piece of wood with annbus, java fern and moss on it so far, I have got some more Hornwort as a temp measure untill I find all my perfect bits and pieces to finish the tank.

this is the tank so far. it is not finished and not a good picture! but it is late and I am sleepy.

thanks for reading
GFG

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_______________________________________
Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself.
Harvey S. Firestone

Hi GFG,
Welcome back.
Sand can be a real pain. If one is going to use it, IMO,
they should not have more than an inch in depth overall.
That thin layer coupled with Corrie's, or kuli loaches of
MTS, something that stirs up the sand will help prevent
the black, anaerobic areas that you describe. They produce
Hydrogen Sulfide and that is toxic to plants and fish.

If you want a minimum maintenance tank, you would be
advised to reduce the fish load to less than normal.
Plants should be "low light" plants such as nearly any
of the crypts and a piece of driftwood could serve as home
to some Anubis (tied by thread to the wood). Over time,
the Anubis roots grow attached to the driftwood and, if you
use dark cotton thread, it will rot off leaving the plants
firmly attached. Keep your lighting down to 1.5 watts
per gallon for a low light, minimum maintenance, tank.

Remember however, minimum maintenance means that you have
to regularly, once or twice a month, vacuum non-planted
portions of the tank gravel, and change out about 50% of
the water while vacuuming. The bio load of the tank should
determine "minimum" interval for cleaning and water
exchange.

It is looking good now.
Hang in there, and welcome back!

Frank

-->>> The Confidence of Amateurs, is the Envy of Professionals <<<--

GFG,

Welcome back

I most appreciate you coming forward with your tank situation, not many people have the guts to report their failures along the way.

About the tank in itself, of course you know that you don't have even remotely enough plants in your tank. If your conditions are less than optimal a few plants will not make an difference from no plants at all.

Yeah, like Frank said, you are in dire need of loads of low light plants, but I would try my luck with Water Sprite and Wisteria over crypts and hornwort (the first grows way too slow, the latter is plain ugly ), loads of it, loads loads loads !!!

If there is any space left then add Java Fern, a slow grower but once it reaches a nice mass it will take off a little more. Stay away from fine leaved plants (another downer for Hornwort, and any Moss) as it will clutter up with algae and once the algae is settled only the removal of the whole plant area will eradicate it.

Hope this helps, and again, keep on posting,

Ingo

---

Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

Hey Goldfishgeek,

welcome back to the mix of things, and kudos for starting the tank over again.

I just want to add one thing: sand itself doesn't hurt plants or cause fish to suffer. There's nothing intrinsic about it that causes plants to wilt and fish to die. Frank mentioned the anaerobic pockets, and that could have been a cause of the mess. However, i think it was the overall (and please dont take this the wrong way ) neglect of the tank that led to poor water quality. Build up of organics in an overstocked tank will lead to poor water quality, low plant and fish health, and all kinds of algae every time.

Once things get far along enough I really think the only way to fix it is to do what you've done - clean and replace everything, just start over.

I agree with what Frank and Ingo said, stuff that sucker with plants and reduce fish load. That is a bit much for a 35 G, even a fully planted one. I would reduce fish stock as much as possible while the plants re-establish themselves. That may mean going very low on fish for a month or two or three, but in the long run it'll be worth it. The waste produced by over-stocking will sabotage your efforts to create a healthy, balanced tank. Once the plants are established and doing well, THEN you can bring up the fish load more, but for now, the fewer, the better.

Hope that helps, and good luck!

Rich

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Back in the saddle!

thanks for the comments guys, although I appreciate that sand isn't a problem, I really dont think it is suitable for planted tanks especially not mine.the plants simply died. whilst this tank was falling apart my 12G with gravel and plants, and exactly the same pH problems so miminal water changes looked like the picture below.It is my favourite tank actually.

I took down one tank and rehomed some fish and what's left is in this tank. To be honest because of the water cleaning issues round here and the difficulty I have had since we moved here I was going to just give up on keeping fish - but then I looked in to using "pH down" and got a better pH test so here I am. I just hope it works better this time!







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_______________________________________
Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself.
Harvey S. Firestone

sorry posted the old picture, this is one from today can any one tell me what type of crypt it is by the way?I know there is alage and it could do with a tidy up but nothing has died or turned brown which for me is a bonus!

I shall leave sand to the more experienced fish tankers!

My next trip to the LFS will be to get some lights since mine aren't working and some more hrnwort which is floating about looking ugly at the moment Little Fish!

I will also ask if I can give back some of the fish, they are such an odd hotch potch of fish. don't really know what to keep and what to give away!

thnaks again

GFG



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_______________________________________
Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself.
Harvey S. Firestone

Hi goldfishgeek

Enjoyed your journey - thanks for sharing it. Your last picture is looking good - sorry, I'm not able to answer the question of what type of crypt.

Are we looking at a different tank though? Shape is different?

Glad to see you have really beefed up the plant mass.

Cheers
TW

sorry Robyn, the last two pics are of my 12G hex, I haven't really been into the hobby for various reasons for the last year, I kept up with minimal W/C but not much else, I have had this problem with very changable pH and over the last few years( since moving house) had unexplained fish deaths that *can* be explained by the local company "cleaning the pipes" every so often (also changes the pH and makes it difficult to W/C without destablising the tank.

any how over this period of time the 35G went to hell plants died and fish looked grim. in the 12G plants flourished and so did fish - well as much as they could in a 12G! the differences are - sand v gravel and obviously size!

the short version is am I am very glad I restarted the 35, even it not being finished I can't take my eyes off it!


_______________________________________
Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself.
Harvey S. Firestone

The 12 is awesome, it should give you ample believe in your abilities, GFG.

Just take it easy with the large tank and you will eventually succeed.

Ingo

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Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

thank you Little Fish.

am blushing!

am also off to Belgian for the Weekend so no fish shop for me!

thanks again

GFG



_______________________________________
Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself.
Harvey S. Firestone

just a quick non picture update,

I have ordered more plants on wood, the guy at the shop is so nice, he has ordered a load and I can choose the shapes etc I want. they all have java fern, moss and that plant I can never spell.

I want three groupings of plants on wood, with maybe Crypts (in between) and twisted Val along the back.

I am going to get the wood plants first and add the planted plants later on.

I am thinking about the stocking fish wise. I want to keep the keyhole, so will get him some friends.

I want a small dither fish for them. Some kind of tetra. the guppies will live in the 12G and the mollies will go for store credit. not great but a solution.

or maybe the guppies should be the dither fish? the eventual babies could (mean of me I know) live food for the keyholes......

then what fish for the 12G? it being Hex shaped is a pain.

sorry kinda got off the plants there!

GFG

_______________________________________
Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself.
Harvey S. Firestone

Welcome back !

Great job on the tanks, why did I suspect you would get even more into plants ?

If you're wondering what fish to move out, move out the clown loaches then add more keyholes ? Crypts sound good too.

My stubborn case of BBA is slowly but surely disappearing thanks to Flourish Excel, I'd recommend that as a co2 source over the tablets.

Best regards,
Da



The Amazon Nut...

GFG,

I just wanted to say that I have heard you bash on yourself quite a bit in some of the threads around here. That last picture you showed is really nice and you should be easier on yourself.

55G Planted tank thread
19G Container Pond
[IMG]http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y118/Wingsdlc/Ric