whetu

That is one big, fat fish!

Oh no! The fish-with-lego-teeth dream! The true meaning of this dream: beware when walking around the house in bare feet that you don't step on bits of dinosaur lego. They hurt!

Keep up the encouragement - we all suffer setbacks at some time, and (while distressing at the time) they will pass and she will enjoy the hobby again. Also I know when I was 11 years old I wasn't a particularly reliable fish-keeper. If asked I would have said, "yes, I do regular water changes!" and "No, I don't feed them too much!" Without trying to blame the poor girl, it might be a good time for a reminder about how a little bit of cleaning done often is so much better than a big clean after things start to get yukky.

The hardest part with the heated pipe in a pond that size wuld be keeping the water cool enough - it's very easy to overheat with the black pipe method.

Scary, innit?! As far as I recall, I have never had a dream that involved an internet forum before. I think I may need therapy. :-?

I had a fish nightmare last night - with a twist! As usual I suddenly remembered I had a whole lot of extra tanks dotted around the house in obscure places, and realised I hadn't fed the fish for weeks & weeks. Then, in my dream, I remembered this thread and thought, "I'll have to update that thread and tell them that the reason I was having fish nightmares was because it was actually true! So they had better all check their houses for neglected tanks!" :lol: One of the rediscovered tanks was in my fridge. I was quite relieved because I realised the fish in the fridge would have a slower metabolism, so it didn't matter that I hadn't fed them for a while. Then I noticed that the left-over corn on the cob had been nibbled so I knew the fish had been taking care of themselves! Oh, and another rediscovered tank had a pygmy platypus in it. I thought it was very cute, but it puzzled me a little because I knew I only kept fish and of course a platypus is a mammal.

Plants can take a while to get settled in a new tank - their roots will have been disturbed, and the water in a new tank is pretty sterile, with not a lot of micro-organisms or micro-nutrients needed for good plant health. Add a couple more fish, by all means increase the light (you can never have enough light IMO!) and continue in the way you have begun - with patience.

Oops! Sorry, my mistake. As you were - cichlid7 did say Green beard algae not black. :oops:

From that link: I haven't had any luck with the Flourish Excel method, but I have found the Siamese Algae eaters do an excellent job of keeping it under control.

Yes, I've had them in the past too - with the same remedy. Generally I find they only appear when there is an area on the surface of the water that has little or no agitation. For example, if you have floating plants these bugs can get established in the still areas of water between the leaves. As far as i know, they have no ill effects on the fish. Things to try: - increase surface agitation - be really strict about general maintenance - water changes etc. - be careful not to over-feed - try using different kinds of food and see if it makes a difference. Some kinds of food seem to leave an oily (proteiny?) slick on the surface - if you have a visible oil slick on the surface, use paper towels to sweep some of it off As long as your general maintenance is good and your water quality is good, don't worry too much about it.

Yes Henward, the stuff from Spotlight (or the same stuff from elsewhere) is great in your filter. I have been using it in a variety of filters for many years with no problems.

"Poor Man's Dosing Drops" - basically a home-made liquid fertiliser. I wonder if women are allowed to use it too?

Ouch! Remind me never to go to your place for lunch!

IMO fert balls are good - you put them in once (when you plant a root-feeding plant) then forget them. Nice & easy. For ferts in the water column you can use one of the commercial brews, but with slow-release fert balls and only a few plants, you may be able to get away with a fraction of the recommended dose. A little & often is far better than a great big dose once every few weeks. A well balanced liquid fert (or well balanced PMDD) will supply all the micronutrients you will need, especially given you are likely to have fairly easy-care plants. As for the carbon, wait until everything is properly established and well balanced before you start worrying about it. There is quite an art to proper CO2 dosing, so in my opinion it will just be an extra expense that you'll be better spending on your substrate, lighting etc. for now.

This gets my vote, too. Cinder/breeze blocks for the uprights, a nicely braced timber structure for the horizontal elements. The 4 x 2 horizontal bracing will spread the load beautifully across the bottom of the tank. And don't forget a layer of poly right under the glass!

I'm not familiar with either the tetras you're describing or the Green Tailed Barbs, but I agree with Caryl that generally tetras and barbs are fine together. Some barbs (but by no means all) can get a bit nippy. If that is the case just make sure that whatever fish you keep in there with them are quick enough swimmers to keep out of their way, and don't have long flowing fins that might get nipped by the barbs. Any torpedo-shaped fish can generally put on a good turn of speed when they need to, so your tetras should be fine. Also make sure you have a lid on your tank so nobody can jump out!

Apart from crushed shell, the beach sand will also be very salty so will need to be rinsed very thoroughly if you're going to use it. Several people on here use sand as a substrate. They seem to buy it from landscaping places or use pool filter sand.

Congratulations on completing the cycle in record time, stargazer! Sounds like you did just the right thing by adding the used filter media. Well done. As other people have said, you can now go ahead and add a few more fish at a time - always making sure you maintain your tank well by doing regular water changes and not over-feeding. The good greeblies you have introduced through the filter will take a little while to get established in your tank (on the gravel etc) so don't do any drastic cleaning of the filer, and still keep an eye on the ammonia and nitrite levels for a while.

That's definitely BGA. The long-term solution is to keep up with your tank maintenance on a regular basis, rather than waiting for it to get established. Just do regular gravel vacs, regular water changes and be careful to not over-feed. (Funny how that seems to be the solution to most aquarium problems!) :lol:

You can also experiment with the sugar mix - raw sugar takes a bit longer to process than white sugar (so the mix should last a bit longer) also some people add some molasses or other more complex sugars to slow down the process. The two packages that come with the 'official' nutrafin system are yeast and baking soda. Just use the same amounts that are in those little packages, but buy them more cheaply at the supermarket. I thought there was only about 1/4 teaspoon of each in the little sachets? (It's been years since I used mine so I might be wrong.) Be careful not to put too much of anything to cause the process to over-react and potentially overflow. My understanding is that he mix becomes quite acidic as the process carries on, killing off the yeast. The addition of the baking soda keeps it alkaline for longer, so the yeast can stay alive and make CO2 for longer.

You could use the cinder blocks (we call them breeze blocks - basically hollow concrete blocks) for the uprights, then put wood over the top (spanning the whole length of the tank) and add polystyrene on top of that. I don't see any problem as long as the whole thing is level, and as long as you have enough 'upright' parts that the timber doesn't sag in the middle. As with anything this size & weight, check that the floor is structurally sound before you start as there will be a lot of weight involved! Disclaimer: Personally I have only ever used timber stands so I have no specific experience using concrete blocks.

I don't think either of those products remove chlorine (someone please correct me if I'm wrong). Do you have Stress Coat? It will remove chlorine and add a protective slime coat to your fish which might help with some of their skin problems. You can still hose the water straight in, but just add the recommended amount of chlorine-removing product to the tank. So if you're changing 100 litres of water, follow the instructions on the bottle for treating 100 litres. Some people say they don't bother removing chlorine, but I would suggest that your fish are already weakened from whatever is causing all these problems so it's important to maximise their skin health and gill function. Chlorine in the water can cause problems with both of these. That's why I think it's important to add chlorine-remover.

hmmm... if the tank has only been set up for a week, those readings seem a bit odd. Usually it takes much longer than that to go through the whole cycle. Have you ever had any ammonia show on your tests? Or any nitrite? Or is this the first test you have done? I would suggest doing a water change of about 20% but don't clean the filter. Keep on doing all the tests and let us know what they are if things change.

This definitely sounds like a cycling problem. When you say you change the water and clean the filter, how much of the water are you changing and how clean are you making the filter? I suspect you might be over-cleaning the tank, meaning you are never letting it cycle properly. Sounds like your fish are suffering from ammonia and/or nitrite in the water (both should be 0 in a fully cycled tank). Keep doing water changes (maybe 30 - 50% each day if you have any nitrite or ammonia in the water). When using tap water to top up the tank, make sure you remove the chlorine from it first. And don't clean the filter at all for a while. Do ammonia and nitrite readings every day and let us know what the readings are. I didn't quite understand the part about the dirty gravel. You have no gravel in your tank - is that because the gravel you got was dirty? Or are you intentionally keeping the tank without gravel?

I suspect your fish probably died of another cause before being eaten. And I'm very surprised it could have been eaten so fast! You are definitely better to under-feed rather thatn over-feed, especially when you have diseases breaking out in your tank.