My dad's 57.7 gallon/218 litre ancient tank, after a year of learning and gradually working on it. Wish I could find a before photo, will have to check my dad's camera and see if he has any shots on there.
Current water parameters
Ammonia 0
Nitrites 0
Nitrates - Usually between 10-40ppm now, but well over 200ppm when I first tested a year ago.
GH > 14
KH Usually between 10-15
pH between 7.2 and 7.6
Permanent stocking (brace yourselves)
Two elderly Botia, at least eight -nine years old, exact species unknown, but look very similar to yoyos. Suspect male and female
corydoras aeneus (bronze cories) -2, male and female
1 honey gourami, male
2 zebra danios
Neon tetra -2
Cardinal tetra - 3
Black neon tetra - 3
glowlight tetra - 3
Harlequin rasbora - 5
Livebearers
Mollies 3 large black and silver patterned, 1 male and 2 female. Have been in there at least five years, produce a lot of young
2 yellow, male and female, adult and sub adult
1 gold dust female
Guppies - 3 male, ones I'd bred that he wanted to keep, will rescue these once treatment is finished and I have tank space so my male/female ratio isn't out of balance, since they're getting their tails nipped. Only seems to be happening to the guppies, everything else has short fins
Platies - 2 female santa mickey mouse
2 male red mickey mouse
2 blue females
3 young female orange mickey mouse, offspring of santa platy females and red mickey mouse males. He might be willing to part with these orange ones to reduce breeding, if he can keep a couple of the young male orange fry instead, but I'm concerned about the breeding and about throwing male female ratios off.
Mollie and platy fry of several sizes and colour variations. The mollies don't appear to breed outside of their colour form for some reason, but the platies have no such restraint. Have some blue platy fry since his females were gravid when he got them, have also spotted a couple of fry that look as though they might be blue patterned on an orange background, so will be interesting to see those when they're larger.
I periodically catch up a load of youngsters once they're large enough to avoid the shops filter system and take them to LFS. Way overdue doing that, which has it pretty overstocked right now.
3 assassin snails and about a billion tiny ramshorn snails.
I'm aware that the stocking is a nightmare mix of hard and soft water fish and bad schooling numbers. I'm limited in what I can do since it isn't my tank, and my father is in his 80s now and resistant to change, or to hearing what he doesn't want to hear. My folks were in the aviaries and aquatics business for years 40 odd years ago, and fish keeping has changed a lot in that time. Plus really, the aquatics side was my mum's area of expertise, and birds were my dads. But he has kept a tank in the house throughout my childhood and until now, and he came from a time when whether the fish had hard or soft water wasn't a concern. All they cared about was whether it was a community fish or not. My mum has dementia now, and doesn't really get involved with the tank other than watching it and pointing things out sometimes.
He's gradually let me take over more of the maintenance since I moved in to care for them last year. He used to mainly top up the tank rather than gravel clean or water change, and would only use rain water from a covered water barrel. Didn't trust ''chemicals' in tap water or water conditioner. Used to turn off the filter in the hood (never got cleaned) for a few days every now and then "to rest the motor". Didn't connect that to the water turning cloudy for days afterwards. Disliked my doing water changes when I began taking care of the tank, thinks too many changes or too large water changes are bad for the fish. I've done so many sneaky water changes when he's out or asleep. I've gradually moved the ratio over to 3/4s tap to 1/4 rain, since he mostly has livebearers now and the tapwater here is 253ppm, which is okay for the livebearers and cories, not so much for the loaches (presumably, species unknown) and tetra/rasbora, but rainwater is limited during summer especially, and trying to get him to stick to hard water species in future. He's really into the platies right now, less so the other fish. The black mollies were my mums and he doesn't like them much. The tetra are mostly elderly remains of larger schools, so I don't want to get more to up the tetra schools, only to condemn them to hard water. The cories I plan to up the school number to six, since he thinks he got them 2-3 years ago, and they can live in our water range.
The only plants that were in there before were some hardy but sad looking crypts and two dying swords. Just before I got a tank last year and learned more, his tank had been taken over by a stubborn black algae/diatom thing that coated everything for months. Leaves, gravel, rocks and driftwood/glass, it didn't come off easily at all and nothing he was trying seemed to work. He ended up half tearing it down and removing most gravel, all decor and plants etc, and enlisted me to help with the physical stuff. By the time he'd trimmed all the algae coated leaves, there were only roots left, which he left outside in a bucket of substrate and water. Did seem to get rid of the algae though. His driftwood couldn't go back in since it had degraded so far it was flaking into bits.
Over the last year I've added more filtration and convinced him that modern filter motors don't need time to rest, and not to turn them off. Added a load more plants, many of which die, but java fern and moss does well enough, as does elodea or hornwort and duckweed. I add water lettuce from my tanks but it seems to fail in there.
Sorry for the essay! So much more I want to add as well. Really I'd love to tear the whole thing down, scrape all the ugly green paint from the back and one side, replace the substrate etc, but he likes the paint, substrate, slate etc, so it has to stay. The river stone/sand mix substrate doesn't seem to have damaged the barbels on the cories and loaches, but he has agreed to let me create a sand 'beach' sort of area at the front to feed the bottom dwellers on.
Current water parameters
Ammonia 0
Nitrites 0
Nitrates - Usually between 10-40ppm now, but well over 200ppm when I first tested a year ago.
GH > 14
KH Usually between 10-15
pH between 7.2 and 7.6
Permanent stocking (brace yourselves)
Two elderly Botia, at least eight -nine years old, exact species unknown, but look very similar to yoyos. Suspect male and female
corydoras aeneus (bronze cories) -2, male and female
1 honey gourami, male
2 zebra danios
Neon tetra -2
Cardinal tetra - 3
Black neon tetra - 3
glowlight tetra - 3
Harlequin rasbora - 5
Livebearers
Mollies 3 large black and silver patterned, 1 male and 2 female. Have been in there at least five years, produce a lot of young
2 yellow, male and female, adult and sub adult
1 gold dust female
Guppies - 3 male, ones I'd bred that he wanted to keep, will rescue these once treatment is finished and I have tank space so my male/female ratio isn't out of balance, since they're getting their tails nipped. Only seems to be happening to the guppies, everything else has short fins
Platies - 2 female santa mickey mouse
2 male red mickey mouse
2 blue females
3 young female orange mickey mouse, offspring of santa platy females and red mickey mouse males. He might be willing to part with these orange ones to reduce breeding, if he can keep a couple of the young male orange fry instead, but I'm concerned about the breeding and about throwing male female ratios off.
Mollie and platy fry of several sizes and colour variations. The mollies don't appear to breed outside of their colour form for some reason, but the platies have no such restraint. Have some blue platy fry since his females were gravid when he got them, have also spotted a couple of fry that look as though they might be blue patterned on an orange background, so will be interesting to see those when they're larger.
I periodically catch up a load of youngsters once they're large enough to avoid the shops filter system and take them to LFS. Way overdue doing that, which has it pretty overstocked right now.
3 assassin snails and about a billion tiny ramshorn snails.
I'm aware that the stocking is a nightmare mix of hard and soft water fish and bad schooling numbers. I'm limited in what I can do since it isn't my tank, and my father is in his 80s now and resistant to change, or to hearing what he doesn't want to hear. My folks were in the aviaries and aquatics business for years 40 odd years ago, and fish keeping has changed a lot in that time. Plus really, the aquatics side was my mum's area of expertise, and birds were my dads. But he has kept a tank in the house throughout my childhood and until now, and he came from a time when whether the fish had hard or soft water wasn't a concern. All they cared about was whether it was a community fish or not. My mum has dementia now, and doesn't really get involved with the tank other than watching it and pointing things out sometimes.
He's gradually let me take over more of the maintenance since I moved in to care for them last year. He used to mainly top up the tank rather than gravel clean or water change, and would only use rain water from a covered water barrel. Didn't trust ''chemicals' in tap water or water conditioner. Used to turn off the filter in the hood (never got cleaned) for a few days every now and then "to rest the motor". Didn't connect that to the water turning cloudy for days afterwards. Disliked my doing water changes when I began taking care of the tank, thinks too many changes or too large water changes are bad for the fish. I've done so many sneaky water changes when he's out or asleep. I've gradually moved the ratio over to 3/4s tap to 1/4 rain, since he mostly has livebearers now and the tapwater here is 253ppm, which is okay for the livebearers and cories, not so much for the loaches (presumably, species unknown) and tetra/rasbora, but rainwater is limited during summer especially, and trying to get him to stick to hard water species in future. He's really into the platies right now, less so the other fish. The black mollies were my mums and he doesn't like them much. The tetra are mostly elderly remains of larger schools, so I don't want to get more to up the tetra schools, only to condemn them to hard water. The cories I plan to up the school number to six, since he thinks he got them 2-3 years ago, and they can live in our water range.
The only plants that were in there before were some hardy but sad looking crypts and two dying swords. Just before I got a tank last year and learned more, his tank had been taken over by a stubborn black algae/diatom thing that coated everything for months. Leaves, gravel, rocks and driftwood/glass, it didn't come off easily at all and nothing he was trying seemed to work. He ended up half tearing it down and removing most gravel, all decor and plants etc, and enlisted me to help with the physical stuff. By the time he'd trimmed all the algae coated leaves, there were only roots left, which he left outside in a bucket of substrate and water. Did seem to get rid of the algae though. His driftwood couldn't go back in since it had degraded so far it was flaking into bits.
Over the last year I've added more filtration and convinced him that modern filter motors don't need time to rest, and not to turn them off. Added a load more plants, many of which die, but java fern and moss does well enough, as does elodea or hornwort and duckweed. I add water lettuce from my tanks but it seems to fail in there.
Sorry for the essay! So much more I want to add as well. Really I'd love to tear the whole thing down, scrape all the ugly green paint from the back and one side, replace the substrate etc, but he likes the paint, substrate, slate etc, so it has to stay. The river stone/sand mix substrate doesn't seem to have damaged the barbels on the cories and loaches, but he has agreed to let me create a sand 'beach' sort of area at the front to feed the bottom dwellers on.
I think they're already doing a lot better, I couldn't believe the nitrate readings when I first started testing, I don't know how so many fish survived. Only tough ones left in there now.
), with soft/hard water issues and schooling sizes being lesser offences.
the mind boggles!!
