Awesome thanks for all the feedback guys! Sorry I haven't given any updates in a while school assessment has been really hectic the last few days, had 2 hours sleep on friday night and 3 and a half last night
So excuse me in advance if I write any sentences that don't really make octopus.
Okay so, I visited a really old friend of mine, who knows more about aquariums than anyone I have ever met. He used to run a store but it closed a few years ago and by chance I ran into him while meeting with his son on the weekend, needless to say many smiles were had that day! Here's a list of the stuff I picked up from his son (who now runs the store as a private cichlid breeder from their garage).
- 20kg bag of gravel identical to the bag I bought off his father 5 years ago!
pretty cool hey!
- Seachem Stability (see photo)
- More activated carbon for my external. Turns out the stuff in there is over 2 years old! Oops!
In addition to that, he told me the way he has always removed tannins from driftwood is by soaking the wood in a bucket of temp around 28C (82F) or really as high as you can get it, and by adding 1 tablespoon per 10 L of your average household bi-carbonate of soda, to raise the ph up. Because the tannic acid released from the wood has a ph of about 5-6, raising the ph in the soaking water helps to rapidly draw the tannins out as the ph attempts to stabilise.
So for the last 3 days I have had an incredibly bad smelling bucket of slimy wood sap, acid and hot water throughout my bedroom.
Hiro, the son of my friend told me this exact stuff was used to completely cycle 32 tanks in 24 hours when they had to move the store (and live fish) from one side of the city to the other.
Hey Eagle, found this lying around. Cyanoacrylate, means its all sweet, right?
Here is the new look with the extra gravel, I had a bit of a debate with my dad about the depth of it
. He insists it needs to be 2-3 inches deep in order for the roots to prosper, which I sort of agree with, but still plan on taking about a third of all that out , just looks out of proportion to me.
I also set up my second 10 gal tank today as well, and filled it out with the same gravel. So it should soon be set up to be identical in water parameters to the larger tank. My question is, should I use this as a quarantine tank? I really only know the name and not how it works or how to do it so can anyone run me through how to use it as a quarantine tank and what to do with it? Thanks.
Once everything is fully settled in it will most likely become a cory panda breeding project, with a few red cherry shrimp.
Side note: I've discovered that my flow in my tank maybe isn't as great as it could be, the plants do gently sway but for an example, if a gourami made a bubble nest it certainly wouldn't be going anywhere any time soon. Are there any ways to increase this? Without buying a new filter as currently my external filter is worth more than the rest of my entire setup combined...