2nd Hand Tank Purchase?

[BFG]

Hi all,

Am looking at starting up a tank, and rather than go small and need to upgrade, I've found a second hand Rio 180 for sale (1 yr old) and currently unused due to an Oscar needing a new home.

What sort of things do I need to look out for on this? I'm guessing scratched glass & damaged bracing would be a good start, but is there anything I should be looking at filter / heater wise?

If I do get this tank is it worth investing in a separate external filter (if that is possible) and a low wattage heater incase the first one fails?

I'd obviously need to let the tank stand for a while and deal with the cycling process, but should I replace all the filter media and start from scratch or use what was in there to speed things up?

Once things are getting settled, I'm hoping to have some tetras, guppies, and corys. Is it worth getting any shrimp / snails once the tank has been running for a couple of months?

Apologies for all the questions, but hopefully someone can help!!

Thanks from a newbie,

BFG

 

[simonbrown403]

HI and welcome to the forum.

have a good look at the tank, check for scraches ect ect, check the silicone to make sure its in good nick,
but if its a year old there should't be a problem.

Make sure all the stuff is there and working although you can buy replacments, check the light to make sure they switch on and off as some times they can go and can be exspencive to replace (about £50+).

Also check the strecher bar which is a black piece of plastic which will span from front to back, make sure its not cracked etc and it is sucurly attached to the front and back, as theis can be a common fault in juwel rio's.

You can replace the filter pads if you want but it will cost about £20 ish for a new set consisting of 4 blue pads 2 fine and 2 corase, 1 black carbon pad and a white floss pad, a tip for these is buy is to buy a sheet of filter floss for ponds at about £3 which will make about 6/8 compared to the 2 juwel brand you get for about £4+.
Depending on the condistion of these you should ba able to waste them out realy well in hot water, to clean and steralize them.
If you know the person your buying the tank off and they havnt had any problems, you might want to keep the pads wet in some old tank water saving the the hassal of cycling, but you will still have to setle the tanks temp which shold only take a few days.

Exsternal filters are good and give extra spece in the tank, but the juwel internal filters are more than adiquate for the tank, most of my tanks are filterd by them, and contain discus amonst other fish.
There's no need to have a backup in the tank, but you should always have a back up handy just in case.
I,ve had cases when the heater has bust in my discus tank and the temp ahs droped to 29'C from 22'C over night without any problems to the fish.

As for the shrimp i think they are quite sensetive, so they might not be the best chose for a beginer, dont know much about snails, but i would say its the same.

 

[rdd1952]

Hello and welcome to the forum.

The shrimp should be fine. I added 2 ghost shrimp about 3 weeks after my 29 gallon was set up back in January (and it wasn't cycled - didn't know about cycling back then) and still have one of them. Lost the other about a month ago. One question you should ask is what chemicals or other things they may have added to the tank. If there has ever been any copper added, it can be absorbed by the silicon sealant and then leech back out into the tank, killing any inverts like shrimp.

 

[BFG]

Hi both,

Thanks for the advice - I've now picked up the tank and it all looks good. Got a bit of a bargain by the looks of things, so will get the tank cycled and in the mean time decide exactly which way to go.

Also, cheers for the welcome - seems like a good place here so should hopefully be hanging around for quite a while