indigo
Fish Fanatic
Hi, I took pleasure in receiving a 5ft 4" 500litre/100g holding tank in a mahogany cabinet last year, it was my mum-in-laws, but the tank cracked and after she'd been through the experience of all that water gushing onto her living room floor once she wasn't prepared for it to happen again! hence I got a free tank out of it with all the gubbins i needed to set it up for tropical!
in fact the insurance company paid some dumb dude to come install it, he'd scratched the cabinet right up and i had to threaten him with court action to pay the bill that i'd paid for a french polisher to come and deal with the damage!
that's not the only mistake dumb dude made, he put far too much sand in the bottom, and not set the pipes up for my filters correctly, so 10 months later, white spot ravaged through my tank and took out some lovely occupants, such as a cray that i'd watch grow from tiny, my lovely fire eel, my funny clown loach adults and a few others, i lost my temper with the tank last thursday, and tore all the sand out of the tank, did a major water change (broke a filter, but we won't go there! i have the bits to repair it today! - just as well we have 2!) tank now has an inch of large pebbley gravel, and 2 massive pieces of bogwood, just waiting for the medication to disipate and after my holiday next week i'll put some more rock caves in there and add some floating plants before adding any more fish/eels/cray. (i'd previously had a 4ft tank some 12 years ago, also with a cray, tyretrack eel and in that one i had a peacock eel too)
i'm at a loss as to what to stock the tank with, suggestions would be warmly welcomed! i currently have a few mollies, swordtails, a tyre track eel, a couple of (dwarf) plecs and a few tetras etc - plenty of space to fill up! i was toying with the idea of 8 tiger barbs as I loved watching those dudes chasing each other about, as a group of 8 they didn't seem to go after anything else in the tank, but i'm getting conflicting info from both LFS that i go to, one says yeah go for it, and the other says no way, species only tank. what does everyone else think? suggestions for another shoal of something stunning would be appreciated too, i know what i *don't* like, i'm just having trouble going yes! i really like that!
sorry didn't mean to bore everyone to tears.. lol
in fact the insurance company paid some dumb dude to come install it, he'd scratched the cabinet right up and i had to threaten him with court action to pay the bill that i'd paid for a french polisher to come and deal with the damage!
that's not the only mistake dumb dude made, he put far too much sand in the bottom, and not set the pipes up for my filters correctly, so 10 months later, white spot ravaged through my tank and took out some lovely occupants, such as a cray that i'd watch grow from tiny, my lovely fire eel, my funny clown loach adults and a few others, i lost my temper with the tank last thursday, and tore all the sand out of the tank, did a major water change (broke a filter, but we won't go there! i have the bits to repair it today! - just as well we have 2!) tank now has an inch of large pebbley gravel, and 2 massive pieces of bogwood, just waiting for the medication to disipate and after my holiday next week i'll put some more rock caves in there and add some floating plants before adding any more fish/eels/cray. (i'd previously had a 4ft tank some 12 years ago, also with a cray, tyretrack eel and in that one i had a peacock eel too)
i'm at a loss as to what to stock the tank with, suggestions would be warmly welcomed! i currently have a few mollies, swordtails, a tyre track eel, a couple of (dwarf) plecs and a few tetras etc - plenty of space to fill up! i was toying with the idea of 8 tiger barbs as I loved watching those dudes chasing each other about, as a group of 8 they didn't seem to go after anything else in the tank, but i'm getting conflicting info from both LFS that i go to, one says yeah go for it, and the other says no way, species only tank. what does everyone else think? suggestions for another shoal of something stunning would be appreciated too, i know what i *don't* like, i'm just having trouble going yes! i really like that!
sorry didn't mean to bore everyone to tears.. lol
i'm put off tetras atm, as that was the only fish that visibly had white spot in our tank, even though i know it was just one of those things, i wouldn't have wanted stangant sand where i was living either! thankfully that's all in the past now, i've learned some hard lessons and i'm much more confident that i can maintain a healthy tank now 
