Advice For Before We Get Our Fluval Edge
- Thread starter Belstar
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xamy_valox
Fishaholic
Haha, indeed!!
My neons have been fine. They have been the last fish that I have added to the tank but they have got on great and have got slightly bigger from when I first bought them as jouveniles.
I only have 4 but they do tend to stick together and stand their ground against my beta!
The only bullying I have had in the tank is between the guppies!
Amy.
My neons have been fine. They have been the last fish that I have added to the tank but they have got on great and have got slightly bigger from when I first bought them as jouveniles.
I only have 4 but they do tend to stick together and stand their ground against my beta!
The only bullying I have had in the tank is between the guppies!
Amy.
Thanks Amy,
having seen the prices available for the Edge online (ranging from £74 - £99) I rang my LFS
to see what they sold them at. He was surprised that I could get them so low as his cost price + VAT brought it up to £74. He said if he made £10 he'd rather do that than get no sale at all so tomorrow when I have done the school run, I am off to Hilliers in Horsham to buy my tank for £85. Yehhhhhh!!!!
What colour do you have?
Bel
having seen the prices available for the Edge online (ranging from £74 - £99) I rang my LFS
What colour do you have?
Bel
xamy_valox
Fishaholic
Thanks Amy,
having seen the prices available for the Edge online (ranging from £74 - £99) I rang my LFSto see what they sold them at. He was surprised that I could get them so low as his cost price + VAT brought it up to £74. He said if he made £10 he'd rather do that than get no sale at all so tomorrow when I have done the school run, I am off to Hilliers in Horsham to buy my tank for £85. Yehhhhhh!!!!
What colour do you have?
Bel
I can't even remember what I bought mine for now...I think it was either £75 or £80, but that was back when they were about £110 so I was quite chuffed haha!
I got the black one and did buy it with the intention to be all imaginative and creative with it, and get lots of stones and lovely things to make it look great.
But instead I have 3 plants 2 green, 1 red towards the back, leaving the front open with a log in the middle that my beta has decided to claim as his own!
You can make them looks absoloutely gorgeous, but I have no artistic flair!
You will have to post a pic whilst its cycling so we can see what you have done with it!
Amy.
nessar
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Hey!
Don't worry you can put decorations in when you are cycling. The only things that should be avoided are things that upset the PH. I cant think of any except coral sand. Bogwood can change PH very very slightly but not enough to upset a cycle. Plus if you are going to get wood, get it now so it can soak and get rid of all those tannins before you get your fish!
The only thing you might want to not get now is the plants. During the cycling process they can get algae on them, which doesnt look great. Personally I had plants from the start and didnt have that problem. Also if you get any snails or shrimp they will nom away on it.
Also plants will compete with alage for food, so its a good idea to have them.
P.S I've seen the edge looking great with black sand, black background and colourful fish.
Don't worry you can put decorations in when you are cycling. The only things that should be avoided are things that upset the PH. I cant think of any except coral sand. Bogwood can change PH very very slightly but not enough to upset a cycle. Plus if you are going to get wood, get it now so it can soak and get rid of all those tannins before you get your fish!
The only thing you might want to not get now is the plants. During the cycling process they can get algae on them, which doesnt look great. Personally I had plants from the start and didnt have that problem. Also if you get any snails or shrimp they will nom away on it.
Also plants will compete with alage for food, so its a good idea to have them.
P.S I've seen the edge looking great with black sand, black background and colourful fish.
Malt_Vinegar
Fishaholic
If you are near Horsham, I am in Billingshurst, and could probably provide you with some seeded media to speed up the cycle 
Hi Malt Vinegar,
Thank you! Have actually just got back from Hilliers/Horsham Water Gardens having just paid for my Edge in black. We will be collecting it at the weekend to start the cycling.
They had one set up there that looked beautiful. It had male guppies of different colours, black phantom tetra's, khuli loach, tiger snail and pretty tetras.
It was planted up with bogwood, rocks, gravel and anubis nana, crypts and java fern so we are probably going to go for something similar.
What is the seeded media? Can it go in at the start of the cycle?
We live in Horsham but my son's best friend lives in Morris Drive and we are there most weeks so we may be able to pick it up from you if needed.
Let me know and thanks again!
Bel
Thank you! Have actually just got back from Hilliers/Horsham Water Gardens having just paid for my Edge in black. We will be collecting it at the weekend to start the cycling.
They had one set up there that looked beautiful. It had male guppies of different colours, black phantom tetra's, khuli loach, tiger snail and pretty tetras.
It was planted up with bogwood, rocks, gravel and anubis nana, crypts and java fern so we are probably going to go for something similar.
What is the seeded media? Can it go in at the start of the cycle?
We live in Horsham but my son's best friend lives in Morris Drive and we are there most weeks so we may be able to pick it up from you if needed.
Let me know and thanks again!
Bel
Malt_Vinegar
Fishaholic
Cool! I go to Hilliers quite often
Seeded media is just a posh was of describing dirty filter sponge essentially.
When you have a filter, it takes time to establish the good bacteria needed to complete the nitrogen cycle, to fully break down fish waste and keep the water levels safe.
If you start off with a small bit of media from an established tank, you get a nice little kick start to the process which can really speed it up.
If you are interested, i will drop a bit of sponge into one of my filters. It will take a couple of days to seed, then u just need to transfer it to your already running tank in a bag of tank water (I can provide this). You will just need to wedge it into the existing filter material and leave it running.
The advantage of this is you can probably run the tank with 1 small fish off the bat.
Seeded media is just a posh was of describing dirty filter sponge essentially.
When you have a filter, it takes time to establish the good bacteria needed to complete the nitrogen cycle, to fully break down fish waste and keep the water levels safe.
If you start off with a small bit of media from an established tank, you get a nice little kick start to the process which can really speed it up.
If you are interested, i will drop a bit of sponge into one of my filters. It will take a couple of days to seed, then u just need to transfer it to your already running tank in a bag of tank water (I can provide this). You will just need to wedge it into the existing filter material and leave it running.
The advantage of this is you can probably run the tank with 1 small fish off the bat.
Hi Malt,
Sorry for the delay in responding to you.
My wonderful husband decided to mow the front lawn last week and somehow managed to cut through the phone cable as he was little too vigorous with his pushing! So have had no phone or internet access at home until today!
Got our tank on Saturday and have set it up and it is now going through its fish less cycle. In the Edge box there was a bottle of cycle and Nutrafin which cleared the water of chlorine etc. Michael at HWG said that this should suffice. They are brilliant there as he took me around teh shop to show me what I might need and held up a net and said that I would only need this for fishing out dead fish! he then qualified it by saying that as I was going to set my tank up properly, my fish won't die so there's no need for one! He also said not to bother with a home water test kit as they will test my water for free for me every time that I come in (which is pretty frequent).
Anyway, as requested by Amy, please see a picture below of our tank! I had fun with the bogwood as it just wouldn't sink and then I remembered reading on here where someone suggested boiling it. It worked and we've positioned it and the stones and rocks in a way that we hope will give the fish somewhere quiet to hide under/behind. We went for some live plants and hope to start off with around 2 fish within the next few weeks or so whenever I water is ready for them.
Will keep you posted,
Bel
Sorry for the delay in responding to you.
My wonderful husband decided to mow the front lawn last week and somehow managed to cut through the phone cable as he was little too vigorous with his pushing! So have had no phone or internet access at home until today!
Got our tank on Saturday and have set it up and it is now going through its fish less cycle. In the Edge box there was a bottle of cycle and Nutrafin which cleared the water of chlorine etc. Michael at HWG said that this should suffice. They are brilliant there as he took me around teh shop to show me what I might need and held up a net and said that I would only need this for fishing out dead fish! he then qualified it by saying that as I was going to set my tank up properly, my fish won't die so there's no need for one! He also said not to bother with a home water test kit as they will test my water for free for me every time that I come in (which is pretty frequent).
Anyway, as requested by Amy, please see a picture below of our tank! I had fun with the bogwood as it just wouldn't sink and then I remembered reading on here where someone suggested boiling it. It worked and we've positioned it and the stones and rocks in a way that we hope will give the fish somewhere quiet to hide under/behind. We went for some live plants and hope to start off with around 2 fish within the next few weeks or so whenever I water is ready for them.
Will keep you posted,
Bel
xamy_valox
Fishaholic
Heyyy,
It looks wonderful! I wish I could get mine to look as pretty!
Will look even better once you have some little fishies swimming around in there.
If you do go for little tiny fish, just be careful of the filter. You know the plastic tube thats sticks into the water and suck it all up? Well I've had a few of my neons when they were really little and some of my baby guppies end up getting sucked up the pipe and get stuck in the little reservoir at the top underneath the filter media! So to save me worrying about the poor things, I got a sock that you can put over it, a proper fluval one, its basically like a microphone sponge, just to stop the little ones getting sucked up. You might want to look into it when you do get your fish, but its not essential.
Keep me posted on how things go!
Amy xx
It looks wonderful! I wish I could get mine to look as pretty!
Will look even better once you have some little fishies swimming around in there.
If you do go for little tiny fish, just be careful of the filter. You know the plastic tube thats sticks into the water and suck it all up? Well I've had a few of my neons when they were really little and some of my baby guppies end up getting sucked up the pipe and get stuck in the little reservoir at the top underneath the filter media! So to save me worrying about the poor things, I got a sock that you can put over it, a proper fluval one, its basically like a microphone sponge, just to stop the little ones getting sucked up. You might want to look into it when you do get your fish, but its not essential.
Keep me posted on how things go!
Amy xx
Hi Malt,
Sorry for the delay in responding to you.
My wonderful husband decided to mow the front lawn last week and somehow managed to cut through the phone cable as he was little too vigorous with his pushing! So have had no phone or internet access at home until today!
Got our tank on Saturday and have set it up and it is now going through its fish less cycle. In the Edge box there was a bottle of cycle and Nutrafin which cleared the water of chlorine etc. Michael at HWG said that this should suffice. They are brilliant there as he took me around teh shop to show me what I might need and held up a net and said that I would only need this for fishing out dead fish! he then qualified it by saying that as I was going to set my tank up properly, my fish won't die so there's no need for one! He also said not to bother with a home water test kit as they will test my water for free for me every time that I come in (which is pretty frequent).
Anyway, as requested by Amy, please see a picture below of our tank! I had fun with the bogwood as it just wouldn't sink and then I remembered reading on here where someone suggested boiling it. It worked and we've positioned it and the stones and rocks in a way that we hope will give the fish somewhere quiet to hide under/behind. We went for some live plants and hope to start off with around 2 fish within the next few weeks or so whenever I water is ready for them.
Will keep you posted,
Bel
Thanks Amy,
Do you know the hilarious thing though? There's no fish in it yet we sit there staring in at it!!
Funny about your 'sock'. It sounds like something out of Finding Nemo - are you sure that they weren't making a getaway? My LFS has suggested that we stick to male guppies and we will probably do that until we find our 'fish feet'.
Take care and speak soon,
bel
Do you know the hilarious thing though? There's no fish in it yet we sit there staring in at it!!
Funny about your 'sock'. It sounds like something out of Finding Nemo - are you sure that they weren't making a getaway? My LFS has suggested that we stick to male guppies and we will probably do that until we find our 'fish feet'.
Take care and speak soon,
bel
nessar
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Hi Malt,
Sorry for the delay in responding to you.
My wonderful husband decided to mow the front lawn last week and somehow managed to cut through the phone cable as he was little too vigorous with his pushing! So have had no phone or internet access at home until today!
Got our tank on Saturday and have set it up and it is now going through its fish less cycle. In the Edge box there was a bottle of cycle and Nutrafin which cleared the water of chlorine etc. Michael at HWG said that this should suffice. They are brilliant there as he took me around teh shop to show me what I might need and held up a net and said that I would only need this for fishing out dead fish! he then qualified it by saying that as I was going to set my tank up properly, my fish won't die so there's no need for one! He also said not to bother with a home water test kit as they will test my water for free for me every time that I come in (which is pretty frequent).
Anyway, as requested by Amy, please see a picture below of our tank! I had fun with the bogwood as it just wouldn't sink and then I remembered reading on here where someone suggested boiling it. It worked and we've positioned it and the stones and rocks in a way that we hope will give the fish somewhere quiet to hide under/behind. We went for some live plants and hope to start off with around 2 fish within the next few weeks or so whenever I water is ready for them.
Will keep you posted,
Bel
Hey! Well looks like you're ready for your fishless cycle, did you read the links on it? You'll need ammonia, I used boots ammonia - only about £3 for more ammonia than you ever need
Also whilst I was cycling (I finished cycling in about 3 weeks but had another 3 to go after that until I could get my fish) I experimented with cycle and tetra safe start. They dont work. Really dont. I also started a poll on it, see here :
http
/www.fishforums.net/index.php?/topic/327165-bottled-bacteria-poll/page__p__2715126__fromsearch__1&#entry2715126The man in the shop was right, you can get away without testing the water more than once a week once everything is going well, so you could just go see him. For general maintence you will just need to test the water every time before you do a water change. But for cycling you really need to be testing every day or every 2 days at least, to get the right amount of ammonia in the tank. If the bacteria eat all the ammonia without you realising, they'll then starve and die off and undo your hard work! Plus if your fish ever get ill (which will happen) you'll need to test the water straight away. I would reccommend getting the test kits, even if you dont use them much. You can get the API master test kit for about £15 on ebay which has all the tests you need.
A net is optional if you think you can take them out with your hands I guess
But even the best cared for fish someday have to die of illness or old age. They're also good for picking up dead/stray bits of plant and uneaten food. I would personally get one anyway, as you need something to get the fish out of the bags from the fish shop I'm sure you've read up on this already but you shouldn't really let the water in the bags get into your tank. PS... I love that plant back-left of the tank.
sorry if I've just been stating the obvious with all that above!
Hi Guys,
Thought I would give you an update as to how we have been getting on.
Tested the water at our LFS
after about a week and it was a ok. The Fluval Cycle says that it allows you to place fish in the tank almost immediately. However the guys at the LFS said no, leave it another week just to make sure. As we had some algae, they said to buy a couple of snails which we did.
We did that and everything was still ok so we bought two guppies last Saturday - Fish and Chips. Thank my son for the names!
We didn't feed them for two days as advised and when we did, we put a tiny amount, watched if they ate it and if they did quickly, gave them a little extra. Fish chased Chips around the tank, was the bigger and brighter one and it was fun to sit and watch them.
Anyway, on Thursday I did a 10% water change with my gravel cleaner. I didn't want to do anymore as I figured there weren't lots of fish and as it is still a relatively new tank, I didn't want to upset the balance. I added some AquaStart in my tap water before I put it in the tank and added some more cycle in the tank once I had done that.
Throughout the clean etc, both F&C's were fine and very curious and hoovered up the food that I gave them an hour or so afterwards.
Today we fed them as we were going to our LFS to buy some bottom feeders x 2 (I'm sorry I can't remember their names but they were pygmies that don't exceed 2.5cms) and two minnows. They tested our water and they said that it was all ok. When we got home and put the bags in the tank to acclimatise, we realised that we could see Chips but couldn't see Fish.
When we did finally spot him he was hiding underneath a leaf on the gravel with his gills moving quite quickly but doing nothing else. He was like that for about 30 minutes, swam about then did the same thing.
We then couldn't find him for over an hour and I have just spotted him in between the heater and the glass on his side, his gills still moving but not much else.
Fish is doing fine and is loving the company, but do we need to go and get that fish net now??
Bel xx
Thought I would give you an update as to how we have been getting on.
Tested the water at our LFS
We did that and everything was still ok so we bought two guppies last Saturday - Fish and Chips. Thank my son for the names!
We didn't feed them for two days as advised and when we did, we put a tiny amount, watched if they ate it and if they did quickly, gave them a little extra. Fish chased Chips around the tank, was the bigger and brighter one and it was fun to sit and watch them.
Anyway, on Thursday I did a 10% water change with my gravel cleaner. I didn't want to do anymore as I figured there weren't lots of fish and as it is still a relatively new tank, I didn't want to upset the balance. I added some AquaStart in my tap water before I put it in the tank and added some more cycle in the tank once I had done that.
Throughout the clean etc, both F&C's were fine and very curious and hoovered up the food that I gave them an hour or so afterwards.
Today we fed them as we were going to our LFS to buy some bottom feeders x 2 (I'm sorry I can't remember their names but they were pygmies that don't exceed 2.5cms) and two minnows. They tested our water and they said that it was all ok. When we got home and put the bags in the tank to acclimatise, we realised that we could see Chips but couldn't see Fish.
When we did finally spot him he was hiding underneath a leaf on the gravel with his gills moving quite quickly but doing nothing else. He was like that for about 30 minutes, swam about then did the same thing.
We then couldn't find him for over an hour and I have just spotted him in between the heater and the glass on his side, his gills still moving but not much else.
Fish is doing fine and is loving the company, but do we need to go and get that fish net now??
Bel xx
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