Designed By A 4 Year Old - 10 Gallon

[waterdrop]

Looks a lot like the AC20(aka mini) on my Q-Tank! There's no particular reason to ever take donated MM out of the filter its donated to, until of course the day long away come when you are rinsing it and notice that its beginning to tatter or fall apart or in some way lose its physical integrity. The usual procedure (if there is a usual, lol) is to simply replace (you've probably alread done this) the media that was removed with some similar fresh media in the original filter (since you never remove more than 1/3 of the biomedia to make a donation, its only a small amount of media you are adding. Bacteria will move to the new surface area over the next weeks and months.

Eventually you will squish away the brown debis on that nice white sponge and you will see yellow stains - that will be the biofilms!

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[jmiller]

Well the AC20 has been running for a few hours now and boy is it loud. I'm hoping it's just because it's new and needs time to settle down. It sounds like there is one small piece of gravel inside it somewhere just rattling up against something. If it's still doing it tomorrow I'll check it out further. The AquaTech 5-15 was been cleaned up and boxed to use as a replacement in case of failure of one of the others. To give you an idea the bottom two pieces are about 75% of the original sizes of the onlt two filters in the AquaTech. Now you can see why I was having filter problems. I do have a little more space so I think I'll get some more of that biomax.

I'm just going to treat this like a fish in cycle and test a lot.

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, our ACmini rattles too. I just chalk it up to being a filter built at a tiny fraction of the cost of a normal external cannister. I think its the magnet/impeller rattling around in its space. On ours (quite old) the plastic top cover also harmonically vibrates along with the motor, creating a little hum sound. There was no small amount of irony having a noisy (actually, the water noise in winter with a lot of evaporation creating a greater gap from the filter lip down to the surface is more significant most of the time than the soft little rattle/hum) quarantine tank after spending considerable effort planning out a quiet main tank (the main is utterly silent.)

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[jmiller]

That's exactly what it sounds like, the impeller just barely touching the side every once in a while. Well it wasn't loud enough to bother my sleep so that's all that really matters. I'm definitely taking that into consideration while planning the larger tank.

 

[jmiller]

Tonight's readings before the regular twice a week 50% WC and gravel vac:
HR PH 8.0
ammonia .50
nitrite 0
nitrate 5-10.0


I did a reading last night 24 hrs after the 75% WC and gravel vac at got this:
HR PH 8.0
ammonia .25
nitrite 0
nitrate 10.0

So it appears that I'm getting an additional .25 ppm of ammonia every 24 hrs.

 

[jmiller]

Tonight's readings before the regular twice a week 50% WC and gravel vac:
HR PH 7.9
ammonia .25
nitrite 0
nitrate 7.5

Until I can get consistant readings I think I'm just going to start a three time a week schedule.

 

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[jmiller]

Tonight's readings before the 50% WC and gravel vac:
HR PH 7.9
ammonia .25-.50
nitrite 0
nitrate 10

I've started the three times a week, I'll be on a Tues/Thurs/Sat or Sun schedule. Since I'm doing daily water checks I went ahead and added 1 guppy & 2 cories. The tank is now fully stocked.

 

[waterdrop]

Well, good to see neon world out in Kentucky (am I remembering that right?) has reported in. We're having White World (a rare occurance) here in North Carolina. Got to see the undersides of cars that had flipped as I rode home on the highway just now. Was getting a bit hard up for some fish flakes, so was delighted to find them (even my brand) right on the shelf with the dog and cat food at the supermarket just now.

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[jmiller]

If you're not used to it things can get ugly real quick, that's for sure. I live just south of Louisville and we only got around 4". Pretty usual for this time of year so no big deal. I visited a friend in Raleigh several years ago during a freak cold snap and it got to 38* and the entire city just about shut down because of the "possibility" of ice.

 

[waterdrop]

Yup, that's us in Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, total winter wimps! Winter weather is forecast and millions of people hold their breath in their garages while one guy bravely begins hooking up our one snow blade to the town pickup truck! Actually, what I fear are the ice storms that can take away the electricity, which means a lot more now with a fishtank running! Luckily there are lots of good threads on TFF about that scenerio too. Ah, we didn't even hold classes for students on campus in Chapel Hill today.

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[jmiller]

We had a huge ice storm last year and were without power for 3 1/2 days, I'll try to post up a pic later tonight. So now I have a big generator in my garage just waiting to be fired up. It's big enough to run my furnace, frig, microwave, tv/dvd, and several lamps with a little left over. I won't get stranded like that again.

 

[jmiller]

Here is what 2" of ice will do:

same tree from the oppisite side

Luckily damage was fairly minor considering what it could have been.

 

[waterdrop]

That's heartbreaking, reminds me of our big ice storm.

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[jmiller]

Here are the two latest additions:

I really wish I had known more about these when I was first starting up the tank. They have more personality than anything else in the tank. The next tank will have a much larger shoal.


While just relaxing tonight and staring at the tank I began to notice something. All of the fish were on one side. Look:

They all spend the majority of their time around those rocks. They have been that way since I put first put them in. The heater is on that side also but the tank is showing 78* on the opposite side and I get good circulation so I don't think that is the cause. I may have to start thinking about removing the wood and replacing it with more rock.