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JuniorTheGoldfish

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Hi there,
I joined this forum after reading some nice posts and seeing some photos of some excellent aquariums. This has given me something to aspire to. I have recently purchsed a Fluval Vicenza 260 with a limited edition cabinet and have it put together but am waiting on some parts before I begin filling it up. I am an avid animal lover with 6 goldfish and 2 dogs. I have been keeping goldfish for about 20 years and like them because they are easy to keep and train. However after longing to get a warmwater aquarium for a long time I went and purchased a large 248 litre one from Fluval. The aquarium is filtered by a Fluval 305, heated with the Fluval E 300watt heater with VueTech technology and illuminated with GLO T5 HO lamps.

So far I have only the basic assembly complete but once my backgrounds arrive this week I will begin filling it and conditioning the water. I have attached a few photos so you can see the state of the tank now and also some shots of my 40 litre gold fish tank.

New tank, sizing was importand as I only had 140cm available so went for a max of 120 to let me with 10cm each side.
IMG_0596.jpg


Here is a shot of the Limited Edition cabinet with the integrated night light, this will serve to entice the night time feeders to come out.
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The Vicenza tank has an integtated light timer which is very nice.
IMG_0598.jpg


The filter is in the base of the cabinet and the connection pipes are through the base of the tank, so no pipes out the top of the tank.
IMG_0599.jpg


All the equipment comes in the kit including this Fluval heater with integrated temperature display. It has a nice little toggle switch on the top to adjust the temperature as well. The temperature display will show in Blue for too cold, Green for just right and red for too warm.
IMG_0600.jpg


Here is another shot of the front of the tank with my little wheaton terrier getting his head in the way.
IMG_0601.jpg


Here is a shot of my gold fish tank, Jr is the gold one that is now 7 - 8 years old.
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Here is another shot of the goldfish. I have 1 Fantail, 2 comets, 2 black moor and a veil tail.
IMG_0604.jpg


I am wondering if anyone can give some advise on what plants I can put in immedietly to help get the cycle going? I want to plant around the back and sides of the tank but do not know much about them since the goldfish have always had artificial plants. So all advise will be appreciated. :)

Thanks,
Jr The Goldfish
 
hi thats a very snazzy tank. it will look good wen its filled up and theres fish in it. With the plants, they will be fine in tap water whilst it is maturing so you can get them once you have filled it up. just make sure if you get tropical plants then the water isnt freezing.

good look
 
hello and welcome to our forum. apart from gold fish you can keep lots of fishes which are easy to maintain like platy, guppy, swordtail, molly and some bottom feederr like pleco or clown loach...
 
hello and welcome to our forum. apart from gold fish you can keep lots of fishes which are easy to maintain like platy, guppy, swordtail, molly and some bottom feederr like pleco or clown loach...

This tank isnt big enough for common plecs or clown loaches long term - please stop posting things like this discus lover.

To Junior -

Welcome to the forum! :D That tank looks great, that stand is pretty fancy with its night light. Personally I would have rather have the tank the same size as the stand for most water capacity. But still 260 liters is a good size tank :)

Just one thing first about your goldfish, I think it might be worthwhile you having a read the advice here - http://www.fishforums.net/index.php?/topic/43980-gold-fish-in-tanks/ just to consider the care of your goldfish atm.

With the new tank, when you say add plants to get the cycle going not sure what this means? I would reccomend you do whats called a fishless cycle which is where you add a small amount of pure house hold ammonia each day to promote bacteria growth in the colony it takes about 5 weeks to do but will make the tank 100% safe for fish when this form of cycling is finished.

Did you have any ideas as to what fish you wanted? As for plants easy plants are always good, things like valis, giant valis and amazon swords. Java fern, Java moss etc

Wills
 
Thanks for the replies. Nice welcome too :) cheers.
Unfortunately I inherited some of the goldfish as I would not normally keep the comets with the fan tails or black moors but I do make sure they are all well fed and healthy. I am not 100% sure what fish I am going to keep in the large aquarium but I will start simple with fish such as neon tetras and after a few weeks will try a few guppys and molly and some bottom feeders like the pleco or clown loach like you recommended discus_lover - thanks for the advise. I was reading that by adding the plants in early that this will help in getting the nitrogen cycle going quickly as they will speed up the first cycle - not sure how true it is. I will be using some Nutrafin Aqua Plus to treat the metals and chlorine in our water and will use the Nutrafin Cycle to get the good bacteria started. These are the Nutrafin products I will use more or less because the Nutrafin products were always good for my goldies and are readily available here and from some of my friends that have 350 ltr tanks it works well with the type of water in our area. Thanks for your words hedgehog738, I will keep you updated with pictures as I progress with my fishies.
Thanks Wills as well I will look for some plants as you suggested next weekend at some of the pet stores near me, I have asked some of my friends as well and thay have some valis and Java fern so I might start with these if I can get them. Who knows I have plenty of space so it depends on what is available in the stores. I would prefer to have some tall plants at the back and some smaller ones around the sides.
Thanks all for your kind words and helpful advise. :)
Jr.
 
welcome!

okay, before you go any further, as far as your stocking goes - - "Starting off with simple fish like neon tetras"....neons are not a simple fish!!! they are in fact a very delicate fish who need to be introduced into a WELL established tank (meaning a tank that has been FULLY cycled and maintained a minimum of 6 months.


if you go for a fishless cycle (the best way to go - - it means you have to be patient but it also means no fish will be harmed in the meantime), it will be up to a couple months before you are ready for fish. if you want neons....you need to wait 6 months FROM THIS POINT, not from when you started.

so, while you do your cycling, start going to stores, seeing what fish are available in your area, note down what catches your eye, then RESEARCH RESEARCH RESEARCH.

do not go by what the pet store tells you, they may seem honest, but they are more interested in making money from selling you fish, then having paid their employee to waste their time talking to you for you to not buy....

its not a waste of money/time for you....but for a business to see a prospective customer talking to an employee for 30-60 min about this fish and that fish, then to buy nothing once they realize the fish is not suitable...the store looses money. BUT if they can get their employee to tell you small lies to match what you want to hear, then you buy fish and they have made profit.


so, go in. see what you like. write down the names, and come on here and ASK - - the members here give up their time for free and have nothing to gain from leading you in the wrong direction. when we tell you what will, or more importantly, will NOT work....its from our hearts...and not our pockets :good:
 
Hi,
Not to spoil the positivity but plants do not help start the nitrogen cycle in any aquarium. They are in fact the last factor of the 'chain' when it comes to establishing your tank as what you need first is ammonia-something plants don't produce, however, I think that it is a great idea to add them to your aquarium, as long as they are all hardy species.
You could add liquid ammonia, as suggested above or, if you are willing to take a risk you could add some hardy fish. It was good of you, Jenste, to point out that neons aren't the fish to buy first when starting a cycle. I agree here and would suggest the guppy, molly, swordtail, platy and other small, hardier species.
Dylan
Good luck, your goldfish look very happy and your new aquarium looks amazing, can't wait to see how it turns out!
 
All I can say again is thanks for the advise, seems I get mixed advise where ever I go and some people have told me that the neons are the "simplest" to keep, however I now stand corrected so thanks for that. I will do as much research as I can before I put anything in, and what I was told about plants seems to be fairly not true as well. Amazing what some people will tell you when they say that they are experts!

Thanks again,
Jr.
 
Welcome to the forum Junior.
Unfortunately, no plant will really help get your filter's cycle going. You are in a position that many new members would envy. You have a mature filter that is supporting your goldfish. That means that you can clone that filter to serve your new tropical tank. Whether you use the new tank as a cleaning bucket for your old filter or steal some media from the old filter to add to your new tank's filter, you can get that clone going. Then you simply treat the new tank as a fishless cycle and, in my experience, you end up with a fully cycled tank in less than a week. You can't beat that with any other method.
Once you get the filter cycled, probably in short order, you can indeed use plants to help you control nitrogen in your tank. In my NPT tank, I find it impossible to ever find nitrate levels over 10 ppm. I have measured it after 6 months without a water change and found less than 10 ppm of nitrates in this tank. I would not advocate using the plants in place of the cycled bacteria but find that plants in high numbers and growing vigorously can indeed remove tons of nitrogen from the water.
XenotaeniaCrop.jpg


On the other hand a lightly planted tank like this one will do very little to reduce your nitrogen readings.
Aponogetifolia1024.jpg
 
*** UPDATE 01-01-2011 ***

Hi All,
first off apologies for not being back here in such a long time but work has had me extremely busy and away from home a lot as well.

Ok now onto my tank, so I cycled the the tank for the best part of 1 month before I introduced some tough fish. I got some Zebra and Leopard Danios and a shaul of 6 Black Widow Tetras and a Suckermouth catfish initially. All the these have survived bar one Danio who managed to get himself stuck up the side of the tank where one of my air lines had come loose. I introduced them all slowely and only a few at a time over the past six months with very little fish losses. The main losses I had was when I was gifted 15 Neons in week 5 by a friend and all died withing 3 weeks. The tank was not ready for them I guess. Since then no more losses. So my current stock is as follows in the order I got them:

3 x Zebra Danio
2 x Leopard Danio
1 x Suckermouth Catfish
1 x Platinum Sailfin Molly
1 x Golden Metallic Marble Sailfin Molly
1 x Blacktailed Guppy
5 x Cherry Barbs
5 x Green Barbs
2 x Bala Sharks
1 x Zebra Loach
3 x Kribensis
1 x 3 Spot Dwarf Guarmi
1 x Blackfin Cory Doras
1 x Golden Tiger Barb
2 x Swordtails
2 x Blue Dolphin Something??? (LFS was not sure of their exact species, maybe someone here can identify them?)



Plant wise I have some Anubis, Rotala, 2 types of Pogostemon and some others I do not know the names of (Again maybe someone here can help me identify them?)

Recently I had a double tragedy, I am not sure who the culprit is but it was with my favourite fish my Golden Metallic Marble Sailfin Molly who is a real character as he constanlty follows my female Platinum Sailfin Molly and raises his dorsel fin every time she even looks at him. They have bred a few time and I was able to save only 1 fry before the other fish ate them and under some advice I released the fry into the main tank after 2 months in the floating breeding tank. It has in the last few days gone missing and I have a feeling the 3 spot Guarmi may have eaten him. Also in the last few days my female Platinum Sailfin has gone from a very bright white to a darker colour and just yesterday when the lights came on I noticed someone had attacked "Goldy" my Golden Metallic Marble Sailfin Molly. His tail was completely eaten off but he is still alive and is trying to swim without much luch. I have moved him to the now empty floating breeding tank. I really hope he survives and again the Guarmi is the main suspect as he seems to be the most aggressive fish in the whole tank.

Ok so now onto some pictures:
Main tank (you can see the recovery ward at the top front for my poor little Sailfin)
IMG_0826.jpg


Golden Tiger barb
IMG_0814.jpg


3 Spot Dwarf Guarmi
IMG_0815.jpg


Male and Female Sword Tails
IMG_0817.jpg


Suckermouth catfish
IMG_0821.jpg


1 of the Kribensis
IMG_0823.jpg


Green Tiger barbs
IMG_0855.jpg


Cory Doras
IMG_0838.jpg


Unknown plant?????
IMG_0841.jpg


One of my rather plump Black Widow Tetras
IMG_0818.jpg


Bala Sharks
IMG_0820.jpg

IMG_0819.jpg


One of the lightening fast Danios
IMG_0831.jpg


Pogostemon (helferi)
IMG_0835.jpg


Unknown Blue Dolphin somehting or other ???
IMG_0849.jpg

IMG_0851.jpg


Cherry barbs
IMG_0850.jpg


Another unknown plant ???
IMG_0834.jpg


So if anyone can help me identify my unknown fish and plants I would really appreciate it. Also if anyone has any idea on who is the most likely culprit on the Sailfin attack please let me know. I am not observing any bad behaviour from anyone in the tank so only have size to go on really.
Thanks for looking,
Junior
 
Hello,
I would say your Molly has suffered fin loss to your green tiger barbs(fin nipping bullies). Your golden tiger barb is in fact a albino tiger barb. Sorry don't keep live plants at the mo so can't help you there.

Keith.
 
Hello,
I would say your Molly has suffered fin loss to your green tiger barbs(fin nipping bullies). Your golden tiger barb is in fact a albino tiger barb. Sorry don't keep live plants at the mo so can't help you there.

Keith.

Really - wow thanks fella, I feel bad now for blaming the Guarmi. The LFS said the golden coloured Barb was a Golden Barb but he does swim with the Green barbs all the time. I have actually seen two tigers stuck in a fight together before and it did go on for a long time before they seperated. Looked harmless but was a little agressive alright. Maybe I need more of them to calm the agression?
 
Unknown plant #1: looks to me like Hygrophila polysperma, but don't quote me on that...
Unknown plant #2 (the last pic): looks like Crypt. Wendtii imo. Really easy to grow plant. I've got way too much of the stuff in my tanks.

also;
Your "Suckermouth Catfish" looks to me to be a Common Pleco, which will grow to be -huge- and much to large for this tank.
 

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