robincushing
Fish Fanatic
I may be an author but this has been a challenge and a half to write.
**My Marine Diary**
As I have gained so much help and knowledge from all you great people on this forum I thought I would write a journal describing my experience in keeping fish. I hope this will be of help to anyone else thinking of starting a fish tank.
I have learned some things the hard way, and some things through extensive research, so if this helps prevent others making the same mistakes I did then all the better.
In February 2007 I started out with a 117lt fresh water tank.
In this tank I had a male and female gourami (admiringly very beautiful fish for tropical water tank)
some rainbow neon's
and dotty the fish, I cant quite remember what fish it was.
Due to 1 tiny trumpet snail coming in with 2 sucker fish, within 6 months I had more snails in there than I did gravel and the tank began to crash.
How was I to know they didn't need pairs to breed!
At that time i had decided not to continue with fish keeping and was heading down the lizard route instead.
After a lot of umming and ahhing I decided to give it another bash. Besides, a lizard just sits there doing nothing, and the fish would at least reduce my tv viewing time. I find I watch the tank more than the tv these days.
I wanted to go for Marine fish because they were far more beautiful than the plain looking colours of fresh water fish and I wanted to have corals as I had always loved the look of them.
So I took the plunge. I bit the bullet, reset up my tank as marine, bought a skimmer, external filter, new gravel, some ornaments, fake looking coral plants and new lights and waited very impatiently for 2-3 months for the water stats to settle and the cycle to finish and there I had it, a lovely clean looking tank, albeit no fish yet but a nice tank of marine water to look at.
So the time came about 3 months later that I felt the desire to put something in my tank rather than just water and ornaments.
I had constantly been nagging my friend who worked in the fish shop if i could put fish in yet and she had kept saying not yet. But now she said it was ok. yipeeee.
I bought 2 Percula clown fish.
A month later I got a Red Mandarin Fish, which I guess was more of an impulse buy as I didn't realise they were such picky eaters.
A month after that I got a long nosed hawk fish.
I think I then left it 2 months (due to lack of money) before I got a red kneed hermit crab, and 2 weeks after that 2 fire shrimp.
Everything was starting to take shape. My lovely tank of pretty water was slowly filling up with lovely fish and cleaning crew.
A few months later and I was on the prowl for more tank inhabitants.
After loads of scrolling through this forum and getting loads of help from all the great people on here, I got a mine urchin who munches away on my ever growing algae like nobodies business.
Everything was going great. Except for the annoying green algae\diatoms that were growing in the tank and refusing to budge whatever I did. I eventually grew used to it and believed it was there to stay.
I even took to my own experiments to find out what was causing it, and covered half the tank in black sheeting for a week. When I took it off there was a distinct line of algae growing where the sheeting was and not a single bit of algae in sight on that half of the tank.
Had I found the cause?
It was now about a year that my tank had been up and running and I was bored of the tiny size my 2ft tank was and wanted bigger. Not to mention the fact I discovered I was almost at my limit for fish in this tank.
So, I was discussing this with my long term friend who works in the local fish shop, and low and behold she was getting rid of her 240lt tank.
I whipped this up at a bargain price.
This was now mid 2009
I then had the task of transferring everything.
I wanted to put the new tank at the other end of the room as I believed the direct sunlight on the tank was causing the algae, and maybe moving it would stop this.
so The new tank was already in place with new gravel, filter and such like ready to be switched on. I took out as much water as I could from the old tank and put it in the new one, leaving just enough for the fish that were still in it.
This took about an hour as I wanted to do it slow so as not to stress the fish any more than they already would be.
Using a net and my fish jug the inhabitants were transferred. then I added the rest of the water, leaving the algae covered gravel and yucky water where it was.
About 2 hours later it was all transferred, heaters already on and pump switched on. The water was a mirky colour and took a good few hours to clear.
The new tank, being 240lt was only half full as I had only taken out the old water from my 117lt 2ft tank at this point.
I then took to adding 1 bucket of salt water (slowly) every day for the next week or so until the new tank was full.
I thought if I did it bit at a time I would reduce stress, time for water to heat up, and filtration to keep up and not have too much of a re-cycle.
All this went very well and everyone seemed happy in their new home, finding new places to hide. There was no cycle and I was happy with my new BIGGER tank.
The tank had been full for about 1 week before the dreaded algae kicked in again and everything was a greenish brown once more.
My sunlight theory was broken and I was at a loss of what could be causing it.
Yet more hours spent on these forums and I was advised to try power heads. I Went and got a nice strong power head from flee bay and a few days later the algae began to subside.
Maybe now I was finally winning the battle.
it did stop where the water flow was so I knew what the problem was. Still think I need to get another power head for the other side of the tank though as the left hand side still gets a little brown but nothing like it was.
I then wanted to get the live rock I had been after for ages, and with another talk with my friend at the shop, she told me about this advert in the local paper for a guy selling 30kg of live rock.
It was an hours drive, which seemed more like 2, but we got there.
I don't know if it was because I was tired or gullible, but I still cant understand why on earth I bought this crap.
It was in a tank in the garden. Logic tells you that marine live rock should be in a heated tank indoors yes? I just looked at the rock and thought wow. He was asking £50, I offered him £25 he said ok.
He also asked if I wanted a pump and skimmer. I said i didn't and went to get my money.
When I came back he told me as I had driven so far he would chuck these in for free. Cool.
It wasn't till I finally got back home another hour later, and weighed it I found it was 16kg of rock not 30 as described, but still it sounded like a bargain.
I put the live rock in and spent the next few days rearranging it several times to get it how I wanted it but to no avail.
Over this time I found loads of mud and leaves coming out of this so called live rock and my suspicions began to grow.
Also as I was moving the rock about, as careful as I was, I found it was breaking off far too easily and careful inspection only made me even more suspicious.
I decided this couldn't be live rock and if it was it certainly wasn't that alive.
So I decided to get rid of it.
This and the fact it looked horrible and was nothing how I wanted it.
So over the next few weeks I removed a few bits here and there and replaced with ocean rock.
So now I have 2 pieces of the so called live rock left. They don't look too bad under the other rock so I'm going to leave them there.
I also have 2 pieces of live rock I got from the fish shop.
I then bought 3 snails to help with the tank clean up. 1 conch and 2 nassarus snails.
About 1 month ago things started to go wrong. First I found my female clown fish was bullying the other and after 3 days it died. Despite my efforts to help him.
I got another one, a small one, hoping she would be ok with this one, but she didn't like him either and he too died.
Then as I was off ill with flu virus I took it upon myself to do a water change about 2am as I was wide awake and I made the biggest mistake of all. I sorted out the water, got it all ready, but didn't heat it up enough before putting it in the tank.
As I was finishing putting the last bit in, 1 of my fire shrimp swam past, went swimming straight up to the surface, flipped on to his back and fell to the bottom. He was still moving but just lay there on his back.
He lasted 2 days and he died.
Then about 2 weeks ago, my other fire shrimp died. This time I was not even anywhere near the tank so cant be blamed for that one.
2 days after that I realised I had not seen my snails for a few days. This doesn't normally bother me as my hermit crab hides sometimes for weeks on end before he appears.
I was looking around he tank and found it. But something told me there was something wrong.
I picked it up and brought it out of the water to inspect it and the instant smell told me it was long gone.
I can still only find 1 snail. The other one has vanished into thin air, shell and all. Mystery.
I did some water tests and the nitrite and nitrate were a little high. I say a little because they have always been 0 ever since my initial cycle. Whether this was due to the fake live rock, the dying critters or something else I still don't know.
But after several water changes it still didn't seem to go down.
So I had an internal filter come with the tank when I bought it, so I put this in the tank as well as the external I have.
This seemed to help and the nitrite is now back to 0 and the nitrate is close to it.
I removed my internal skimmer (another cheap flee bay buy) because the annoying suckers kept falling off.
When I get around to it I plan to find out how the skimmer works that the live rock guy gave me.
SO as it stands today, I have 1 clown fish,
1 red mandarin,
1 long nosed hawk fish,
1 sea urchin,
1 red kneed hermit crab and 1 nassarus snail.
The rocks are now to my liking (near enough) and the water appears ok again.
I'm on the look out for getting a blue tang and some more shrimp and snails. Then I'm going to complete the tank with the corals I have dreamed of. This is the main reason I went for marine in the first place.
the main things I have learned from all this are:
don't skimp on things, especially live rock. Don't just get it because someone says it is, make sure its proper stuff.
Take your time when cleaning the tank, fish and critters stress very easily.
Research as much as you can before you go and get whatever it is you want to get. and then when your ready, come on here and research some more.
it will save you a lot of stress, anguish, and expense in the long run.
I will keep you all posted when anything new is added and I hope this journal was helpful to at least 1 person.
And thank you to Selfie and all the others on here for their help in my sometimes silly and simple questions.
thank you
View attachment 58411
**My Marine Diary**
As I have gained so much help and knowledge from all you great people on this forum I thought I would write a journal describing my experience in keeping fish. I hope this will be of help to anyone else thinking of starting a fish tank.
I have learned some things the hard way, and some things through extensive research, so if this helps prevent others making the same mistakes I did then all the better.
In February 2007 I started out with a 117lt fresh water tank.
In this tank I had a male and female gourami (admiringly very beautiful fish for tropical water tank)
some rainbow neon's
and dotty the fish, I cant quite remember what fish it was.
Due to 1 tiny trumpet snail coming in with 2 sucker fish, within 6 months I had more snails in there than I did gravel and the tank began to crash.
How was I to know they didn't need pairs to breed!
At that time i had decided not to continue with fish keeping and was heading down the lizard route instead.
After a lot of umming and ahhing I decided to give it another bash. Besides, a lizard just sits there doing nothing, and the fish would at least reduce my tv viewing time. I find I watch the tank more than the tv these days.
I wanted to go for Marine fish because they were far more beautiful than the plain looking colours of fresh water fish and I wanted to have corals as I had always loved the look of them.
So I took the plunge. I bit the bullet, reset up my tank as marine, bought a skimmer, external filter, new gravel, some ornaments, fake looking coral plants and new lights and waited very impatiently for 2-3 months for the water stats to settle and the cycle to finish and there I had it, a lovely clean looking tank, albeit no fish yet but a nice tank of marine water to look at.
So the time came about 3 months later that I felt the desire to put something in my tank rather than just water and ornaments.
I had constantly been nagging my friend who worked in the fish shop if i could put fish in yet and she had kept saying not yet. But now she said it was ok. yipeeee.
I bought 2 Percula clown fish.
A month later I got a Red Mandarin Fish, which I guess was more of an impulse buy as I didn't realise they were such picky eaters.
A month after that I got a long nosed hawk fish.
I think I then left it 2 months (due to lack of money) before I got a red kneed hermit crab, and 2 weeks after that 2 fire shrimp.
Everything was starting to take shape. My lovely tank of pretty water was slowly filling up with lovely fish and cleaning crew.
A few months later and I was on the prowl for more tank inhabitants.
After loads of scrolling through this forum and getting loads of help from all the great people on here, I got a mine urchin who munches away on my ever growing algae like nobodies business.
Everything was going great. Except for the annoying green algae\diatoms that were growing in the tank and refusing to budge whatever I did. I eventually grew used to it and believed it was there to stay.
I even took to my own experiments to find out what was causing it, and covered half the tank in black sheeting for a week. When I took it off there was a distinct line of algae growing where the sheeting was and not a single bit of algae in sight on that half of the tank.
Had I found the cause?
It was now about a year that my tank had been up and running and I was bored of the tiny size my 2ft tank was and wanted bigger. Not to mention the fact I discovered I was almost at my limit for fish in this tank.
So, I was discussing this with my long term friend who works in the local fish shop, and low and behold she was getting rid of her 240lt tank.
I whipped this up at a bargain price.
This was now mid 2009
I then had the task of transferring everything.
I wanted to put the new tank at the other end of the room as I believed the direct sunlight on the tank was causing the algae, and maybe moving it would stop this.
so The new tank was already in place with new gravel, filter and such like ready to be switched on. I took out as much water as I could from the old tank and put it in the new one, leaving just enough for the fish that were still in it.
This took about an hour as I wanted to do it slow so as not to stress the fish any more than they already would be.
Using a net and my fish jug the inhabitants were transferred. then I added the rest of the water, leaving the algae covered gravel and yucky water where it was.
About 2 hours later it was all transferred, heaters already on and pump switched on. The water was a mirky colour and took a good few hours to clear.
The new tank, being 240lt was only half full as I had only taken out the old water from my 117lt 2ft tank at this point.
I then took to adding 1 bucket of salt water (slowly) every day for the next week or so until the new tank was full.
I thought if I did it bit at a time I would reduce stress, time for water to heat up, and filtration to keep up and not have too much of a re-cycle.
All this went very well and everyone seemed happy in their new home, finding new places to hide. There was no cycle and I was happy with my new BIGGER tank.
The tank had been full for about 1 week before the dreaded algae kicked in again and everything was a greenish brown once more.
My sunlight theory was broken and I was at a loss of what could be causing it.
Yet more hours spent on these forums and I was advised to try power heads. I Went and got a nice strong power head from flee bay and a few days later the algae began to subside.
Maybe now I was finally winning the battle.
it did stop where the water flow was so I knew what the problem was. Still think I need to get another power head for the other side of the tank though as the left hand side still gets a little brown but nothing like it was.
I then wanted to get the live rock I had been after for ages, and with another talk with my friend at the shop, she told me about this advert in the local paper for a guy selling 30kg of live rock.
It was an hours drive, which seemed more like 2, but we got there.
I don't know if it was because I was tired or gullible, but I still cant understand why on earth I bought this crap.
It was in a tank in the garden. Logic tells you that marine live rock should be in a heated tank indoors yes? I just looked at the rock and thought wow. He was asking £50, I offered him £25 he said ok.
He also asked if I wanted a pump and skimmer. I said i didn't and went to get my money.
When I came back he told me as I had driven so far he would chuck these in for free. Cool.
It wasn't till I finally got back home another hour later, and weighed it I found it was 16kg of rock not 30 as described, but still it sounded like a bargain.
I put the live rock in and spent the next few days rearranging it several times to get it how I wanted it but to no avail.
Over this time I found loads of mud and leaves coming out of this so called live rock and my suspicions began to grow.
Also as I was moving the rock about, as careful as I was, I found it was breaking off far too easily and careful inspection only made me even more suspicious.
I decided this couldn't be live rock and if it was it certainly wasn't that alive.
So I decided to get rid of it.
This and the fact it looked horrible and was nothing how I wanted it.
So over the next few weeks I removed a few bits here and there and replaced with ocean rock.
So now I have 2 pieces of the so called live rock left. They don't look too bad under the other rock so I'm going to leave them there.
I also have 2 pieces of live rock I got from the fish shop.
I then bought 3 snails to help with the tank clean up. 1 conch and 2 nassarus snails.
About 1 month ago things started to go wrong. First I found my female clown fish was bullying the other and after 3 days it died. Despite my efforts to help him.
I got another one, a small one, hoping she would be ok with this one, but she didn't like him either and he too died.
Then as I was off ill with flu virus I took it upon myself to do a water change about 2am as I was wide awake and I made the biggest mistake of all. I sorted out the water, got it all ready, but didn't heat it up enough before putting it in the tank.
As I was finishing putting the last bit in, 1 of my fire shrimp swam past, went swimming straight up to the surface, flipped on to his back and fell to the bottom. He was still moving but just lay there on his back.
He lasted 2 days and he died.
Then about 2 weeks ago, my other fire shrimp died. This time I was not even anywhere near the tank so cant be blamed for that one.
2 days after that I realised I had not seen my snails for a few days. This doesn't normally bother me as my hermit crab hides sometimes for weeks on end before he appears.
I was looking around he tank and found it. But something told me there was something wrong.
I picked it up and brought it out of the water to inspect it and the instant smell told me it was long gone.
I can still only find 1 snail. The other one has vanished into thin air, shell and all. Mystery.
I did some water tests and the nitrite and nitrate were a little high. I say a little because they have always been 0 ever since my initial cycle. Whether this was due to the fake live rock, the dying critters or something else I still don't know.
But after several water changes it still didn't seem to go down.
So I had an internal filter come with the tank when I bought it, so I put this in the tank as well as the external I have.
This seemed to help and the nitrite is now back to 0 and the nitrate is close to it.
I removed my internal skimmer (another cheap flee bay buy) because the annoying suckers kept falling off.
When I get around to it I plan to find out how the skimmer works that the live rock guy gave me.
SO as it stands today, I have 1 clown fish,
1 red mandarin,
1 long nosed hawk fish,
1 sea urchin,
1 red kneed hermit crab and 1 nassarus snail.
The rocks are now to my liking (near enough) and the water appears ok again.
I'm on the look out for getting a blue tang and some more shrimp and snails. Then I'm going to complete the tank with the corals I have dreamed of. This is the main reason I went for marine in the first place.
the main things I have learned from all this are:
don't skimp on things, especially live rock. Don't just get it because someone says it is, make sure its proper stuff.
Take your time when cleaning the tank, fish and critters stress very easily.
Research as much as you can before you go and get whatever it is you want to get. and then when your ready, come on here and research some more.
it will save you a lot of stress, anguish, and expense in the long run.
I will keep you all posted when anything new is added and I hope this journal was helpful to at least 1 person.
And thank you to Selfie and all the others on here for their help in my sometimes silly and simple questions.
thank you
View attachment 58411
