Questions

[Parasaurolophus]

ok thanks for all the replies guys they helped alot I have done my research (for the past 3 weeks) and have chosen the fish species I want and read up there compatibility pH, temperatures, if they like planted tanks, how easily they breed, required tank size, diseases, how to clean the tank, the average price ratio for the equipment I need, how to cycle the tank, the substrate that would work best, how old the fish I like live for, the foods the fish need, how to stop algae overgrowing, how to change the water, what to teat the water with, the behaviors these fish exhibit, harmful foods for them, enrichment items, how to sex the fish, how often I would need to feed the fish, how many of each fish I should/could have, how often I'd need to change the water and clean the tank I think I've covered everything so far and probably know more but forgot to remember it at the moment xD, and believe I'm ready to buy my tank and cycle it in about 2 weeks when I start my summer holidays (secondary school sucks).
thanks to everyone again for all the helpful advice!

 

[OldMan47]

Sorry guys, I have her book and actually read it. She advocates a moderately high light situation added to some sunlight for part of the day. At least 2 WPG unless you are getting the sunlight into the tank. A low tech low light tank can work fine, as my flowering Anubias shows, but it is not an NPT / Walstad set up. It is a low light tank. I have a few of those too. They are run on different principles.
I am not one to ever advocate adding fish to an uncycled tank although Diana does advocate that you add plants and fish at the same time in her book. Some things I adopt but most things I adapt to suit my own prejudices. An NPT is for someone who is comfortable with fish keeping and wants to branch out. It is not a good idea for a beginner to try. That tank gets a water change every 6+ months whether it needs it or not. Last time I did a water change, I tested the water first. Nitrates were below 10 ppm and all other nitrogen factors were zeros. The stocking in the tank is heavy, almost 2 inches per gallon of fish where the inch per gallon formula should work well. The plants are dealing with nitrogen production so well they are almost nitrogen starved by their own action.

 

[Parasaurolophus]

ok sorry but I have another question about what size tank would be best for the amount of fish and crustaceans I would like.

12 white cloud mountain minnows
6 zebra/leopard danios
4-5 panda corydoras
6 cherry barb
1 rams-horn snail
2 cherry shrimp

I was thinking a 3-4 foot tank for this many fish and I am still unsure about the cherry barb If I decide not to get them I will up the number of zebra danios to 8 but still is that much abit much for a 3-4 foot tank?
what would be the minimum size tank? as I want to steer clear of the minimums and get the biggest tank I can.
thanks in advance.

 

[OldMan47]

For your proposed stock levels, especially if you are not accustomed to intense tank maintenance, I would say no smaller than a 29 gallon tank. That will hold about 25 real gallons or about 95 litres of water. Once you have become accustomed to tank maintenance and are comfortable with it, you could probably keep the same stock in a US 20 gallon tank which holds about 18 gallons or a bit less, 68 litres.

 

[Parasaurolophus]

So how many foot tank would that be?
I searched it on google but came up with various answers...

 

[OldMan47]

I am not used to measuring tanks in feet. A 4 foot tank to me means anything between a nominal 55 gallon and a nominal 90 gallon. Those are very different tanks and have very different capacities in terms of stocking, but I think of both as 4 foot tanks and use a 4 foot measurement to build stands for them. My own 6 foot tank is a mere 120 gallon nominal volume but both 160 gallon and 200 gallon tanks have the same length.
A 29 gallon tank in the US is often a 30 inch tank while a nominal 20 gallon tank is a 2 foot tank. I also have had 20 and 25 gallon tanks that were 30 inches long, so even the 2 1/2 foot nominal length is meaningless in terms of stocking.
I sometimes wish I knew what you members from the UK mean by various measures of length that you seem to use as standards.

 

[JoshuaA]

I sometimes wish I knew what you members from the UK mean by various measures of length that you seem to use as standards.

We use imperial when driving (Miles, Mph, yards) but normally metric for anything else now (Weight, Volume, measuring etc). Or at least that's how I have got about the last 20 years.

US are inferior to UK gallons of course, I don't see why it was a good idea to have to make your own .

 

[OldMan47]

The US gallon is indeed smaller than an imperial gallon, JoshuaA. Who knows why, it just is. As it happens, a US gallon is close to 3.79 litres. Litres are a universal unit of measure that many of my countrymen find too obscure to use. Lets go the next step here. A US tank called a 29 only holds about 25 US gallons of water. The 29 seems to be based on measuring the outside of the glass, not the inside, and then using standard conversions to convert that volume to US gallons. That means that things are even worse than the ratio between Imperial and US gallons. It means that any number I see for a tank's volume includes the volume of the glass itself. I don't know that I would call it "inferior" but it is certainly a smaller volume than an imperial gallon. Using the same thought process, a litre would be far "inferior" to A US gallon. It is certainly a smaller volume but I doubt it is in any way inferior. It is simply a different unit of measure. We all grow up using units that we understand in a sort of gestalt fashion and need to do conversions when we encounter other units. That does not make any one set of units superior to another but does indeed mean that getting a grasp of the other person's units is a challenge.

 

[JoshuaA]

Fish tank manufacturers will market it with what sounds best, I find it false advertisement when they claim a volume of so and so and then don't seem to state it any text on the box, booklet and or specifications that it does not actually contain the real volume. It's odd... I go to buy a bottle of coke containing 1L, by law it has to container either 1L or more, it CANNOT be less. However a fish tank can seem to be what it wants.

My use of the word "inferior" was having a little joke about the fact that British people get annoyed about Americans adapting the language and changing it for example the word "Colour" > "Color". So I was applying the same sort of thing to the units of measurement that the US had to be different by having a US gallon rather than using a UK one.

Edit:

I for one embarrassingly don't know anything about Floz, Oz, stones or lbs. Same with yards/inches I can only visual a mile or picture it in my mind at least. Where as a cm/metre but NOT a kilometre I can accurately gauge with my hands.

Seems a very mixed up situation over here regarding units of measurements.

 

[OldMan47]

I find things much the same here JoshuaA. I can easily relate to a mile or a pound since I encounter them every day but a kilogram, which I know intellectually as 2.2 pounds, gives me no gut feel for its size. I look down the road when I am driving and say to my self that a particular object is about a mile away but cannot do the same thing and easily judge a Km. I guess it all comes down to the units you are accustomed to judging. A single litre is a unit I am starting to get a grasp of but it has no feel for me when you say a tank holds 60 litres. To really get a feel for it I must say to myself that it is a bit bigger than a 15 gallon tank. That tank has a gut feel for me. It would be so much easier if we all used the same units of measure but in this present day that is simply not the case.

 

[JoshuaA]

I can only struggle to visualise a gallon only if I picture a water container for one of your office water dispensers. I can visualise a litre/2 litre so easily due to bottles being supplied in that level of volume, though like you said a kilometre is beyond me but I find it odd I can gauge metres so accurately.

Usually for miles I think I've learnt the distance it truly is by the odometer in my car and of course SatNav, as I'm the new age kind of people who can't find their way out of a wet paper bag without a map and directions. I can gauge weight relatively easily in KG though once again not in any imperial measurement.

It's also find it odd that I fill my car in Litres however refer to my fuel efficiency always in MpG yet I struggle to visualise it. Hmmm odd way we humans work.

I've always looked at the dimensions rather than the volume for fish tanks, A long fish tank will take and waste more potential water volume by using substrate than a tall aquarium would. Therefore trying to guesstimate it's real volume becomes hard until you've actually set the tank up. My small 10G setup with current estimates could be as little as 30Litres in the tank rather than the proposed 40Litre it should be.

 

[OldMan47]

I think we both agree that it is easy to visualize units we are accustomed to using but find it difficult to use units that require us to use conversions. As I said earlier though, I build tank stands and a 4 foot tank means to me that I need to build a tank stand that is about 4 feet and 1/4 inch long. The depth from front to back changes a lot with different tank capacities and the height of the tank itself also varies. A place that I struggle with whole idea of a "4 foot tank" is that I have lots of tanks I can buy that are almost exactly 4 feet long. I do not consider all of those tanks as being even close to equal in terms of the fish I could stock in them.

 

[JoshuaA]

You build your tank stand eh... How much does that cost you on average for everything including doors/hinges etc for a 4 footer?

 

[OldMan47]

I build two tiered stands so that I can get more into a room without taking up too much space. One like this costs me about $40 because of the cost of the trim and such.

When I just slap something together and paint it, like this one, it is about $5 less.

That is an old fashioned 4 foot long 40 gallon tank on the bottom but the top of the stand is built the right size for a 4 foot long 90 gallon tank with the deeper footprint. Since I don't own a 90 gallon right now, it is presently holding 2 of the 20H tanks. In the picture I set a 20H and a 10 on it just to give the picture some perspective.

 

[JoshuaA]

What type of wood do you find is the best to make it then and the thickness? I'm tempted to make one for a bigger tank in the near future, however I'm convincing myself of saving the effort and just buying the big package.

Edit:

Thanks for the response by the way