Thinking About Starting Over

[Miss Wiggle]

well as some of you know a year or so ago we had lots of tanks, 7/8 at one time in a tiny 1 bedroom house, it all got a bit out of hand so we scaled back considerably until we are just left with a 60 gal planted community tank which was my other halfs first tank before we got together.

although we say it's our tank now it really doesn't feel like mine at all and i'm missing having my own tanks a bit.

while the tank we have now is nice it's not all that practical as a planted tank, it's 4 foot long, 2 foot deep then about 15" wide. Cos it's pretty narrow it's quite hard to aquascape it and now we've got some new funiture in the living room there's only one place it can go and it's v impractical for maintenance there. We had a bit of a problem with black beard algae in there, stripped down the tank, scrubbed everything out but it keeps coming back, there's not a lot of it and it doesn't seem to eb getting any worse, but we just can't irradicate it. The first place it grows back is by the filter output so we think there's either some in the filter tucked away somewhere we can't get shot of. Obviously with fish in the tank we can't totally scrub out both filters and replace the media as the tank would start cycling.

so we're both a bit dissatisfied with the set up we have now, the tank's got a few old shoals of fish from other tanks thrown in together, it's not really a nicely planned stocking although it works.

We spotted a really nice tank so we're considering getting rid of everything, fishless cycling the new tank and totally starting from scratch and doing it right, every tank we've had has been bodged in one way or another so thinking it'd be nice to do things from scratch and do it all right.

The new tanks an aqua one acqueisance 650 or something like that, basically a nice looking 2 foot cube tank, cos of the depth it'll be nice to scape, it'd go in the same space as the tank we have now but cos it's 2 foot shorted there's room to get in and do maintenance much more easily.

Would have been fine, we were nearly convinced about it and we went to the lfs today to look at the tank. This happens to be the same lfs that Rabbut works in, he had a pair of angels (at home, not in the shop) that i'd really really really admired a few months back that he's asked if we could take from him. Now we could take them and put them in the tank now, then get him to take them in the shop for the 4-6 weeks while we fishless cycle the new tank and then we could take them back, but angels in an immature tank isn't the best idea ever.

so bit of a dilemma, do we take the angels and spend a bit of cash trying to make the tank we have now work, or do we say no to the beautiful angels and start over.

Just don't know what to do?!

 

[shelaghfishface]

oh my goodness MW,when you have a dilema,you really have one dont you
there is no doubt that you and Rabbut between you could ensure the very best for the angels, you know what you want to do, and you know that you are more than capable of doing it, why would you consider a fishless cycle-is it so that you are starting right at the basics?.if you want them then it would be be mature media ( why do i feel like im teaching my granny to suck eggs here )

i have every faith in you making the desicion that is best for both you and Ian,make a list of pro`s and cons,, then ignore the cons and do it anyway

all the best ,whichever way you go
shelagh xxx

 

[tenohfive]

I struggled reading this as I'm tired (and stupid, lets be honest) but my understanding is the choice is between:

a) keeping your existing, unplanned, bodge tank so to speak and adding two beautiful angels, or

b) buy a new tank that you can aquascape and plant from scratch, have the choice of what goes into it and tailor everything to the way you want it - but consequently giving the two angels a miss

If I've got the gist of it, I'd go with b) - but with a 3 foot tank as I think that'll open your options up. I'm the first to admit my experience is limited, but I found when setting up a 3 foot tank that for a small-ish increase it opens your options disproportianately, and would still give you room compared to your existing tank.

Even with a 2 foot tank though - I'd go for b) as it'll be the first real opportunity for you to have a setup EXACTLY the way you planned.




Or magical option c) - move into a tent and convert the whole house into a fish house

 

[shelaghfishface]

disproportianately

what a show off!!

 

[tenohfive]

Grrr, annoys me when I do a typo:

Disproportionately even.

 

[ally86ozzy]

Or magical option c) - move into a tent and convert the whole house into a fish house

i like that one! lol. -heart , ally86ozzy

 

[tenohfive]

I lived in a tent in my mum's back garden for 3 months when I was 17, lost my job and couldn't afford the rent on my flat. I've got to say, I got the best kip of my life in that tent - especially when it was hammering down with rain.

Don't dismiss option c) .....

 

[ally86ozzy]

I lived in a tent in my mum's back garden for 3 months when I was 17, lost my job and couldn't afford the rent on my flat. I've got to say, I got the best kip of my life in that tent - especially when it was hammering down with rain.

Don't dismiss option c) .....

lolz, i wanna liv in a tent! ill ask my dad!

 

[SharonCC]

Dismiss option C...it's only for the very young! I'd go with the new tank, done exactly as you want it. Could you keep the Angels in the old tank, until the new is ready and cycled...which shouldn't take long, if you use the mature media from the old filter....

 

[Miss Wiggle]

well the debate is this

the angels rabbut has are really stunning, look like the wild caught in their natural colours. we've been looking for some like this for oh about 2 years now and haven't found anything up to the standards that we are looking for. So it's not like we can just pick up another pair later down the road we may never find any as good as these or at the least we'll have a long wait. Added to which while Rabbut needs to get shot of them for reason's I'll leave him to disclose if he wants to, he wants to make sure they go to a good home with people who know what they are doing and appreciate them.

we've decided we definately want the new tank and the angels would be the perfect centerpiece for this tank (tenohfive - 2 foot cube, not standard 2 foot tank, it's 60 gals or there abouts, same volume of water as we have now just a shape that fits the space we have better ).

But because of the BBA problem we want to start over with new media in the filter, the only fish we want to keep from our existing tank are quite small, we've got a 10gal in the cellar which we can set up with media from the existing tank and while the tanks not ideal, it'd be fine for 4-6 weeks while we fishless cycle with a little bit of careful monitoring and extra water changes. But the 10 gal is no place for the angels even short term and it'd mean that they then go into a newly cycled tank which is putting them at some considerable risk, no amount of fishkeeping experience can make a tank mature any faster, it all just needs time to settle and for the bacteria colony to strengthen up and angels do not do well in this period.

the other thing is i've never actually done a fishless cycle and I'd like to have a go at it!! May seem silly as I tell people about it all the time, but my first tank was set up by my dad for me and his methods are old school to say the least, every tank since then has been cloned.

Now I've been thinking and the only way around it that I can see is to get a considerable amount of mature media, the new tank comes with a decent sized filter and I think we'd need like half of it full of mature media so that the new tank would hopefully be stable enough to be OK for the angels then we wouldn't do a fishless cycle, that's a lot of media to get off anyone. So I've asked rabbut if he reckons he could sort us out with that much mature media in a month or two's time when we change the tanks over.

Even then though it's still risky putting the angels into a tank that's newly set up like that. hmmmmmmmmmmm

 

[tenohfive]

Do you know someone off here with a mature tank that can look after the angels for a month or two for you Miss W?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

Do you know someone off here with a mature tank that can look after the angels for a month or two for you Miss W?

there's no one local that springs to mind

 

[BigIan]

Never mind the stocking what are we going to do about the lighting?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

Never mind the stocking what are we going to do about the lighting?

what was the make of the LED's we saw today hun?

 

[BigIan]

Aqua ray solid state lighting, from TMC