Yay! Got Me A 60l Planted Tank!

[Keithoms]

Yippee!

Hi im 14, kinda new here.

Came back from my two week holiday to canada. I had left a tetra brand food block in the bottom of my pretty crappy 13l tank. Walked into my room and....
Horrible brown mould stuff on the side of the fish tank. God i felt sorry for that goldfish...

I tell my dad i need a new bucket so i can clean out the tank (full clean is needed). He tells me to come with him so i can get one the right size .
We arrive at lfs (P@H tbh) and my dad suddenly says "Well Keith, just go ahead and pick yourself out a descent new tank.

I pick a tetra aquuart 60l one. W have modified my titchy bedrooom to take it and have got it going well.

One thing is, we poured in all of the new white gravel then realised we had fergotten to wash it first. We scoop out 7kg worth of gravel by hand leaving 15% of the stuff we cant get out. (We couldnt go any further as we had put a substrate down for the plants, we didnt want any of it washed away).

We wash the stuff we do get out, put everything back in and get it going. There is now a white fog floating around. It is starting to clear, but do you think it will be ok?

I have done a 50% change in the old tank, as doing a full change is pointless when we can just get the new tank cycled instead. Its beside in pics.

One last Q. Is turning off the air pump (not filter) ok from when go to bed (10:30) till i wake up (6:50)? As it is very noisy, i need my sleep .

 

[jacko9901]

good looking tank

dont see anything wrong with switching the air pump off.

 

[Ludwig Venter]

I think you are spoilt, but yes.... putting new gravel into a tank (even if you wash and rinse several times) does leave a film of "white stuff" floating on the surface...... take a piece of newspaper, and sweep the surface with this to rid of most of it.

Then your water would be "murky" for a coupla days.... ("new tank syndrome") it is called, but will go away in about 3 days. The purpose of aeration in the tank is exclusively to move the water around so that your bottom water can also get into contact with the surface where oxygen exchange takes place, so if you have a submerged filter in there, this swirls your water sufficiently and you can do without the pump completely.

 

[Renate]

Love the start up of the new tank. What are those plants?

How are you planning to cycle it? Using anything from the old tank. Read some take gravel or filter media from old tank and put it in a sock and put it in the tank. Course that depends on how bad the algae in the old tank is.

You might try an automatic feeder next time. I got one which I put anything on EBay for $20. Had 1 from petsmart but only able to put flake food in it. One from EBay from vendor whom is in the Orient and sells often.

The items you leave in the bottom for feeding are know to cause problems.

Some don't feed their fish if there are just gone for a week. For it is said in the wild that fish don't eat everyday. I couldn't do that.

 

[paul_219]

Lovely tank u got over there.