What company makes Cycle R2K? Is it liquid or powder? Can you give me a link to order some place online?
i have filter city i have a cannister filter in the cupboard underneath and then have two other small one's at either end of the tank cause rainbows love the water movement and cause i had them from when i had the smaller tank and just kept using them
more info on Amtrite Down Made in the US, and distributed by Biotec Restoration Pl they also make a great water ager that neutralises Chlorine, Chloramine, Ammonia, and heavy metals and also does Slime Coat
If you have a 10g tank, you don't need more than one good filter. Besides, UG filters can be a pain to maintain and also end up causing more trouble than good.
Deckard - thanks the tank going well at the moment... aside from the hot weather jump the temp up almost dangerously too high plants are going pretty well, the mercury vapour lights help lost a few things and need to buy a few more large swords to go behind the log on the right, need to plant on mass or the loaches seem to go after one new plant if i just plant one the drought in australia has also meant there are much less rainbows available... hopefully that will improve, used to have lots more especially mature Red Rainbows and mature Bosemanis ... which are amazing got to get me some more
If you want to remove Ammonia, Chlorine, and Chloramine from water in one sweep, use something called Amquel. I toldja when you started to get it... pay attention. Every pet store should sell it.
I always had problems keeping swords. Honestly, now that I think about it, it may be the Clown Loaches. I think they used to love to tear tiny, thin strips off the fresh young shoots of the sword plants. That could have been why I had such bad luck keeping them long-term. I had better luck with Anacharis, hornwort, foxtail... varieties of those long, bushy plants. (I'm forgetting a lot of them) The loaches didn't go for them. I always ended up keeping the Clowns and trying and failing with the swords.
R2K, ain't it a trip?? Anyone who thinks fish, and some fish in particular, don't have personalities and don't recognize their "people" just haven't been around them enough. I swear, some of my fish could tell who I was and would get excited (food!) or act p-ssed off (you s.o.b!) when I came into the room and just ignore other folks. Strange, but true. Oscar's are definitely that way. And they aren't the only ones by a long shot.
the really cool thing about my Oscar...he can tell the difference between me and the others in the house. When I walk into the room...he comes to the front...but I have watched from the kitchen(there is a bar between the kitchen and the living room so he cant see me) when the wife walks over by the teank...and he doesnt budge.. there are certain fish that arent smart enough to do that...but Oscars definitely arent one of em. All this talk about clown loaches have reminded me...I really need to go se if I can find some...I miss having some of them around.
Cichlids that re-design their environments by moving rocks/gravel and ripping plants up... a pain in the butt to maintain, but cool to watch.
Doc, that's why you don't like UG filters... Africans and big S. Americans, but Africans especiallly, can wreck havoc with them. So I don't blame you. I had them a few times, but I always got drawn back to the fish varieties I mentioned. Africans are really cool and easier to keep, in many ways. They can have some fantastic colors for a freshwater and their behavior is fun to watch. But plants? Forget it! They may not eat them, but if a potential rival could possibly hide behind one then, hey!... I think I'll just rip that sucka outta there! They're a good fish to keep for Central Texas. Love hard water and you can use all the limestone laying around here. If I had the room and got back into fish, I'd consider adding a 50 gallon with Africans. I wouldn't use a UG either. I'd use a good canister, like an Eheim. (I always used one anyway) And if you breed the rare varieties, you can make out like a bandit.
Ok, I've been found out. You're right, some of those things can be sold for some high dollar value, but sometimes getting some of the species to breed is the toughest thing. When I get a house I'm looking for at least a 50 gallon tank to start an African setup. I saw some autopharynx lithobates at a store in Armkes (great place to get cichlids) that blew me away. One of the best looking cichlid colorations I've ever seen. But then there's a side of me that wants to finally experiment with a saltwater setup.... we'll see.
So do you guys think I would benefit from upgrading? Instead of this 10 gallon tank, what if I upgraded to a 30 gallon tank? You think that would be better? The way I look at it is, 30 gallons is 3x as much water therefore the ammonia levels would probably be significantly lower and this would allow my tank to full cycle or so I believe and then I could add more fish too once it is properly cycled. Also, a friend of mine has a 90 gallon tank and he has one male swordtail and 7 female swords. I was watching them and the male keeps swimming backwards in the direction of one particular female and bends his tail towards her. Sometimes he'll swim parallel to this female and bend his tail toward her also. The female keeps swimming quickly away. My question is, is the male trying to mate? My friend said he's had several batches of fry born already with only four (females) surviving. He said he's never actually watched for signs of mating though.
Your tank should've been fully cycled before you added the fish. There's nothing that doesn't "allow" a tank to fully cycle except mistakes. You should have social workers breaking down your doors and taking your fish from you.... and your damn computer that you can never get working... I'm sick of that thing!
Lil Pun, assuming the social workers don't get to you first , I'd try to get a 40 instead of a 30 if you can. They are not as tall, but wider from front to back. I think the length is the same. What that does is give you a much larger surface area. That gives a big increase in the oxygen that gets into your tank, because it's related to that. You'll also have a larger area on the bottom, which allows a bigger, more efficient undergravel filter (unless you have African cichlids... then don't bother. use a nice cannister filter and/or one that hangs on the back of the tank). All of that gives you more capacity for fish. You can have fewer, larger ones, or several of the smaller varieties. You have more bottom area for rocks, decorations, plants (real or artificial)and some of the cool bottom dwellers. It's just groovy all around. A 75 is another foot longer and a lot taller, but with the same foot and a half from front to back. 75's are a really nice sized tank to get and gives you a bunch of options. And they're 4 feet long as well. I sometimes had a 75 when I had my 135. Those two in a room, with a couple of 10's or 20's for breeding or raising something unusual was fish heaven for me! You know what we say in the GARM? You can't teach size? Think that way with tanks. Just get the biggest you can afford. They're easier to care for, too. If something starts to go wrong, like a fish dies under a rock and you don't see it until it starts to go foul, then you have much more leeway to straighten the water out before it all goes south and smells like the Houston Ship Channel on a bad day. And if you get that bigger tank and go with an undergravel filter? Be sure to get a powerhead for each of the two rear outlet tubes. They will have that UG aces in no time. And the fish like the added circulation and areation. Like the other guys here have said, you can't have too much filtration. And, hey! If you get that far along, you can order fish via the internet that can be flown in. That's how the shops get them. After all that, we'll be asking the questions.
I totally agree with my replicant friend.. even tho bigger tanks are more expensive, and it takes more time to do the maintenance(water changes,cleaning, decorations, etc) they do give you a much larger margin for error. and there aint nothin quite as nice as having a huge tank full of colorful fish to watch. on top of that, a large tank allows you to keep some of the breeds in the way that they really like. What I mean by that is that most fish like to be around alot of their same kind. Like in the example you provided with your friends tank...he has one male with many females...that is the way alot of the schooling fish are in nature..(btw...that does sound like breeding behaviour) re:cycling what you have run into is one of the disadvantages of doin the fish-less cycling. Without a real biological load..the bacterial colonies dont get properly established...and when you finally add fish...the load jumps quickly. My preferred way is to start with a couple of hardy,cheap fish when you first startup a tank...and then use the biological supplements to help give the bacterial colonies a jump start..it requires more careful monitoring at first...but imo it establishes the cycle quicker. anyway...everything you are talking about sounds about right...you are always going to have some levels of ammonia/nitrite to deal with after first adding the fish....it is something you cant avoid....just keep monitoring the tank...and do smallwater changes as needed until the bacteria colny gets builtup enough to handle it.
My girlfriend is a social worker as well as an animal activist, trust me if anything happens to these fish I'm gonna have hell to pay. My computer is fine, it's new stuff on computers that I haven't dealt with that I keep asking questions about. I shot mine that I kept asking questions about.
SO what are some hardy types of fish. In my current setup I have two GloFish (danios) and a pleco. I've been told by you all that danios are very hardy, what about plecos? I would like to get some swords later on, are they hardy fish? Here's a good question: If I decide to get one of these huge 50-75 gallon tanks what happens when I decide to move from my current location (house)? How the hell do you manage to move all the fish and equipment without disturbing the fish and destroying your bacterial colony? Not to mention the weight of everything, one gallon of water weighs 8.3 lbs so a 50 gallon setup would have 415 pounds of water to deal with as well as the gravel, equipment, and the tank itself you're looking at well over 500 or 600 pounds of stuff to deal with moving.
Uh, Pun. You drain the tank before you move it. You can take some of the gravel and water and put it in a bucket and put an air pump to help keep some of the bacteria alive during the trip.
