Tuesday, August 23, 2005

The Mist Is Clearing

The new aquarium has been up and running for just over a day now and the mist is almost gone, by Friday it should be crystal clear ready for the new inhabitants.

flick00178

There are so many different tropical fish we want to get and with the size of the tank, we should be able to accommodate between sixty and seventy in total. We've been reading up on starting out with a new aquarium and we can't put in too many in to start with, it has to complete cycles, which in terms that I understand is that the aquarium has to be able to deal with the ammonia produced by the fish and seventy fish using a brand new aquarium as a lavatory won't do them any good lol.

flick00179

We've got a good idea of what we want but we're going to have choose which fish to get in the first week. With us adding the chemicals to get the bacteria going we should be able to start with a decent number of fish, maybe twenty or so and then add more each week. Of the ones we're wanting, Zebra Danios, Platy, White Clouds and Cherry Barbs appear to be the best tropical fish to start out with.

Paul

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

That is going to be so incredibly soothing to watch when the cooler weather sets in.

I'm curious to learn just how much work is involved with an aquarium. Do you still have to drain and scrub them out or is that a thing of the past?

Snowbabies said...

We'll need to change about 25% of the water each week or so. Some of the fish we'll be getting will take care of all the cleaning :-)

Anonymous said...

I noticed you are using sand and not gravel. Very nice, I like the natural look of it!

Cheryl, Indiana, Shingo and Molly said...

Make sure that you let your tank fully cycle, BEFORE, you add any fish. Take it from me (we have 7 tanks at home)...the impatient sacrificer of many fish. A complete cycle usually takes 3-4 weeks. In the US we can get a produce that allows you to immediately add fish upon set up. It's called Bio-Spira. You can read about it here http://www.marineland.com/products/mllabs/ML_biospira.asp
They have a salt water formula and a fresh water formula. I've used it and it works!!

Snowbabies said...

Thanks for the warning Cheryl :-) We've added all the recomended chemicals to the tank to get the bacteria going and were told to wait 4-5 days so we should be OK for this weekend :-)

gemmak said...

Don't follow my lead but I used to just put em all in at once and they always survived fine!