New Aquarium

@ricky101 - do you have a camera in my living room, or are you tracking what I am watching on YouTube? I sat last night watching videos about filtration, and then read bits and bobs online and that brought me to carbon.....

I am about to pop out and play with the traffic, so will post back later

 

Right - sorry I had to dart out earlier, but I had to catch a bus.

After coming back from town this morning, we started to get the tank cleaned, and as we were doing so our neighbour knocked on with the rocks and a couple of bags of substrate - completely unopened, and I have checked online since and this stuff is about £30 a bag! Guess who is in for a few beers when I get back to work?

Anyway, as we were already in the mood, we kept going - tank clean and empty, we decided to keep on rolling. As it was such a nice day outside, we washed the gravel, rocks and ornaments outside (you should have seen the crud that came off the rocks! , and then we began assembling the tank.

We have managed to get it to the stage where it is now waiting for water, plants, cycling and then eventually, fish!

That brings me to tonight's question - as there is nothing in the tank, and I know that it is a 300 litre tank, and therefore the amount of the Tap Safe that will be needed, is there any reason that I can't fill the whole tank and then treat the water all at once? Doing it bucket by bucket is going to be incredibly slow, and we can in actual fact run the hose in through the patio doors and use that to fill the tank (as we did to leak check it) - the outside tap and the kitchen tap are on the same pipe, so it is the same water quality? The other issue with buckets is that it would be entirely down to Mrs C to lift them into the tank, as I simply can't do it at the moment, and that really doesn't seem fair to me.

@ricky101 - I have taken pics of the filter set up, and I will post them back shortly (need to get them off my phone, and need to eat me dinner and have a cuppa

In the interim, here is the tank now we have it all cleaned etc - I am quietly chuffed with our achievements today, getting it all cleaned up and I even think it looks pretty decent, given we have never set up a tank before.

 

OK, I have fed my face.

@ricky101 - here are pics of the lid/filter arrangement:

Underside, and lights - they are not marked, but there is a rating lable on the side that says they are 2 x 18w


Inside the filter - the bar that runs along over the length is full of holes to allow the water to run out into the filter media; the end of the bar (right side on this pic) is plugged.







It is not easy to see here, but there is a wee red square around the outlet channel, and it is this that has a reputation for problems if the poly filter blocks up at that end. For clarity, there are no reports of this problem happening to this particular tank, but I have seen it highlighted elsewhere hence my thinking to be ahead of the game and prevent it flooding over in the first place.

 

Hi @ricky101

Thanks - I am really chuffed wih it - - took a bit of scrubbing to get it cleaned up, but it was well worth it. I did some of it, but Mrs C had to do the bulk of the hard work sadly.

The two bags that my neighbour gave me were called Caribsea - black, granular stuff that the bag said was a complete substrate designed for planting; it could be used on its own, or with any other gravel on top if desired, so we went with the gravel that came with the tank to be honest. It too was pretty grubby, but it was battered round in batches in the collander until it cleaned up and it now looks as clean as a whistle; in fact, the colour is much brighter than it was too, as it looked more like a petrol blue when we first saw it.

I hit the credit card for noodles and carbon to add to that top filter, which will have to do for now - I will have to wait until I go back to work before I can even think about an external cannister filter. I am currently looking at ways that I can support the pump a bit better though, as it is held on three plastic turret things, and they look distinctly unhappy to me - - I have visions of it going plop when we get round to adding fish! I will come up with something.

I am also tempted to get a file out and enlarge that exit channel hole as that is tiny - not overly sure of how else I could do it.

I will fill the tank and add the prescribed amount of tap safe and then a slug for good luck which should cover me if I have put a wee bit more than 300l in. I will then run the filter for an hour or so before starting to introduce the good bacteria starter liquid, and hopefully that will get us off to a good start; I will get the heater on pretty pronto too, which will hopefully take sufficient chill off for planting once they have arrived and been quarantined for a wee while.

Re the email alerts, I think the GC mail server is having a funny turn, as I tried to email webmaster last night and it bounced back at me. Sadly, that is not something I can do much with.

 

Hi @ricky101

That does look to be similar set up, although the way that mine is suspended looks completely different. As it happens, I have it out of the tank, so here it is:



There is a hell of a lot of flex in these three wee pillars:



There is simply a ridge along the top which clip into the lid - in truth, it really does not inspire confidence and I have already put a similar one, but with suckers that hold onto the glass onto my wishlist. I am also intending on getting an external filter, as this morning's saga (tell you in a minute) demonstrated to me that if there is any problem at all with the hood, pump or filter, we are left completely without filtration and circulation. Somewhat co-incidentally, the company you linked to are the ones I have got my eye on an external filter from - they do a 1400 litre per hour, with UV sterilising for £70, which isn't disgustingly expensive particularly as it comes with the filter media too. I am thinking that I can run both, and when it comes time to renew filter media I can do so in a staggered fashion to retain good bacteria? The UV sterilisation is a bonus to be honest, and being new to the game, I am going to need all the cards on my side.

Now, this morning's saga - I went to start filing the tank, and flicked the lights on to see where I was going to put a bowl to slow the water; as I did so, there was a bit of buzz, and the front light went out. After a bit of faffing about, we had to take the hood off (not least as I cannot stand for long enough to faff with things like that) - so thank goodness we hadn't yet started the pump or we would have had wet filters to deal with, and would be removing filtration from the tank; we switched the two bulbs about and tested it, and the problem stayed on the same socket, so it is the connector itself or the wire to it that is faulty. I had to stop there as I had visitors coming for a meeting, so I will have to take a look at it and try to fix it tomorrow. I suspect that it is just the wee brass fittings that are a bit loose and not connecting with the bulb, so if I can get them to tuck back in a wee bit, I will get it working. Tomorrow will tell. However, this has proved to me that I need to get an external filter at some point, if only as a sort of double up protection.

No plants yet, but the tank is now full of water, and the heater is on - I haven't yet used the de-chlorinator as I thought I would hold off until tomorrow when I can get the filter going. Once that is done, I will start to add the bacteria culture.

 

Hi @Sian in Belgium

It is very deep (which I must admit, I love about it) - 28", so my wee fishy friends will have tons of room to play, and there is tons of hidey-holes for the times they are feeling shy. Hopefully the plants will arrive tomorrow and we can get them planted, and if I can get the lighting fixed I can then get the hood back on, and get some filtration and movement going. This time tomorrow night, I will probably be sat here watching plants wafting back and forth

 

I haven't turned the heater off, thinking it would be OK in such a large tank - would convection currents not ensure that the water moves around it? Even if the water didn't move, surely it would just get warm around the heater at which point the heater would switch off thermostatically?