New Aquarium

OK, spoke to the local aquarium shop and took a sample of water in with us - they essentially agreed with the test strips, in as much as they showed nitrites and nitrates, and no ammonia and that led them to the conclusion that our tank was in a cycle, but hadn't completed a cycle. I am a tad concerned, as I did not see any ammonia spike (although admittedly, the water was in there a few days before I started testing.

Regarding the hardness, we were told not to worry about that as it wouldn't bother the fish - presumably they are referring to the fish that they supply, which may well have been bred in hard water?

We did come home with a few plants to replace those that had unrooted themselves numerous times, and were starting to rot at the bottom; not quite sure where Mrs C has put the labels at the moment, but I will post the names of them when I find them. I also had no choice but to get a new heater (pee'd me off a bit to be honest) - over the past few days, whenever I have touched the water, it has seemed quite warm and subsequent checking with a thermometer showed temperatures of 30-31ºC, and that did not subside despite turning the control on the back of the heater, so I think it might be cream-crackered. I haven't lobbed it, as it would do as a stand in for a day or two if the new one ever decides to fail (as they do, usually on Christmas Day!)

So, it was lid off again to plant plants, and clear out dead leaves that were floating from the plants that were presumably refusing to take root. While we had the lid off, I measured the pipework for the external filter with a view to looking out for some sort of hose/flexible tubing to make it easier to remove the hood when we need to, and if possible to have the spray bar for the external filter over on the left where the water comes in from the internal filter. Mrs C came up with a brilliant idea that we should perhaps look at some of the tubing on the various syphons we have for wine making, some of which are hugely long, others are on broken syphons that we have kept to cannibalise..... and lo-and-behold, one of the PVC hoses fitted between the input pipe and the spray bar beautfully!! So, cut to size, cable tie to hold it at the top of the tank, and I now have the spray bar on the left of the tank so now all water leaves on the right to go to both filters and comes back in on the right. I have also been able to submerge (just) the spray bar, so I no longer have the sound of running water in my right ear.

 

@ricky101 - there is no issue with the pipes themselves, it is the design of the tank/hood that is the problem. On the back of the tank, there is two oval holes in the top rim (one on each side of the tank), which is above the glass and the bit that the hood sits into - these holes in themselves are fine for the pipes to pass through, and hang over the side of the tank, but then the lid wouldn't sit down at the back; this in turn pushed the internal filter lid open.

The problem was in fact the internal filter, which was blocking/obscuring the bulk of the holes in the tank which meant they were only really suitable to pass in small air pipes and heater power cable etc. To allow the pipes to pass in through the hood, I had do modify one end of the filter tray (removing the areas in hatched red on the image below) so the pipes come into the filter tray and then drop through the hole where the pipe comes up from the powerhead type pump into the internal filter spray bar. Only the right side of the filter tray could be modified in this way as the other side is the output chamber where the water swirls and goes back down into the tank.



The downside of that was that the height they were passing through meant that the hard pipes were barely poking out of the bottom of the hood, particularly the one for the spray bar coming in from the external filter. The other downside was that both the in and the out pipes for the external filter had to come in/out at the same side of the tank. The pipe going to the spray bar was as tight as a tight man's tight thing, to the point that if we had to lift the hood at all, even just the front, the spray bar pipework would become detached. This also meant that the spray bar was so high up near the hood that the water was dribbling down a fair old distance and it was remarkably noisy (I could hear it from upstairs during the night).

Now, we have a piece of hose that attaches to the pipework just under the lid, and has allowed me to move the spray bar over to the left side of the tank - so now all the outgoing water is on the right, and all the incoming is on the left; and it is lower, so is all but submerged, and I now don't have the noise of running water all the time - and it has also stopped a lot of turbulence in the water which I suspect is part of the reason that some of the plants didn't root.

As for the heater, it was set initially to 26º and over a few days it was turned down about three times, yet the temperature just kept rising and rising - with the heater set to 24º, we had water at nearly 31º, and that was at the opposite end of the tank to the heater, hence my deduction that it was stuffed.

I will keep checking the water over the coming days and see, and I will have to live in hope that the plants will remove the nitrates from the water, as there is actually more nitrates in our tap water than there is in the tank at the moment

 

My dad got a severe electric shock when I was a kid (so thirty-odd years ago now), and it was from the lights in the hood of our tropical tank. He was stood barefoot on a concrete fireplace, and was basically stuck to the lid until my mum came into the room and killed the power; he was really ill for ages after it too. So, any work on the tank - power goes off. If I need to, I have a kettle that I can use to heat water and take the chill off water changes by adding hot water to each bucket - I even have a spare wine thermometer to check the bucket temp before I put the water in

 

Those look like the ones we bought yesterday @BigC, although we chose not to separate them, despite being tempted to do so - we bought two pots of Echinodorus bleheri, one of Bacopa monnieri, and another couple that I don't have labels for.

The ones that are floating up are those that came without roots - essentially cuttings that should have rooted themselves, but I think our ham-fisted attempts to get them in have crushed the stems causing them to start to rot and then not root. Not the sellers fault to be fair - I think they are more aimed at people like yourself who know what they are doing, and have established tanks, rather than muppets like me who are just starting out.