When I posed up the pics of taking wifey to the Dallas aquarium, I got a request to post up a cpuple of pictures of my marine aquarium at the house. Well, it only took me 3 months to do it. Here they are.
Aquarium
- Thread starter BusaWhipped
- Start date
Got the finding nemo thing going on
...
Love salt water tanks, alot of upkeep though.
Rayabusa0818
Never Forgotten
Nice set up. I had to sell my 3 tanks. With my busted brain I just couldn't keep up.
Nice pics,RSD.
Nice pics,RSD.
Nice tank!
This one's not to bad. If you pick your fish right, it isn't much more work than a fresh water tank. We used to have some fragile fish that were very sensitive to water quality changes and would only eat live food. That took some work to keep the fish swimming. These are all harty fish and eat flake food.
damn. That's twice the size of mine. What are you planning to put in it?
It's an Oceanic Reef-Ready tank, but this go-around it will be all freshwater. The kids saw pics of neon tetras, swordtails, guppies, zebra danios, etc. They said that they want 'those' in the tank. ...
Kind of ironic that I posted this up this week. We lost most of the fish today. The temp in the tank dropped when we had the power outage and killed off the bio-filter. It only took 2 days for "new tank syndrom" to kill off the fish we've had for 4 years.
Are there steps to progerss through...as temp, ph, is there a salt level to maintain, and others even before you introduce fish?
Do plants and others things aid in the enviroment control?
I have read these points, just curious to your real world experience.
Looks good, is there a daily routine, weekly?
Do plants and others things aid in the enviroment control?
I have read these points, just curious to your real world experience.
Looks good, is there a daily routine, weekly?
ummm, since I'm basically starting from scratch again, yes, there are steps to progress through. If you introduce fish into your tank too fast, they will poison the water and kill everything off. This is known as new tank syndrome.
An aquarium is a ballancing act. Fish produce ammonia which is very toxic. A bio-filter contains two types of bacteria, one of which consumes ammonia and produces nitrites and the other which consumes nitrites and produce nitrates. There are no bacteria or fishes that can consume nitrates. This is where the plants come in to play. Plants consume nitrates and produce oxygen.
So in the perfect aquarium, everything would take care of itself, fish eat plants produce ammonia to feed the bio filter which produces nitrates which nourish the plants. Ufortunately there isn't a perfect aquarium. Even in an established tank, every time you introdue a new fish, it takes time for the bio-filter to adjust to the increased ammonia production. I operate a natural aquarium, meaning I do not use external filters or skimmers. It reduces the number of fish the tank can support per gallon of water, but I perfer this method.
There are also a few other things which effect water quality and fish health. ph is the acidity of the water. What level pH to maintain depends on the types of fishes you are keeping, but gennerally it needs to be kept on the basic side of neutral. Along with pH come alkalinity. Alkalinity is a measurement of the ability of the water to absorb acidic matter without effecting the pH level.
Lastly, for a salt water aquarium, you need to have the correct specific gravity of the water. The specific gravity is the measure of the amount of salt disolved in the water. Keeping the specific gravity correct is what makes water changes in a salt water aquarium a bit more troublesome than a fresh water one.
Over the first month of setting up a new tank, you'll need to measure all of these levels daily and make adjustments until the tank stabalized. One the tank is stable, slowly introduce fishes into the tank, allowing it to adjust to the new load. You'll need to watch the chemical levels closely when introducing specemins. Once it stabalizes, you can reduce the water testing to weekly, and eventually to monthly as you build confidence in the stability of the tank.
Hope that helps.
An aquarium is a ballancing act. Fish produce ammonia which is very toxic. A bio-filter contains two types of bacteria, one of which consumes ammonia and produces nitrites and the other which consumes nitrites and produce nitrates. There are no bacteria or fishes that can consume nitrates. This is where the plants come in to play. Plants consume nitrates and produce oxygen.
So in the perfect aquarium, everything would take care of itself, fish eat plants produce ammonia to feed the bio filter which produces nitrates which nourish the plants. Ufortunately there isn't a perfect aquarium. Even in an established tank, every time you introdue a new fish, it takes time for the bio-filter to adjust to the increased ammonia production. I operate a natural aquarium, meaning I do not use external filters or skimmers. It reduces the number of fish the tank can support per gallon of water, but I perfer this method.
There are also a few other things which effect water quality and fish health. ph is the acidity of the water. What level pH to maintain depends on the types of fishes you are keeping, but gennerally it needs to be kept on the basic side of neutral. Along with pH come alkalinity. Alkalinity is a measurement of the ability of the water to absorb acidic matter without effecting the pH level.
Lastly, for a salt water aquarium, you need to have the correct specific gravity of the water. The specific gravity is the measure of the amount of salt disolved in the water. Keeping the specific gravity correct is what makes water changes in a salt water aquarium a bit more troublesome than a fresh water one.
Over the first month of setting up a new tank, you'll need to measure all of these levels daily and make adjustments until the tank stabalized. One the tank is stable, slowly introduce fishes into the tank, allowing it to adjust to the new load. You'll need to watch the chemical levels closely when introducing specemins. Once it stabalizes, you can reduce the water testing to weekly, and eventually to monthly as you build confidence in the stability of the tank.
Hope that helps.
Similar threads
