My Aquarium Blog – The History So Far

I thought it might be a good idea to have an area where I detail the latest goings on in my own fish tanks so I will update this when something new happens. To start with, however, this first post will be a condensed summary of my tropical fish journey to date.

The First Aquarium

As with everything I do, I spent a lot of time researching my new fish tank. I purchased a book and even had a Powerpoint presentation with the fish that I wanted to get (which I showed to my other half!) Pretty geeky, huh?! Unfortunately most of this advice was out of date, especially the information surrounding fishless cycling, and also some of the advice for the different fish species turned out to be wrong too. Most of this work, therefore, mattered for nothing when it was time to get my first fish – the information available online is so much better than books in my opinion.

Having purchased by new Fluval Roma 125 tank online from Seapets, the first thing I noticed that the stand was missing some essential bits so my set-up was delayed for a few days until the missing parts arrived. When the parts arrived a few days later, after setting the tank up, I added the substrate (play sand from Argos) and a few plants and filled it with dechlorinated tap water and then embarked on a long, laborious, fishless cycle which took many months.
Once the tank was cycled, my initial purchase was a group of guppies and Sterbai Cory (some of which I still have five years later). The guppies soon started breading and they began to overrun the 125 litre tank so I succumbed to a common ailment for new fish keepers; “Multiple Tank Syndrome”! I purchased a new 90 litre tank from Ebay in order to house the new fish.

Despite the breeding success, I suffered no-end of problems with the Guppies, which seemed to be very sickly and most didn’t last more than a year, despite the hard London tap water supposedly suiting them. In the end I became demoralised with the constant deaths and decided to give my guppies away to concentrate on the other fish.

 

Soft Water Aquarium

By this time, I had also purchased some Amano Shrimp, Cardinal Tetras and Threadfin Rainbowfish. Unfortunately I was not very successful with most of these fish (I still have all the shrimp I started with though) and it became increasingly apparent that the very hard, alkaline tap water that contained copious amounts of Nitrate was simply not suited to keeping most of the tropical fish available in the hobby and all of my rainbow fish died (some jumped out onto the floor) and most of my Cardinal Tetras also perished. At this point I made the decision to buy a Reverse Osmosis Unit (R/O Unit) in order to produce the soft water with no nitrate contamination that most of these fist required and I gradually substituted this for the tap water.

The new soft water that was made available to me through the R/O unit completely changed my fishkeeping and my fish now started to thrive in their new environment. I still had most of my Corydoras, one of my cardinal tetras and all of my Amano shrimps so in the following months I purchased some Lemon Tetras and Brazilian Rams for my tank, which (Amano shrimps conveniently ignored) I made into a loose Brazilian river biotope. At the same time I changed my old internal filters that came with the fish tanks for the more powerful and easier to maintain external JBL CristalProfi external filters.

Unfortunately the Rams did not take well to the Corys eating the food in their territories that they set up so they had to be separated and ended up in the second tank that used to house the extra Guppies. At this point, I also decided to undertake a complete overhaul of both tanks where I added some substrate for plants (JBL Aquabasis) and put sand over the top. This gave quite a boost to the extra plants that I also added at the same time, enabling them to take nutrients from the substrate.

Breeding More of My Tropical Fish

The gradual softening of the water in the aquarium was having an effect on its inhabitants and the Sterbai Corys started spawning and laying eggs. Unfortunately the Lemon Tetras noticed what was going on and gobbled up the eggs as they were being laid. It was clear that no fry were going to survive this so I purchased a breeding trap.

After fitting the trap, I collected some eggs before the Tetras could get to them and placed them in the trap along with some old mouldering Catappa leaves from the main tank. The eggs hatched and I raised the fry on egg yolk, crushed flake and whatever micro-organisms were on the leaves. Incredibly this worked and five of the tiny Corydoras grew into adult fish and are now a part of my aquarium. I have never used the breeding trap since (one of the Lemon Tetras got trapped in it and died) and despite the Sterbai continuing to spawn and lay eggs at regular intervals, none have subsequently survived into adulthood without the aid of the breeding trap.

A Third Aquarium

At this point, the fishkeeping bug really took hold and I decided to branch out with a third fish tank. This time I chose a larger 200 litre Fluval Roma 200. Once again, I added the plant substrate below the sand with several plants and pieces of bogwood. The cycling was much easier this time as I just used a sponge from my other filter to seed the new one with the required bacteria.

As I already had a loose South American biotope, I decided to go Asian with this new tank and created a loose Malaysian biotope. I always wanted either a Betta or Kuhli loaches so this was the perfect excuse to buy some Kuhlis! In addition to the loaches I also got a group of Harlequins and some Eye Spot rasboras. To complete the aquarium I purchased three Pearl Gourami.

Most of these fish settled in well but the Kuhli loaches were very small when I first got them and I had a problem with them swimming up the piping to the external filter. They are very good at hiding so it is hard to determine whether any of them are missing and I only discovered the break-out during some routine filter maintenance when I found three of them actually inside the external filter! I covered the inlet and outlet with some ladies tights which prevented any further escapes.

This broadly brings me up to date with the aquaria as they currently stand and if there are any further updates I will update this area of the website.
So, how many fish tanks do you have? What species of fish do you keep and do you have any interesting stories regarding your fish tank? If so, I would love to hear about them!