Introducing myself.

Evening all. or depending when ypur reading this, Morning, lol

I am setting up a tank for my youngest. Now there is a story to how this all came about, so bare with me.

Youngest came home from saturday school club with a gold fish. Now to be fair we were given a warning from his teacher, but we thought she meant one that they were going to be making at school and not the real thing. At 4pm we picked him up from school and then after a 40 min drive home rushed to the pet shop and picked up a small starter tank. This was obviously small and not suited to gold fish. I then ordered a bigger tank online with all the equipment needed. About a week before the tank came in, fred (yeah my son puy a lot of thought into that name) gulped his last breath. Said son then decided that he did not want to have another goldfish and wanted something else, which turned out to be shell dwellers. Now the tank I ordered for freddie was a 70x50x50cm 175l, with overkill filtration for the messy goldfish. This is not really the tank you want for shellies as 2/3 would not be used at all. I took him down to Seahorse Aquariums and he has fallen in love with Lake Tanganykan Cichlids. I have just set up the tank. Have chinese limestone rock, with aragonite sand to buffer ph and am 3 days into cycling the tank. I will add some pics later, but pretty boring at the mo, as just sand and rocks, lol. Once the tank is cycled we can go and pick some fish. Though have no idea what ones we will go for yet. The overall size is not that big for cichlids and with the rocks and sand the 175l is down to 135l of actual water The good news is the filter is over kill and will be able to handle what we put in it.

Sorry if this was a little longer than usual, but thouyght I should give an explanation as to why we are trying to put lake tang or lake malawi (he is 10 and anything can happen between now and when i take him down to pick the fish) into a tiny aquarium.

Dominic

Its all fun & games John,

So far its all working out. have had no problems setting up the aquarium. Cycling the tank with the help of Stability. I will do a 20% water change tomorrow and then have the water tested on Saturday. If ok. Will pick up some fish. Taking him back to Dublin and he can pick. Providing what he wants will work in the aquarium. he gets his way. If his choices dont match, well then between the assistant in the shop and myself we should be able to stear him to something more appropriate.

Hi Dominic and son , welcome to the forum , its great to see young blood coming into the hobby . He will like us all make mistakes when starting out ( i am still making them after 30 years in the hobby ) its a massive learning curve . Its a great hobby . So good luck with the tank and keep us posted on how things are going . Us forum people love to follow a new project . Robert

a few pictures of aquarium. The water is pretty clear now. Though the grey frosting that I applied to the back of the tank is probably not the best choice... we live and learn

Thnaks Robert, He is very keen at the moment. Lets hope that regular water changes and cleaning the filter will not diminish enthusiasm.

Nice fine sand you have there. That's another thing you will be dreading when fish go in and you try and siphon the muck out without getting to much sand.
But with practice it can be done.

lol, I know... Really am coming at this arse about face. Believe it or not this is the larger grained version of the aragonite sand. The other one that they do has half the grain size that this one has.

When I ordered it, my son was going for shell dwellers, and I was advised to go for the aragonite sand as they move it about and also bury the shells in it. Obviously things have moved on since then and no longer going for shellies...

I am hoping that holding the siphone above the sand will get the crap and leave the sand, but we both know thats not going to happen, lol.

I also have a lot of shells that were going to be used for the shellies that are now sitting in a box and an airpump. you never know they may get used at some point, in a different tank. Though the next one will be one that I have more control over.

Dom