So my new 36" tank is safely sitting in my kitchen, complete with layers of plant substrate, fine gravel and chunky gravel. I've lovingly planted 2 Amazon swords, 2 vallisneria spirallis, 1 anubias nano, 1 pretty veriagated wavy leafed thing, 1 red leafed thing (that decided to split itself into 3) and a piece of bogwood complete with java fern (and possibly a little bit of java moss) rooted on it. They've been bought a temporary mini lamp until the hood arrives, is declared suitable and I work out (or am told by someone in the know) how I put lights inside it. Hopefully they'll all flurish and establish themselves nicely before the fishies arrive.

Unfortunately, the blue tinge from the aquasafe hasn't quite cleared so don't think I'll be using that brand again but the temperature is fluctuating nicely between 27.1 and 27.8 degrees. I'm sure that must be fairly normal. Haven't stuck the magnet back onto the glass yet because I'm hoping it will stay high enough without sticking at least until I can work out if that corner is the best one for it. In my old life I'd be really excited because the tank is so full of bubbles but now I'm not sure that's such a good thing.

I'm think I'm about ready to start cycling (ammonia method).

The current readings are:
pH 7.5
total hardness between 14 and 21
Carbonate hardness 20
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 15

The little one died when I did a water change from the big tank in preparation to move it. I bought some more eggs, a pack of about 30 and decided to hatch them in the bigger tank again. I had maybe 5 hatch and they all died inside a week. That's 3 failures in a row.

I'm now thinking; this tank I'm using was owned by fish novices and the water was like pea soup when I came round and rescued their barbs. They quite probably put in an algae killer at some point to try to clean it up or even snail killer as they had some green mush in the tank that may have once been plants too. These things often contain copper in which case up I'm right up the spout trying to use this tank for triops. It would explain the appalling hatch and survival rates. Perhaps I'll try killifish but not at the moment.

Work has been killing me, while trying to do this several new projects have turned up and thanks to this and a primary server going knockers up I've been regularly working 8am to 6pm then 10pm to 2am during the week and then 8am to 4pm Sunday. This has effected both my enjoyment of the tanks and my sense of humour.

So I get home last Friday and found Dory had a serious fungal infection that wasn't there the night before. Looks like she banged her head and got an infection. Now Dory is not a fish that enjoys attention and the only way I could catch her is to strip the tank and drain it to 6" of water. (had to do it before) Even then it would be difficult. I really couldn't face the destruction and wasn't convinced that it was a good idea considering my tank is FOWLR (and a few soft corals more or less thrown in.) So I picked up my invert friendly, "reef safe", oodinex, turned off the carbon and UV and dosed accordingly.

Instantly the mushrooms shrivelled, the cowrie hid and the torch coral disintegrated (although the torch has been on its way out for months now). 3 days of this and the mushrooms appear to be recovering, the cowrie is unhappy but alive and I no longer have a flatworm problem. Better still Dory is improved but this was a very dramatic example of what 'reef safe' actually means. Terrible. I need to get things back in control and I need to find and train someone to look after all these fish for me because next year I'm going to Florida for 3 weeks.

As you can imagine with all this and 2 kids that are currently 'testing boundaries' I've taken the only sensible course of action with the triop project... I give up.

Well after lots of research we have decided to go ahead and start building our pond. Obviously we aren't planning to stock with fish until spring but we have decided to start the build now as with three kids under 6 it may take a while lol!

Pond is going to be 8ft x 12ft and plan is 2.5ft under the ground and another 2ft above ground bringing a total depth of 4.5ft

Started digging yesterday, well my other half did and i thought i'd post his progress as i'm impressed with him for saying the ground is mostly compacted clay after just half a foot down lol.

Last time I posted I was waiting for my triops in my triop kit to hatch. They never did - that I saw but I learned a couple of things.
First I was over complicating the whole thing. Triops need a very low TDS to hatch which means that cycling the tank before they hatch is near impossible. Plus when they hatch they are so small that having a cycled tank is pointless anyway. Their bioload is so tiny that even in a pint glass it would be like a single tetra in a 50 gallon tank. In a 30L tank all they really needed was to be left alone.
Anyway, that was a learning experience so I ordered some new eggs from ebay and got the european species "cancriformis" that is more comfortable with lower temperatures and grows larger.
I set up a bowl on top of the tank with a light and put in mostly pure RO with a small jug full of old tank water from the tropical tank. Left it a day and then poured in the new eggs.

A week later some triops where born, last week I thought they'd all died before growing.
This was followed by the growing on tank becoming overgrown with algae and last weekend by my marine tank sump return malfuctioning and 30 gallons of water ending up on the dining room floor. The fish are ok but the Cowrie hasn't moved since so I need to go check him out as soon as I've finished typing this... tomorrow I'm fitting a new laminate floor (the tank itself is mounted directly onto the concrete so at least I don't have to get under it!

Overall I've been feeling pretty fed up about all this but just this afternoon as I was about to tip out the grotty bowl of water I spotted a 0.5cm triop lazing at the surface. Some good news at last
The newborns where smaller than the sand at the bottom of the bowl and so despite my best efforts proved impossible to photograph. Actually I do have some images with tiny white specs on them that may be the baby triops but here is a photo of the 0.5cm one today.

I've been meaning to give you an update on my big tank for ages, but have been so busy. Got time now finally . So my tank has been up and running for nearly a year now.



I finished the cupboards and shelves around the tank, so it is now boxed in and looks great. The plants have grown well, too well for some of them. The wisteria and fluffy weed stuff (cambomba?) had to both come out as they went mad. I had to trim them every 4 days or so, it was a bit out of hand. The Amazon swords are getting huge, and one of the even had babies which is good, free plants I've gradually added further fish and the others have grown bigger. The shoal of harlequins now numbers about 50 and make a good site when they school. I've added some upside down cats (no photo at the moment, they hide all the time ). I have also added a rainbow cichlid called Romeo, he was a valentines present. He did have a Juliet, but she died of hole in the head, just wouldn't respond to my treatments . I do plan to get Romeo another girl friend when i see a female.



I've also added a paradise fish. Again i had two, a supposed pair. But they turned out to be both males and started really fighting, so one has been taken back to the LFS. He doesn't have a name yet. I'm planning to get him a girlfriend too when i find one.



And Sinbad has grown even bigger, he's now 10.5 inches nose to tail. My biggest fish by some margin. And he loves eating, happily munches his courgette. He eats an inch or so a day. It is amazing how he can balance on top of plants and things though, guess that comes with having a swim bladder.



That's all for now, I'll do another update soon when i can get the fish to hold still for some pictures. Like that's ever going to happen.

Just finished building my tank and am about to start on the putting the water etc in... Will updaste once I get somewhere - also my first post on here

I put the adding of triops on hold as I wanted to run some chemistry experiments on the tank first. Results on those still to follow but I've done a few water changes and the water is now clear.

I have found that the exceptionally soft water required for the triops is resulting in difficult keeping the PH from crashing. With the additional chemical activity of the plants and the ammonia starting a cycle the ph drops low, the cycle stalls and it all goes pete tong. Lucky this is all being discovered before adding the triops. To counter this I have chosen to increase the KH and TDS of the tank a little. I am now holding a PH of 6.4 - 6.6 and a TDS of close to 200.

To answer a couple of questions posed on the last blog entry,

1. I have some egg cysts left over from a couple of years ago, I know they are good at surviving drought (~sp.) but do you think they would still be viable?
Triop eggs are amazingly resilient and can be viable after decades. It will depend on how they've been kept, hopefully dry and cool. The only way to know is to try it out.

2. How big do they get?
That depends on the particular species of Triop. I've been told Triops inhabit every continent and climate, the largest being the european (Triops cancriformis) and grow to over 4" plus tail. The UK has triops however they are an endangered species so collecting from the wild is a definite no-no. Normally the ones you get in kits are from one of a few species that grow to around 2" (plus tail). Once you learn the species names ebay makes it easy to get the ones you're after.


I promise there will be triops in the next instalment of this triop blog!

Hello again,
I've not blogged anything for a while but I have a new project on the go now. Triops! I know this is a fishkeeping website but triop care isn't that different and so here is FK's first triop blog and rough guide.

The story so far...
I never had triops as a kid and have always been fascinated by the weird and wonderful so last Christmas my wife surprised me with a box called Triop World. Billing itself and everything I would need to keep triops it contained a pamphlet, a clear plastic yoghurt pot (maybe 500ml) and a three sachets.
The sachets turned out to be one of sand - about 50g. One of food, looks like standard fish feed pellets, and one of eggs and food.

The instructions tell you to fill the pot with bottled water (because chlorine and chloride are not liked by triops)
Wait until the water is at room temperature then add the eggs. Feed daily. Add the sand after three weeks. Do a partial water change every two weeks.

I decided to do some online research and found that most of this was pandering to the "make it easy or people wont buy it" line of thinking .

With the assistance of sites like http://mytriops.com and a few others that I can't find any more I learned that what I really wanted was a small aquarium of 4L per adult triop. A filter that would be considered safe for fry and somewhere to put it.

My credit with the wife had all but expired so rather than spending money I got on with redecorating the living room and fitting a 47" HD LCD to the wall. This pleased the wife but left an awkward empty gap next to the sofa... what would we put there?

A visit to Ikea saw the purchase of a sturdy chest of drawers which we could keep the remote controls and game controllers in... something tells me that if you need a chest of drawers for your remote controls technology really has taken over your life!

During this time my daughter made a new friend, when her parents came round they spotted the multiple tanks and asked if I would take theirs off their hands as they'd lost patience and where feeling guilty about the fish. These guys:-



Seen here fully recovered in my tank they where sadly homed in a 30L mess that was opaque with blackish slime algae. The filter had broken months before, several dead fish kept them company and the water was so murky I couldn't tell what they where until after I'd bagged them up, even then their poor frail bodies made them hard to identify.

The good news is that these poor little fishies are now much happier in my 220L planted tank and I have a 30L tank hood and light.

Thanks to work hours giving me no time at all to go round the lfs it took me ages to then find that none of the lfs sell a simple sponge filter. I bought an Eheim Pickup 2008 and stretched the toe of some tights over the inlet strainer.

It took another week to get back to a lfs that sold sand, maidenhead wanted £25 for a 25kg bag of sand. Not impressed guys. I rode the extra 50 yards to Wydales garden center and collected a 25kg bag of playsand instead for £3.99. Same stuff minus the little fishies on the bag! Seriously, what a racket.


Rinsed the sand, filled the tank with RO and a dash of tap/remineraliser making the TDS around 80ppm. Triops like very soft water and they spawn in fresh rainfall. Dropped in a couple of bits of bogwood that I had lying around too. Now when it clears I'll add the plants.



So that's it. Thanks for reading and now we are up to date I'll try to be a little more concise next time

My tank has been up and running now for 2 months and the plants have grown in amazingly. I think it looks great now. I've also added some fish from my sitting room tank, and have a few more in quarantine waiting to go in. The filters have been working fine, but i decided to add a booster pump to one of their return feeds. The pipes for it are really long with a few corners and the current from it was a bit pathetic, so i installed a small booster pump and its much better. Still waiting for the second external heater to arrive, company keeps promising it but it doesn't come

This is how the tank looks now. The tall plants are breaking it up really well now so when i get my angle fish they shouldn't fight as they'll all have their own areas to hide. Still need to build the lid for the tank cupboard area, it will hide the lighting systems. I'll have time one day, June maybe.



I fertilise the tank once a week and the lights are on for 13 hours a day at the moment. Now the plants are grown up so well i will probably cut the lights back a bit to prevent algae build up and the plants going mad. I haven't had any algae growth yet luckily, i think the fish and plants are getting it before its a problem. The plants around the plane and ship have grown up really well and they look like they've been there for quite a while now.





The sand can get a bit dirty, especially with the plecs pooing away. I've got a plug in hoover which is quite efficient. I spend a happy half hour up to my armpits in the tank hoovering once a week.

So far the tank contains 4 harlequins, 5 mollies and about 8 molly fry (at it again ), 2 hoplo catfish called Lucy and Not Lucy, a sailfin plec called Sinbad, a L015 plec who hides all the time, 10 corries and 5 unknown algae eaters.

Here is Lucy on my sunken battle ship. The spots are sand from her rummages, not white spot. Hopefully i won't get white spot as the tank has UV systems. The Hoplos are really cute and have started coming to the surface for the flake food. I'm hoping to train them to hand feed like the mollies.



And Sinbad engaged in his favourite past time of stuffing himself



I'm planning to add another 15 harlequins (already in the quarantine tank), some angle fish and some other small cichlids such as earth eaters. I might also add a few more catfish as i love them so much. they are definitely my favourite fish. That will be a gradual process over the next few months depending on q tank capacity and such things.

I'm very happy with my tank. Its quite a bit of work but i love having it. It is a bit of a distraction though. Its in my office and when I'm trying to work I keep looking over and staring for ages.

Well after quite some time ive gotten round to an update thins have progress slowly deliberately so allowing the tank to machure and fish to be quarantined

I came across a few problems with the set up which have mostly been solved the first was quite a large amount of fuss and slime accumulating on the bog wood.
After consulting LHG we came to the conclusion of adding a Pleco to the tank as this would work quite well with the currant inhabitance i was on the look out for a wood eating Pleco that as a bonus to chewing the bog wood he would clean the fuss as well.
whilst in my lfs i came across a dull eyed royal pleco(l191) and promptly got him home and into quarantine
after introduction he cleaned the bog wood up nicely within a few days



then i started having clarity problems misting of the water my levels where very good no problems with filtration or flow around the tank clean gravel and all agen after talking to forum members including LHG
it was decided that far from being a bad thing happening it was more likely to be an abundance of life in the tank coupled with the usual misting that cichlids produce
so the discussion was made to add a uv steriliser i searched e bay to fined one suitable and within my poor man's budget i came across this

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&item=180220836188

all seemed good a nice uv steriliser with fittings that would rotate 360 degrease to allow easy figment and mounting under the tank and well within the flow rate of the fluval 205 filter.
it arrived 3 days later i got all exited with a new gadget but to my disappointment after assembling and switching the unit on the bulb would not illuminate. of back to the e bay seller i go i have to give credit hear to the customer service of the seller 100 percent good i sent a message explaining the problem and they promptly sent me a new bulb and transformer which on fitting worked perfectly. all well and good i plumbed it in today i will update on the effect it has on the tank in the future.



The next stage was finding a specese of fish that would add some movement to the tanks upper levels as the cichlids kept in ther end of tank territory and the Platydoras costatus had gone fully nocturnal and only appear after lights out hiding among the bog wood throughout the day so left most of the middle and upper tank void of movement. and again another LHG recommendation along with dwss59 input and some research we found a good sized medium shoal fish with enough boisterousness to hold ther own and not bother or be bothered with the cichlids as well as having ther own character i decided on selecting one of the large rainbows once i could fined some in my lfs of the right size i wanted to introduce larger specimens.

When in my lfs looking for them i struck up a conversation with a friend of a friend ho had decided to shut dawn his tank and had 6 Glossolepis incisus (red rainbows). i got them home and put them in qt they where pretty washed out not showing much colour the first few days until they settled after some more research i discovered i had 6 males. (bummer lol) so will have to track dawn some females and swap out 4 of them at a later date.

So i will finish of with a few tank shots and under tank shots of the filter and electronic layout the stand is ready for cladding now i have everything as i want it so till the next update.