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Watering the aquarium plants.
I have just completed my second water change with the objective of changing my extremely hard alkaline aquarium water into soft neutral water. Not to mention that these water changes will also lower the Nitrate level ever closer to 50 mg/l, which keeps the algae from spreading. My aquarium used to be... pH = 7.8 KH = 15 GH = 20.5 NO2 = 0.01 mg/l NO3 = 100 mg/l After this second water change this has now changed to... pH = 7.4 KH = 8 GH = 10 NO2 = 0 NO3 = 70 mg/l So today my aquarium has just moved from alkaline based water to neutral based water, even if in the end I can get the pH down to very close to 7.0. Not that this aspect matters too much, when it is the General Hardness that is the important aspect here, where this aspect has now gone from the start of extremely hard, straight through hard, into medium, where now we are on the lower end of medium hardness. And so one more water change should have the pH at around 7.2 and the GH at either the bottom of Medium or the very top of Soft. My fish are doing just fine, as I expected they would, even if the White Mollies prefer things more how they were. Today I decided to get more lighting for my aquarium, which should increase the range of plants that I can support. Since I will soon have three aquariums up and running, then it would be a bit much to go past two main tubes per tank. I have found out a lot of information on the lighting subject now, which means that I am very close to buying. Also during my lighting search I came across a couple of devices known as Nitrate Filters, which does just what I need in removing Nitrate from my local water supply. Kind of on the costly side though, but that would solve my algae problem once and for all. In the end you are always left in wonder at how much it costs to support a few cheap fish. I of course won't run through the price list of items that you should know well, but getting these two new (or correctly second hand) aquariums up and running makes for an expensive shopping list. At least all this is a one time only expense, excluding items that fail of course, when apart from the food these fish only need your attention in keeping their living conditions fine. Using all that expensive and numerous equipment... Sometimes I think that I should buy expensive fish to match my expensive equipment, but in the case of my local fish shop, then it is more a case of not having the new fish dying of one disease of another. Like that my last purchase came with two diseases. First of all there was the common White Spot. And the problem here was that the fish that came with this White Spot were my new Mollies. And the thing about White Spot disease is that it is White, where the thing about my Mollies is that they are also White. And so to begin with I was only suspicious that they may have it, where it was only when my Angel Fish (who was black) caught it, then did I know for sure. The problem there was that I spotted this late on Friday and placed an on-line order minutes later, where the White Spot cure arrived on Tuesday. By then one of my original three White Mollies had died, one Golden Tiger Barb as well (three is now down to one), where the Angel Fish having a large amount of surface area died rather quickly. I was not too upset about that Angel Fish death, when he was a fish murdering fish. As when I was making this aquarium into a peaceful fish community, then so did my brother go out and buy this Angel Fish. Lets just say that my 20 neon tetras were obliterated. And as this Angel Fish slowly picked them off one by one, then it was only when their numbers halved did I notice the problem. That Angel Fish was like Jack the Ripper, where it would certainly go for just about anything that got too close. So most fish learned to stay out of it's way, where for years my care in keeping all these fish alive also limited my fish choice due to this one Angel Fish. So I was not too unhappy when White Spot quickly took out that mass murdering Angel Fish, when I certainly won't allow any Angel Fish in my aquariums again. The second disease that my pet shop supplied was Tuberculosis, which came with my very short lived Starlight Bristolnose Plecos. As they died one by one, where it was only when all of them had died did I discover the cause. Normally when a fish dies I remove it from the aquarium as quickly as possible, when I do not wish my other fish to catch what it died of, but unfortunately the last Pleco died in a very inconvenient and hard to spot location. I soon had it located, but not before one of my catfish was feasting upon it, where sure enough the bacterium that causes Tuberculosis (Mycobacterium Piscium) spread and this catfish fell ill. I separated it from the other fish, where this one displayed much better signs of what it had. Since there is no cure, then so did it soon die of a horrible death, which is maybe one reason why the fish book recommends fish termination. Even if they say it is to stop this disease spreading. So I was not too happy with my local fish store, when 5 of these new fish and 2 of my existing fish died. I lost my second Golden Tiger Barb not long following for some unknown reason, where the final one has been doing just fine for the months following all alone. Tiger Barbs I find are those fish that will die before all others when anything is going on the extremely bad side, but they look so nice and so worth the risk. And so now I have to get more Golden Tiger Barbs, when I always hate single species fish. My second and last catfish also died following this time, but I would put that one down to old age, when it had lived many years. Then again it could have just been lonely, when it outlived two catfish friends in that time. No more deaths since then, when my aquarium works well enough even with the hard water and higher Nitrate levels. One day soon I may even risk a trip to my local fish shop again, where this time I will have a separate aquarium to let them die in. Think I may get me some loaches this time, when I always wanted to master this creature of the darkness. Not to mention that I really had to pity those loaches in the fish store, which were under a bright light with no shelter at all. I am sure that such stores should not be allowed to keep these fish so badly, but then that is often due to ignorance. As I have certainly learned the hard way how not to kill fish, where if you think about it, then letting the inexperienced public own fish is really cruel to these fish. Many of these fish simply die due to their lack of understanding of why they are dying. Not to mention their belief that all it takes to keep them alive is to feed them. Anyway, I guess any fish would be lucky to have me as their owner, when I am slowly inching towards perfection. So fish are safe with me as long as they don't catch anything from new fish, which is what one of these two extra aquariums will solve. I would also like to get a Fighting Fish as well along with a few females, when these fish are safe enough. Sure they will go at anything that gets too close, but they are just too slow to ever pose a real problem. And knowing me I would also buy any fish that is in any way unusual, but currently the fish I have are rather boring. At this time I am just planning to move my White Mollies to the larger tank, when these two breeding to seven is coming close to maximum capacity. Anyway, time to go and sort out my lighting, then to add yet more costly items needed to get these other two aquariums active. Cardman. http://www.cardman.com http://www.cardman.co.uk |
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