20 Gallon tank wish list

I decided to do everyone a favor and put together a Amazon.com wish list that would have everything (or as much as possible) of everything that you would need to setup your own 20 gallon freshwater aquarium. The list includes everything except decorations and the actual fish.

You can view the wish list here. Let me know what you all think.

PWC Grand Prix

I decided to have a little fun with my second water change last night and time it. I didn't go as fast As I could because the kids were asleep, but I definitely pushed it to the limit.

Step 1: Siphon out 9 gallons of water.

• Bucket 1 - 2:49.05 minutes
• Bucket 2 - 3:00.00 minutes
• Bucket 3 - 3:20.04 minutes

Total: 9:09.09 minutes.

Step 2: Put 9 gallons of pre-treated water into tank. Total: 2:38.80 minutes.

Step 3: Refill 10 gallon cooler with 9 gallons of tap water.

• Bucket 1 - 1:35.90 minutes
• Bucket 2 - 1:06.90 minutes
• Bucket 3 - 1:03.00 minutes

Total: 3:45.80 minutes

Step 4: Treat tap water with water conditioner, aquarium salt, and pH 7.0. Total: 00:56.60 minutes.

This makes the grand total for a 50% water change: 16:31.90 minutes.

Siphoning the water out of the fish tank took longer the less water there was in the tank, which I'm sure there is a scientific answer for.

Why buy a bio-wheel filter for your freshwater tank

 I was doing some reading today about protein skimmers for marine tanks, and came across this aricle from the bailey brothers on bio-wheel filters. I really wanted one for my tank, but I could never really justify purchasing a new filter, when my old one really works just fine.

This article basically explains that the beneficial bacteria in your tank requires oxygen. Most water has only 7 ppm oxygen. This means the bacteria have to fight go grow and thrive with just a few particles of air. The bio-wheel filter rotates in and out of water allowing the bacteria to gain oxygen from the air which is at 200,000 ppm oxygen.

This really appeals to me because I need to build up the beneficial bacteria as fast as possible or I will be doing 50% water changes every day for this whole month.

I love how math explains everything.

Source: AquariumFish.net

Timing is Everything

Before we left on the trip to New York, I needed to figure outa way to have the tank light turn on and off without requiring my neighbor come over all the time to do it.

Then I remembered that over a year ago, when we were trying to sleep train our son, we bought a outlet timer that we could set to automatically turn his bed-stand lamp on when it was time to get up.

That project failed miserably because we had to keep resetting it because of when he went to bed. But as we were leaving, I realized that it would be perfect for the trip.

Woot!

Greater Washington D.C. Area Aquarist/Fishkeeping Societies and Associations

For those of you who live in the greater Washington D.C. Area, I did some poking around on the AquariumAdvice.com forum and found some groups for Aquarists/Fishkeepers that meet on a regular basis. 

• Patomac Valley Aquarium Society (PVAS)
• Washington, DC Area Marine Aquarist Society (WAMAS)
• Capital Cichlid Association (CCA)
• Greater Washington Aquatic Plant Association (GWAPA)

Fishkeeping: Day 11

Once again DC helped me feed the fish when I got home from work. I could tell that DC didn't mess with them, because they were a lot more active and less skittish. I am really starting to enjoy watching the fish eat, its like a little dance that they are doing for me. After the feeding I started thinking that with the trip to New York tomorrow and knowing that the ammonia was not going to go down, it would be best if i did a partial water change tonight.

I started out by taking a 10 gallon wide cooler and filling it up with 6 gallons of water. I then added tap water conditioner, pH 7.0, and aquarium salt. I then put the cooler near the tank and walked away.

After the kids were asleep, I went ahead and took the current levels of the tank:

• pH: 7.0
• Ammonia: 1.0 mg/l
• Nitrite: 0.0 mg/l
• Nitrate: 5.0 mg/l

Then just to be safe, I got the pH level of the new water which was 7.0.

I used my neighbors siphon to fill up my new 3 gallon bucket. I dumped the bucket at repeated. Doing the math, there was 6 gallons taken out of the tank, and I had a cooler with 6 gallons of replacement water. All I had to do was put the water from the cooler in the tank and boom goes the dynamite, my first PWC was completed.

As a final step, I grabbed the water levels one more time:

• pH: 7.0
• Ammonia: < 1.0 mg/l
• Nitrite: 0.0 mg/l
• Nitrate: 5.0 mg/l

6 gallons of water out of a 20 gallon tank is approximatly 30% of the total water volume in the tank, so numbers should have gone down 30% and I don't think it did. After some serious thinking, I went to AquariumAdvice.com and looked up information on API water testing kit expiration date. It said the last 4 digits of the batch number on each bottle represents the date it was made, and it should be good for 3 years after that date. the bottles dated from 2009, so I didn't think the testing chemicals were bad yet.

I really didn't have anymore time, so I turned the light off and said goodnight to Leela, Fry, and Bender.

(PHOTO's)



Draining the Tank

Filling the cooler with 6 gallons of water

chemicals for replacement water

Leela, Fry, and Bender

Levels after PWC

Levels prior to PWC

pH of replacement water

Tank after PWC



Aquarium Advice

As a part of my immersion into the Fishkeeping/Aquarist hobby, I have decided to be a little more social and join an aquarium forum. I was browsing the iPhone app store, when I came across an app for "AquariumAdvice.com".

After some poking around I was very happy with not only the quality of articles, but the quantity of active users and overall community that has been established.

If you are at all interested in the hobby, I would suggest stopping by AquariumAdvice.com and reading a few of the articles.

You can view my AquariumAdvice.com profile here.

Fishkeeping: Day 3

Right before the Larrimore's rolled out, I grabbed the latest numbers on the tank.

pH = 7.0 (Woot!)
Ammonia = 1.0 mg/l
Nitrate = 5.0 mg/l

I was happy about the pH finally leveling out, but the nitrates have me worried. I knew the gravel was still dirty when I put it in the tank even though I attempted to clean it, but I thought that the filter would fix everything.

After doing some research, I think I may have uncovered the problem. In a fish tank, there are 3 types of filters; Mechanical, chemical and biological. Mechanical filters pull in water and pass it through a mesh that keeps dirt and particles from flowing back into the tank. Chemical filters are a medium like charcoal removing chemicals like ammonia. Biological filters are live bacteria that take the nitrogen (nitrates and nitrites) and fish waste and produce oxygen.

The reason why I still have nitrates in the tank is because I don't have a biological filter. The problem is that a biological filter is grown not made. Fish naturally have the bacteria in them and when they excrete waste, they also excrete the bacteria. The bacteria gather in the mechanical filter and grow.

This means that the only way to lower the nitrates is to clean the gravel and replace the water and start over, unless I want to take a chance with the new fish.

I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do yet, but luckily I have some time to think about it.

What do you think?

Should you get an undergravel filter?

Before you do, I would recommend reading this article first.

Aquatics Unlimited also did a follow-up article to address comments and concerns with the original post

Pet Fish Talk Show

In an attempt to learn more about Fishkeeping, I scoured the iTunes podcast library and downloaded a few from one called the Pet Fish Talk Show. It's a radio show with 2 brothers who have umpteen years of experience with Fishkeeping talking about the old days and nerding out about fish and aquariums.

I really didn't understand much, but they did a podcast about setting up your first aquarium that I thought was fantastic. Not only did they explain the equipment needed in great detail, they went into introducing the fish to the tank and maintenance. What made me like this podcast even more was the fact that the information matched up with what I had been reading.

I don't know about subscribing to the podcast as these guys are a little dry, but they are definitely a knowledgeable source on Fishkeeping, and they have a regular podcast.

You can find them here

You Goofed me Google! Export with caution!

For anyone using Google Blogger:

Please be extremely careful with your posts and blogs. I recently transferred posts from one blog to another and found out that the export feature of Google Blogger was not all that it was cracked up to be, if you use jump breaks.

Apparently, Blogger exports your posts in Atom format, which seems harmless enough, except when you use jump breaks. It will cut the post off at the jump break and then put in a link to the old blog post. Combine that with cleaning up posts at the old blog and you will loose precious posts. Currently, half of my posts are now gone. Months of blogging are now nothing more than short posts that I will never be able to recreate.

If you want to export/import your Google Blog, be sure to go to "Feed Setting" under the Settings tag, and set "Allow Blog Feeds" to "Full" before you export. This should allow your blog feeds to be exported in full.