Fishkeeping: Day 8, part 1

I spent last night running around like a chicken with his head cut off. It was day 8, I had finished my book, and there were no fish in the tank and I was not happy with the situation.

The first thing I wanted to do was go to the pet store to pick up a bucket for changing up the water. We had a smaller bucket, but it has been used to hold cleaning supplies and I didn't want to take the chance of the chemicals getting in the fish tank. I rounded up my neighbor Tony, who was having his own problems.

They recently added several fish from a store other than the one they were used too and now their fish were dying. When I stopped by I saw 2 fish dead on the bottom of the tank. After some serious consideration and inspection he decided that after we got back to super clean the tank and change up 20% of the water in his 55 gallon tank.

I came home from the Petco with some supplies for our rats and the decoration you see above. Its some sort of acrylic piece of drift wood. I was a little hesitant at first, but it definitely looks better in the tank. I then proceeded to use my neighbors syphon to empty the tank of water and take out all of the gravel.

After putting new water in, I de-chlorinated it, put in pH 7.0 as well as aquarium salt and let it sit. I noticed the tempurature was a little high, so using ice cream logic, I took ice, cold water and salt, put it in a ziploc bag and dropped in the tank. By the time it was all melted it dropped the 20 gallon tank 3 - 5 degrees to a normal level for the fish I was going to put in there.

At this point, The water was all setup, I had gravel sitting in a bucket in the bathroom tub, and dinner on the table, it was time to take a break.

(PHOTO'S)

New Drift Wood Decoration

Refilled tank with bag full of ice