Dupla CO2 Omega Reaktor
I’m going to start experimenting with CO2 fertilisation for plants with this simple Dupla Co2 Omega Reactor, it’s just 200g of sugar and yeast, in a bottle with an airline tube into a tank. A DIY version can be made very easily with a pop bottle. I’ve dissolved the sugar in warm water from the kettle, I’m just waiting for the temperature to drop to 25 degrees C before and add the yeast, I don’t want to kill the yeast, if the water is too hot.
If your ever driving northbound or soutbound on the M1 passing Junction 35, you MUST stop at Simply Aquatics – Probably the Best Aquatics Shop in Sheffield.
Located at
Spotty my pet Large spot catfish Synodontis Ocellifer is poorly, in the last few days, his character has changed, he normally hides all day, and comes out for feeding, and he’s out at night, but I’ve noticed him out during the day.
I’ve moved him to a quarantine tank on his own, but I fear the worst.
I went to the Sheaf Valley Aquarist Society fish auction today, this is the second time I’ve been to a Sheaf Valley Aquarist Society fish auction. I received a very warm welcome from members of the society, and despite leaving late from York, and driving like a Forumla 1 driver, got to the auction before it started. Auction started shortly after 1pm, and was well catered for with refreshments, drinks and food, fanastic because I’d not eaten all day (I don’t do breakfast!), so it was nice to get a can of pop during a break, when I wasn’t bidding!
Just a list of the few fish that came up for auction, Corydoras (approx 10 different species), Platies, Mollies, Guppies, Angelfish, L-number catfish, Ancistrus (approx 5 different species), Cichlids, Danios, Gouramis and Killifish. I think there was something for most fishkeepers from beginners to experts, and also for sale F1 (local breed) King Tiger Plecos L66s, it wouldn’t be fair to list prices, just make sure you go to the next auction.Lots of dry goods, filters, food, electrical items, tanks. In my opinion, most tank breed local fish are always better quality than whats available in the local tropical fish shops. (if available).
The next auction, and it’s the last auction of the year is on Monday Evening 12th October at The Pheasant Inn, 822 Barnsley Road, Sheffield, S5 0QG. Auction starts at 20:00hrs.
This is the list of items I won today at auction
two boxes of fish!
Again congratulations to members of the society for a execellent auction.
I was also lucky enough to win a few times in the Sheaf Valley Aquarist Society raffle today, and for first prize I selected a new Aqua One external filter and later some ceramic hoop filter media. So it’s always worth purchasing a strip to help out the society.
Raffle Prizes
I also passed Simply Aquatics, 84 – 86 The Common, Ecclesfield, Sheffield, S35 9WN on the return journey, and this is one excellent shop. Excellent slection of tropical, coldwater and marines, and very well maintained, and clean setup. Five stars and highly recommended, it will be on my places to visit next time I’m in the area. It’s only been open 6 months, and is definately worth a visit, whether begineer or expert. I also met David Marshall, Secretary of Ryedale Aquarist Soceity purchasing fish in Simply Aquatics as well (I didn’t know, I’d been sat next to him in the auction for three hours!). Just Google for David Marshall, Ryedale (click link and you’ll see who I’m referring to). He beat me to purchasing a very nice catfish, I must contact him, and ask him for the latin name, I also bought, what David Bought.
Purchased from Simply Aquatics,
The Zebra Danios were described as purple, but they look red/pink to me, the shop is a member of OATA, and assured me they were not dyed, and were true purple/red/pink direct from Malayasia. David and I were interested how these young danios develop and if they breed true. If DEFRA come knocking at our doors, we will know, thay they are GM fish! The Silver Dollars are to grow on for my large oddball tank.
Interesting!
I’ve just heard that TRI-MAR in Camborne, Cornwall (Jethro country) have been voted :-
WINNERS OVERALL of the PRACTICAL FISHKEEPING MAGAZINE’S
UK Aquatic Retailer of the Year 2009
Congratulations to Mony & Staff at TRI-MAR, well deserved in my opinion. IF you ever go on holiday to Cornwall, you’ve got to go to Monty’s place! (enough said!)
The new aquarium, I’d installed in the fish house at the end of August, has become a large quaratine tank for the common pleco I’d rescued from the vets, it wasn’t eating, and had become very emaciated and weak, and the larger fish started to bully it. So I removed it from the oddballs tank, and started trying different foods, it wouldn’t eat courgette or cucumber, after 72 hours it started feeding on Barlow Aquatics Trading Stinking Sinking Catfish and Cichlid pellets (I’ve no idea, where I got these from, must Google later!) and Hikari Algae Wafers. I’ve never been so excited to see pleco plop plops. This pleco has started to recover nicely.
I’ve also spent some time, re-integrating seven fish tanks, that I’d removed from the fish house. By rotating the fish tanks by 90 degrees, I’ve managed to fit them all in again, I just now need to find some space for the remaning two tanks. I’ve installed 1 x 18x18x18, 2 x 18x10x1, 2 x 24x15x12 and 2 x 24x12x12 inch tanks. All are filtered by air driven Algarde Bio-foam 200 sponge filters and for the first time, I’m also using Tetra sponge filters in three of the tanks, these don’t use airstones, like the Algarde Bio-foam 200 sponge filters, I’ve never used them before, but had them lying around in the fish house, unsed. Some fishkeepers I’ve spoken to, prefer them to the Algarde filters. All the tanks are currently fishless cycling.
new tanks No.1
new tanks No.2
new tanks No.3
I’ve also added an additional filter to the output of the Lifegard FB300 fluidized bed filter, I’ve diverted the output across a very old home-made trickle filter. This trickle filter was given to me by a friend (thanks Paul) over twenty years ago, it’s not been used for twenty years, I found it in the fish house, and thought time to re-use it. I’ve modified it a little but, by adding a spray-bar and filter floss to reduce the water flow. But the small glass tank has be made to measure to fit the bio-blocks inside. There are twenty square bio-blocks inside the tank. Paul tells me, he used to pay £2 a bio-block from Roman Tropicals, Roman Road, Bow, London and purchased one a week. It took him twenty weeks to obtain all the blocks. I remember seeing the full page adverts for Roman Tropicals in Practical Fishkeeping in the late 70s, early 80s. Unfortunately, I never had the chance to visit. I think it’s long gone.
Pictures of Paul’s HomeMade Trickle Filter
Paul's trickle filter No.1
Paul's trickle filter No.2
Paul's trickle filter No.3
It’s important to test the quality of your aquarium water regularly if you care about your tropical, marine or coldwater fish. Remember fish do swim around in their urine and faeces in your aquarium, in the wild this wouldn’t be a problem, because the fish come from very large expanses of water, and the effects would be diluted many times, but YOU are responsible for the water (quality) at all times in the aquarium. People often ask me, oh you keep fish, and I often reply, well actually I manage water! If you manage your water (paramaters) correctly and well, your fish should flourish and breed (if you’ve got a male and a female – that’s another blog post one day!).
Yes, I know it’s a chore, but you owe it to your fish. And you should also be changing the water in the aquarium at least 25% each week with fresh suitable clean water , and that doesn’t mean out of the time either! (subject to water quality).
Here are the test results for the water in my new aquarium I’ve just set up. (click the image for more detailed view)
water testing with a test kit
From left to right,
The above is what I would expect on a new aquarium setup with an establish mature filter. (remember I stole, four mature sponge filters from existing mature filters!). My water is very hard, you could stand a spoon in it, it’s liquid rock coming out of the tap. My test kit comes with two test ranges 6.0 – 7.8, and 7.4 to 8.8 (I already know, my “treated” tap water is 8.0. So pH is acceptable, Nitrate levels will only peak, when Nitrite and Ammonia are broken down, high nitrate levels cause algae, as well as too much light and food, so more water changes are required. Farm fertilisers cause high Nitrate levels in tap water. In a mature aquarium, ammonia is oxidised by bacteria to form nitrites and nitrite is oxidised by bacteria to form nitrate. (Google Nitrogen Cycle!). But when I introduce fish, I’ll be regularly checking water by testing to check the filters are working correctly, and I don’t overload the filters.
When I “built” this tank, I used 100l of water from and existing aquarium in the fish house, and another 100l of treated water from my storage tank, this water is aerated, kept at 26 degrees C, and is mains filtered by a filter which removes debris, passed over carbon, and Heavy Metals, Chlorine, Chloramine and finally nitrate are removed, this process does not alter pH. (I also have Reverse Osmosis, but didn’t need this water for this tank). If you don’t have all this at your disposal, leaving water to stand overnight aerated will get rid of the chlorine killer, or use something like Tetra Aquasafe if you have a small tank.
water testing with a test kit and a ph Probe!
I also have another gadget, a commercial eletronic digital pH probe, I use it as a “guide”, water temperature is very accurate, but the pH needs calibrating regularly, it’s currently reading pH – 7.89, which I think is too low, so I’ve got lots of calibration fluid, I’ll try and recalibrate it tomorrow, and see what value it gives then. So I prefer to use the test kit colour solution.
There are many Aquarium Test kits on the market, at very low cost, I use a wet Freshwater Master Test Kit by API, it’s cheap with many tanks, but if you’ve just got one tank, why not try the 5 in 1 Aquarium Test Strips, 25 tests for a tenner! No bottles, no mess, no mixing, shaking, or adding drops.
Why Not Treat Your Fish Today!
(you buy treats for the cat or dog, don’t you!)
Three months ago, I reported all change in the fish house and removed 9 unsed fish tanks from the fish house and tried to replace them with a spare 48x18x12 – plans didn’t work well!, well it’s taken me three months to get the faulty aquarium replaced, and I’ve spent many hours this weekend installing the tank on it’s shelf. I’d previously removed the 2 x 24x12x15 and 18x18x18 cube from this shelf. So I just needed to slot this tank in place and wire-up heaters and filters.
Algarde Digi-Therm external stat
I’ve used an Algarde Digi-Therm digital external thermostat connected to two heaters (200 and 300 watt) – this is rather an old combination of using external thermostat connected to internal heaters, the norm these days is to use, combined heater thermostats, but I still prefer this older, safer combination. I’ve had many combined heater stats jam on and heat up and kill the fish in the tank.
Hagen Bio-Life 55 internal filter with trickle filter
Filtration is provided by a Hagen Bio-Life 55, internal Wet ‘n’ Dry internal filter, and excellent internal filter – I’ve had to start this filter from new, so it’s not mature yet, and will take several weeks to mature and
homebrew tank hangers for biolife 55
I had to make some homebrew clips to secure the fish tank to the side of the tank, as this tank is 18″ deep, I’ve lost the suckers or bracket to stick to tank wall , I was going to use a Dennerle C400 internal filter, but I prefer this filter because it has an internal trickle filter (they were all the rage, once upon a time). I’ve also installed an air-driven
Algarde Bio-foam 200 sponge filter
Algarde Bio-Foam 200 internal foam filter using four foams, this was easy to mature, because I just stole a foam from other tanks in the fish house which are already mature, as most tanks in the fish house have air-driven Algarde Bio-Foam 200 internal foam filter using two foams – so I ust removed one foam and replaced with a new, and made sure the mature foam was pre-washed in old aquarium water. I’m hoping that this speeds up maturation of the aquarium. I’ve also installed a sand filter,
Lifegard FB300 Fluidized Sand Filter (fully Fluidized!)
a Lifegard FB300 driven by a Maxijet PH600 powerhead. I don’t think you can ever “over-filter” a tank. I had a small issue with this filter, because after filling it with media (sand), the powerhead wouldn’t drive it correctly, even after testing it correcly before filling, so I had to empty the sand into a bucket, re-connect the filter, run the powerhead, and re-fill the filter with a 5ml spoon of sand at a time to prevent clogging, it took a while re-filling the filter with sand, a few spoonfuls!
top of tank showing water movement
Tank water looks a bit cloudy at present, but give it a week, and I’m sure this will clear, as the bacteria start to work their magic.
Angus gets out of fish tank
It was empty!
Before I could clean and rinse the new fish tank today, before site-ing in the fish house, Angus had to get out of it! I’d just un-wrapped it in the garden for cleaning, and Angus jumped in! I reached for my handy camera to take a snapshot of him in the tank, but as you can see from the photo above, he started to climb out!
Later I managed to get the tank cleaned, rinsed and polished and sited in the fish house ready for filters, heaters, sand and water.
In preparation for the new 48x18x18 tank install in the fish house, I’ve removed the old fish tanks, two 24x15x12 and an cube 18x18x18 from that shelf, and cleaned the shelf, and added a new layer of polysterne tiles for the new tank, removed all the electrical wires for pumps, heaters and airlines for internal filters. I just to to rinse and clean the new tank, and site in the fish house before filling and fitting filters and heaters.
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