My latest 'pet' project...
I finally set up the fish tank scott & i have had for .. over 3 years now which was basically completely empty and void of any life except for maybe scum & mold (i suppose that counts as life..)
so anyway first thing, scott actually cleaned the tank out and put it on the shelf for me, so I can't take credit for the initial cleaning of the tank. However I put in the stones (scott had a bag of black stones and some random bags of white stones, so I thought mixing them a little would add a nice touch, so it's black stones with a little bit of white stone mixed in) .. only to realize you had to wash them off before putting them in there and filling it up with water (this realization was after the tank was half way through when scott got home from class and goes ... uhh did you wash those off?) so we empty out the tank and i then proceed to wash the stones - which took me about a week to finally get around to doing because we didn't really have a good way to wash them so I was doing a few batches at a time with a collander/steamer thing and a big plastic bowl, LOL (it looked like i was panning for gold) - anyway I get the stones washed and returned to the tank and fill it up with water and put in the plants I got only to realize there was no filter! So, off to petsmart I go and pick up a penguin biowheel filter, and the coolest aquarium ornament thingy EVAR! (which you'll see in the pictures) so home I come with a filter as well as some easy chemical testing strips (we had the liquid stuff and .. ugh it's just such a bitch to deal with, much easier to just stick a strip in there. I get everything together and in there, water is moving and I test the pH and it's maybe .4 too high, so I throw in some pH downer (which is like sodium bicarbonate or something similar) and test again 30 mins later and voila my tank is ready!
I make another venture out to petsmart and look for some fishies, small tropical fish and something cool, because I don't want ugly fish. I found a tank with two types of tetras in it, some black neon tetras and some red minor tetras - I wanted a bit of a variety and this was the only tank with two flavors already mixed (that didn't require aquarium salt) so I got 6 of each and brought them home and let them hang out in their bag of water in the aquarium to get them and the water they're in acclimated to the temperature of my tank.
And here are the results - let's hope they live!
sorry for the shitty quality of the pics, i took them with my camera phone, I'm sure scott can take some better pics with his camera.
so anyway first thing, scott actually cleaned the tank out and put it on the shelf for me, so I can't take credit for the initial cleaning of the tank. However I put in the stones (scott had a bag of black stones and some random bags of white stones, so I thought mixing them a little would add a nice touch, so it's black stones with a little bit of white stone mixed in) .. only to realize you had to wash them off before putting them in there and filling it up with water (this realization was after the tank was half way through when scott got home from class and goes ... uhh did you wash those off?) so we empty out the tank and i then proceed to wash the stones - which took me about a week to finally get around to doing because we didn't really have a good way to wash them so I was doing a few batches at a time with a collander/steamer thing and a big plastic bowl, LOL (it looked like i was panning for gold) - anyway I get the stones washed and returned to the tank and fill it up with water and put in the plants I got only to realize there was no filter! So, off to petsmart I go and pick up a penguin biowheel filter, and the coolest aquarium ornament thingy EVAR! (which you'll see in the pictures) so home I come with a filter as well as some easy chemical testing strips (we had the liquid stuff and .. ugh it's just such a bitch to deal with, much easier to just stick a strip in there. I get everything together and in there, water is moving and I test the pH and it's maybe .4 too high, so I throw in some pH downer (which is like sodium bicarbonate or something similar) and test again 30 mins later and voila my tank is ready!
I make another venture out to petsmart and look for some fishies, small tropical fish and something cool, because I don't want ugly fish. I found a tank with two types of tetras in it, some black neon tetras and some red minor tetras - I wanted a bit of a variety and this was the only tank with two flavors already mixed (that didn't require aquarium salt) so I got 6 of each and brought them home and let them hang out in their bag of water in the aquarium to get them and the water they're in acclimated to the temperature of my tank.
And here are the results - let's hope they live!
sorry for the shitty quality of the pics, i took them with my camera phone, I'm sure scott can take some better pics with his camera.