220l Tank Project - complete makeover required!

[LittleTinca]

Update on today's adventure. Got myself some new bogwood (see pic attached) - decided against the substrate for now, it was more of an impulse buy! Got the nice pointy piece from my LFS, the other 3 were from the "Range" - only £1.99 each! And I got the smallest piece for free because it had broken off a larger piece. Also bought some of those little hooks which hold the air tubing in place.

I had concerns about my water, so I also bought a test kit & some filter booster. Here are the readings from my tank, which I think are really strange, which I'll mention why afterwards;

Nitrates: 15
Nitrites: 0-0.25
pH: 7
Alkalinity KH: 8 degree
General Hardness: 16 degree
Ammonia: 0??

I can't quite put my finger on why the Ammonia is zero? The tank has only been up & running for a week, & it was almost a 100% water change during the move, & I cleaned the filter with tap water. I've attached a picture of the reading (this was way after 10 mins, may have even been half an hour), any thoughts? Regardless, I put some filter booster in there.

My hardness is also worrying me. It seems that my water hardness is relatively high. Can anyone give me some general advice on species which thrive better in hard water? I've been looking at tetra's, barbs & livebearers mainly - I prefer the smaller shoaling fish.

Also spoke to the woman in the store about rehoming my red tail black shark, he's too aggressive. I'm still undecided just now as to whether to rehome the 2 Angelfish too...

[TropicalFishForums]

[Pilgrim89]

Why did you rinse the filter in tap water? ... That kills the beneficial bacteria that are on there ... One thing you should never do when 'cleaning' a filter is use tap water. You should always use water that you take out of the tank during water changes and swill it and lightly squeeze it in that water. Never tap water

[LittleTinca]

Pilgrim, I was told that the filter hadn't been cleaned for 6-8 months, I thought giving it a complete "fresh" clean would have been better. Cleaning the huge amass of plec mess from inside the filter was one of the most disturbing things in my life... I now know that this was a mistake to not clean the filter in tap water, so it is certainly a lesson learned

[Feliss]

Argh I need to get to a range!

[Pilgrim89]

Oh, yeah! obviously, we need to clean the filter system but we should do that by getting a bucket of tank water and using that ... I've had some pretty gunky water after cleaning the filter but using tank water, as mentioned, saves the established bacteria

[plankton]

Livebearers are fine in hard water. X-ray (pristella) tetras are ok in hard too. Some rasbora and barbs are ok in hardwater, but do your research, I can't remember which at the moment.

[LittleTinca]

Thanks for the help guys


The only problem with the bogwood from the range is that they drill through it & attach a tie wrap with the price tag on... But that shouldn't be a problem for anyone, unless you're a perfectionist


Just letting the tank settle down for a couple of weeks now. The only "major" issue I have at the moment is the red tail shark bullying the rainbow shark. He'll be rehomed as soon as I can, I'm working away next week so that will have to wait for now.

[plankton]

Stick the roots of some Java fern through the hole.

[LittleTinca]

Ahh good idea not even thought about planting yet!

[Gingerlove05]

Stick the roots of some Java fern through the hole.

Thats exactly what i thought when i noticed it on the ones i got today lol


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