Here is a picture of my new R338 tank all set up and beautiful, with 2 Zebra Danios in there to cycle the tank. I would try fishless cycling, but I have absolutely no idea where in Jordan you find pure ammonia.
On Saturday (15/8/15) I surprised my dad while we were visiting a street where every other shop is a fish store by taking out my own money and buying myself this tank. I have not had my own tank in 5 years, and I couldn't wait to fill mine up with fish.
Many hours of research later, I had learned many things, 2 of which are:
1. Adding a whole bunch of fish to a tank when it is brand new = bad, and
2. No matter how much I know Oscars are too big for my tank, that doesn't make it any less fun to research them.
I started out with a medium house decoration and a fake plant stolen from our family's fish tank, as well as a nice inch and a half of gravel. My original plan was to rescue our Pictus catfish from execution for it's murder of who knows how many minnow-type tropical fish. However, further research showed that it needs much more than 10 gallons to do well, and the result was that I moved the house downstairs, as it had recently outgrown a small barrel ornament.
After letting the tank settle for a few days, on Wednesday I began to start filling my tank. I went to the store and bought 5 Danios, 2 for my tank and 3 for the family tank.
This is one of my Danios, a large female who tends to swim around the bottom of the tank. Although you can't really tell from the picture, she is a little under an inch and a half long, and has some interesting mottling in her stripes. Who knows? She might even be part leopard Danio! She has nice long fins, but the ends are tattered from being nipped at in the store.
This is the other Danio, a smaller male about an inch long. While he looks rather puny next to my female, he seems to be healthy. He prefers darting around among the bubbles at the top of the tank, and I didn't have much luck trying to get a picture of him. Every once and a while, he swims down and gets chased around by my female, but they dart so fast they only show up as blurs.
Although I originally intended to try to find some silk plants, I was convinced to pick up live plants, what I think are Anacharis and Red Ludwigia along with a nice barrel decoration and a (too big) heater. Once I got home, I spent an hour setting up my decorations and letting loose the fish into my tank and the family tank. At 4:00, I realized that the things the water plants had come wrapped in would not actually let them grow, and I did not have a plant growing substrate, so I spent 2 hours cutting the bottoms off of Styrofoam cups, putting in a few coins as ballast, and filling them with potting soil topped with silty clay. I had just finished putting in the dirt when my mom called me for dinner.
After dinner, I carefully put the stems of the plants into the homemade pots, cut some pieces of paper as covers so that the dirt wouldn't all come out, and replanted my garden. The Red Ludwigia was having a tough time behind the barrel where the current is strong, so I switched it to the left. Over the last few days, my fish seem to have gotten used to their new home. I originally planned that this coming Saturday I would get 2 more for this tank and a few for the Family tank, but then disaster struck. This morning, I woke up to find that in the fish's first night, one of the Danios had disappeared. It seems that, even though a larger cave means the Pictus no longer has to spend his days sulking in a corner after he outgrew his old home, he is still hungry for fish. Even though the Danios we put in are barely smaller than the tetra type things he has lived with for months, it seems at least one was too small to escape. My new plan is to evacuate all surviving Danios to my tank on Saturday, although if another is eaten tomorrow morning I will risk ammonia casualties and move the last one up. My plan for this Saturday's fish trip is to have four Danios in my tank and try to find some more of the fish that can live with the Pictus.
Unfortunately, this created a problem. My original plan was to use 4 Danios to cycle my tank, then move them to the Family tank and replace them with a small school of Neon Tetras and a Betta fish. Now that sending them there would be sending them to almost certain doom, I had to come up with another solution. Luckily, just hours ago I managed to convince my sister that she should really get a fish tank, and that the guppies she adores are compatible with Danios.
However, as I have no plans to expel the Danios for at least 3 more weeks, for now all there is to do is to wait for Saturday's trip, and hope the catfish is full.
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