Amelias's 45g Journal

[ameliaaahx]

Picked up my new 45g bowfront tank today, along with miles of crap.


The tank.


An Eheim 300w heater! Score! Too bad the plug isn't a NZ standard one. Might have to find an adapter.


An Eheim 2215 Canister Filter. NO idea how it works, been trying to piece it together all morning. Will probably put this on my 65g if I get it going.


The standard tank filter and the top of the Eheim canister.

SO, I'll be spending the rest of the day trying to fit all this crap together.

[ameliaaahx]

Whole bunch of random crap that came with the tank.

[ameliaaahx]

Filled with no leaks! Success! Also managed to get the standard filter running smoothly, it seems to be quite a good one. There's a big media tray about 2foot long in the hood of the tank that you can remove for easy cleaning. I packed it all up tight with biomedia and poly-pad -- and forgot to leave room for cycled stuff from my other tank! DOH! I'll have to take it all apart again.

The lighting isn't what I expected. The description said LED lighting but this isn't LED. Looks good though. I wonder if I'll have success with plants.

Found out the the thing that goes on the filter intake to stop large objects (like fish) going up is missing, so for now there's just a big hole. Hopefully I can find a spare off another tank which will fit.

Still struggling with the canister. Apparently water goes in the bottom and comes out the top, so if you wanna clean the first sponge that picks up all the solid waste, you have to take EVERYTHING ELSE out to get to it! Stupid or what.

I'm pretty pleased with how it's looking already. Don't you love it when driftwood sinks straight away??

[dizzydezzy]

Looks fantastic so far!

I would recomend a pre-filter sponge on the canister intake, and filling the whole canister with biomedia. That way you can just clean (or replace) the sponge that is in the tank when it's dirty, and don't need to open up the canister pretty much ever.

I had a small tank with a built-in trickle filter, and it worked great. The only real concern is that if the power goes out, you have a much bigger chance of the cycled media drying out and the bbs dying, since all the water is able to drain out of the media compartment...

[ScottishFish]

I look forward to following this journal

[ameliaaahx]

Yeah, my 25g runs on a wet to dry trickle filter and I like it a lot. Good point about the media drying out, I didn't think about that! That's a good idea about the pre filter sponge, I'll definitely be looking into that. :)

[Cliff]

I like the pc of driftwood in the tank

Your tank is going to look pretty good

I'm looking forward to following your journel

[tate8]

Bookmarked

So far so good!

[ameliaaahx]

Thanks guys!

It's SO GOOD to have fish back in the house. For 2 months I went without fish while we were moving and settling in, and I hated it. For those of you who didn't read my other thread, I recently adopted a really ugly betta with a growth on his head who was going to be fed to an oscar, and he now lives in a 5g on my desk. I didn't realize how much I missed fish until I got him! I can't walk past the table with out saying hi to him, and I even catch my boyfriend talking to him!
http://www.aquaticcommunity.com/aqua...t=97252&page=2

Gotta go get some extension cords and plug boards so I can actually RUN the tank today... And if I get time I might start washing gravel (my least favourite fish job ever).

[ameliaaahx]

Cleaned a whole lot of gravel and got the tank mostly set up today -- will add photos after I've added more gravel, I didn't get enough.

On an unrelated note, I finished Harvey Dent/Two-Face's tank today. Added more gravel, cut back the unruly Java Moss and planted the Ambulia and Sagittaria. Gave the pot and driftwood a decent scrubbing (a lot of crap had accumulated in the cracks in the wood) and polished the outside and inside of the tank. El presto!