First new tank in 15 years

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dpcc487

Aquarium Advice Newbie
Joined
Nov 20, 2012
Messages
2
This post will probably be a bit long so I apologize in advance.

Me; 8 years old. I don't remember exactly how it came up but my dad and I decided to get a little 2 gallon bowl and some gold fish. 1 day later, ich. Return ill fish and try with another one. Same result. That's all I can remember from that experience.

Fast-forward 8 years; I'm 16, visiting my dad for the first time in 4 or 5 years (parents divorced). He had bought a real nice 55 gallon (I think) tank. He said his doctor actually recommended it to him to help with his high blood pressure. He ha some real neat-looking fish in there. He told me what they were but as with any 16-year-old it was in one ear and out the other.

Fast-forward another 7 years. I'm back living with my mother after loosing a job because of medical problems. One of our roomates is moving out and leaves a 10 gallon tank of algae. The smell from this thing was well... I'll spare you that detail, but rest assured there were INCHES of algae covering everything in the aquarium and on the filter. He had moved out and had not returned for more than 2 weeks to pick the tank up so I decided to at least try and clean it so it wouldn't funk-up the whole house. After hours of gagging while removing all of the water, if it still was water, I had what you see in the first 3 pictures. For some reason he was using a Magnum canister filter for a 10 gallon tank. I did a little research and found out that the particular model he was using was ~$200 new, So I decided to try and salvage it, but the tubing that was attached to it was incredibly old and hard and in the process of pulling the tubing off the outlet, the nipple snapped off completely; that's pic 4.

That brings me to my first question; what can I use, if anything, to reattach the nipple - epoxy? aquarium silicone?

Anyway, I cleaned and sanitized everything except the canister filter with a 10% bleach solution. Even after that, I had to throw away most of what was in the tank. I was able to salvage the under gravel filter so I saved that. The tank itself was over 15 years and while attempting to clean and scrape the remaining film off the glass, my mother reminded me christmas was getting close and If I wanted, a new tank could be my present from her. Why not? The smell of the tank was starting to make me sick anyway.

3 weeks later I have everything needed to set up a new tank; 10g tank (came with a hood, incandescent light strip, and a corner filter all of which I am saving as a backups), power filter, 2x air pumps (1 from roomate; was in a box of misc aquarium stuff, not used in his algae tank), a few gang valves from the roomate, silicone tubing, 3x artificial plants (1 from roomate), 50w heater, fluorescent hood w/ 8000k light, airstones, and all other prerequisites for a flourishing freshwater tank. Oh and most important (to me, at least) about 5 ebooks on freshwater aquariums.

Now I have everything set up and am starting a fishless cycle. I'll upload a pic in my next post. Here are my questions/concerns thus far:

1. Most if not all of the fish I want to put in my tank (my 1st choice is zebra danios) are schooling fish that do best in groups of 5 or more, however I don't want to add 5 fish at once to a small 10g tank. Can I get away with adding 2 or 3 without them suffering from not being in a big-enough school?

2. With it being winter here in Michigan, I have a ultrasonic humidifier running in my room 24/7 with my tank. My concern with this is I fill it with tap water, which around here is very hard and ultrasonic humidifiers don't boil-off any heavy metals/chlorine/calcium like a warm-mist humidifier does. That means there's microscopic particles of heavy metals and calcium in the air in the same room as my tank. Should I switch to a warm-mist humidifier or will this not be a problem?

3. The water conditioner I am using says it "instantly" removes heavy metals as well as chlorine from tap water. I took this to mean I can test my water for hardness a few minutes after adding it to the water. I followed the directions and added 10ml per 10 gallons. My water hardness came out at or over 300ppm. I am using the test strips and I have herd they can be inaccurate. Did I not wait long enough after adding the water conditioner to test the water? Are my test strips crap? Could my water really be that hard?

4. Is there something I can do with the 10g tank and equipment my roomate left behind?
 

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Here is my new tank. As you can tell from the bubbles everywhere I JUST filled it up.
 

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looks ok didnt read all ur thread as im on and off thanks to work but what are your stocking plans I could see a few danios and guppys suiting it
 
put a lid on ur tank to window fitters should do it cheap if your willing to look for one
 
If the nipple on the filter comes in direct contact with water going in to the aquarium I would not use epoxy for it has bad chemicals that may harm the fish. Try silicone you can get it at hard ware stores just make sure it is pure silicone. It should not say paintable or mold resistant on the bottle.
 
Can you test the PH of the water? If you can get the API Master liquid kit, it will have everything you need to test for including PH and it's more reliable than strips.

If you do a fishless cycle with pure ammonia, you can fully stock the tank once it's done. WIth that being said a 10 gal is a bit small for most schooling fish; most danios and tetras, while small, are very active and would benefit from more swim room (at least 20 gals). But there are still some good options for a 10 gal. You could do:

1 betta (don't underestimate these fish; they are highly entertaining)
OR
2 dwarf puffers
OR
a group of 6-8 nano fish like ember tetra, chili rasbora or celestial pearl danio. You could also have a centerpiece like 1-2 Scarlet Badis or a sparkling gourami (not honey or any other kind of larger gourami)
 
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