al398247
Aquarium Advice Apprentice
My Dad and I bought a second-hand aquarium last weekend. Dad had aquariums all his life and I had them all my life too, but for the past five years we haven't had an aquarium. Dad was always the one looking after our aquariums so I happen to know very little about them. Last Friday Dad cleaned our "new" aquarium and the accessories that came with it. At the end the only problem we faced was having no gravel. So to save money Dad decided to go to a nearby yacht club and get some gravel there. When he brought it back home he put it in the aquarium along with some of the old owner's corals and poured tap water on top. He set it up like he set up all his other aquariums before.
A couple of days later the water started to "bloom": it gained colour and odour. The walls seemed to acquire some sort of build-up. I'm not sure what that's called but I think it might be ammonia. We were trying to figure out if the reason for that was the gravel, or the previous owner's corals (which had a lot of green stuff on them), or something we did wrong, or something else. At the end we decided to clean it out today (which is the 8th day after we set the aquarium up last Friday.)
A couple of hours ago Dad went through the same routine except instead of the old gravel we put in a pack of gravel Dad bought at WalMart. We also threw away one coral and left one "artificial cave" and a Bermuda coral (which my Dad scraped off a reef in St. George's Tobacco Bay in 2003). Everything seemed fine until a couple of minutes ago when I noticed a faint build-up on the aquarium walls. I don't know what it's called but I think the term might be ammonia. Please correct me if I'm wrong, I'd really just like to know what it's called. To be more precise the build-up looks like phytoplankton.
We just want to know if that's normal or not, if we're doing anything wrong here, and would really just appreciate any advice, suggestions, insight or feedback. I should probably also note that we're planning to buy two catfish and three mollies tomorrow.
A couple of days later the water started to "bloom": it gained colour and odour. The walls seemed to acquire some sort of build-up. I'm not sure what that's called but I think it might be ammonia. We were trying to figure out if the reason for that was the gravel, or the previous owner's corals (which had a lot of green stuff on them), or something we did wrong, or something else. At the end we decided to clean it out today (which is the 8th day after we set the aquarium up last Friday.)
A couple of hours ago Dad went through the same routine except instead of the old gravel we put in a pack of gravel Dad bought at WalMart. We also threw away one coral and left one "artificial cave" and a Bermuda coral (which my Dad scraped off a reef in St. George's Tobacco Bay in 2003). Everything seemed fine until a couple of minutes ago when I noticed a faint build-up on the aquarium walls. I don't know what it's called but I think the term might be ammonia. Please correct me if I'm wrong, I'd really just like to know what it's called. To be more precise the build-up looks like phytoplankton.
We just want to know if that's normal or not, if we're doing anything wrong here, and would really just appreciate any advice, suggestions, insight or feedback. I should probably also note that we're planning to buy two catfish and three mollies tomorrow.
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