abw0004
Aquarium Advice FINatic
As many of you well know by now through my multiple threads created over the months, I decided to rebuild my aquarium. I wanted to share how I did it, along with my mistakes and what I did right so someone after me can learn. I did take the expensive route, so my way may not fit for everyone. My view was that I would rather do this once the right way and spend more money.
My Fluval Accent 25 gallon aquarium has been up and running since January 2014. I always loved fish, and having an ecosystem in a box fascinated me. I had no idea what I was doing and did not know about cycling, or really what went into a tank. All I knew was that I wanted real plants. I quickly learned the hard way way cycling was however and went from there. Over the last few years my knowledge grew, and I really took pride in that I knew, along with my success in breeding German Blue Rams. I would say over the last year however, I felt how my aquarium looked did not represent how much I knew about the hobby, so I wanted a change. Here is what it looked like at the beginning of when I started:
This all started because I wanted to change this filtration system. The original system was a water column in the tank that had a two stage filtration system an heater. This easily took up 10-20% of the aquarium space, and was also very loud. This in turn stressed me out because I knew the fish could hear it if I could hear it outside of the water. Once I committed to upgrading the filter, I decided to go ahead and upgrade everything as I was about to purchase a home and this aquarium would go in my living room, and wanted it to be a good representation of me. I was always annoyed with the gravel substrate as it was really hard to plant in, had no nutrients, and since it was light in color, algae showed up easily on it. I also hated saying to people, "Everything in the aquarium is real... except the fake tree root." The fish that were in the tank were a German Blue Ram (male died), Honey Gourami, Neon Tetras, Clown Pleco, and Nerite snails. Here is the tank the day before the changes were made:
I bought originally a Fluval C3 HOB filter. I wanted my tank over-filtered so I went with a filter that was meant for a 50 gallon. This filter worked fine, but was incredibly loud. So, it returned it after trying it for a week, and bought the Fluval 206 canister filter. In an effort to minimize my tank re-cycling when the rebuild was done, I set up the 206 one week in advance with some old filter material to get the BB growing in the canister. The goal for this whole build was to make the tank look as clean as possible, limiting wires and anything else people can see, so the canister had to go under the aquarium. To do this, I had to drill two holes in the back panel for the input and output hoses to miniziae bends. See below:
It was also this time I bought my new gravel, Seachem Flourite Dark Sand, and Dark Gravel. I chose this over other options like ADA Aquasoil as I knew after about 2 years the Aquasoil decomposes and leaves dust everywhere. I purchased it a week in advance and spent 2 hours everyday rinsing out the gravel with a hose outside and a bucket. For future knowledge, the new strainer inside the bag dose work, just put your hose on the jet setting and put it in the bag. The sand was like mud however.
Finally the day arrived (February 11th) where I would get a chance to make it the way I envisioned. I did this on a Saturday so if something went wrong, I had Sunday to fix it. I tore out all of my plants, and put them in my quarantine tank as I would reuse some, along with my fish, driftwood, and some cups with the old gravel in it to help restart the new tank. A little crammed, but it worked:
My Fluval Accent 25 gallon aquarium has been up and running since January 2014. I always loved fish, and having an ecosystem in a box fascinated me. I had no idea what I was doing and did not know about cycling, or really what went into a tank. All I knew was that I wanted real plants. I quickly learned the hard way way cycling was however and went from there. Over the last few years my knowledge grew, and I really took pride in that I knew, along with my success in breeding German Blue Rams. I would say over the last year however, I felt how my aquarium looked did not represent how much I knew about the hobby, so I wanted a change. Here is what it looked like at the beginning of when I started:
This all started because I wanted to change this filtration system. The original system was a water column in the tank that had a two stage filtration system an heater. This easily took up 10-20% of the aquarium space, and was also very loud. This in turn stressed me out because I knew the fish could hear it if I could hear it outside of the water. Once I committed to upgrading the filter, I decided to go ahead and upgrade everything as I was about to purchase a home and this aquarium would go in my living room, and wanted it to be a good representation of me. I was always annoyed with the gravel substrate as it was really hard to plant in, had no nutrients, and since it was light in color, algae showed up easily on it. I also hated saying to people, "Everything in the aquarium is real... except the fake tree root." The fish that were in the tank were a German Blue Ram (male died), Honey Gourami, Neon Tetras, Clown Pleco, and Nerite snails. Here is the tank the day before the changes were made:
I bought originally a Fluval C3 HOB filter. I wanted my tank over-filtered so I went with a filter that was meant for a 50 gallon. This filter worked fine, but was incredibly loud. So, it returned it after trying it for a week, and bought the Fluval 206 canister filter. In an effort to minimize my tank re-cycling when the rebuild was done, I set up the 206 one week in advance with some old filter material to get the BB growing in the canister. The goal for this whole build was to make the tank look as clean as possible, limiting wires and anything else people can see, so the canister had to go under the aquarium. To do this, I had to drill two holes in the back panel for the input and output hoses to miniziae bends. See below:
It was also this time I bought my new gravel, Seachem Flourite Dark Sand, and Dark Gravel. I chose this over other options like ADA Aquasoil as I knew after about 2 years the Aquasoil decomposes and leaves dust everywhere. I purchased it a week in advance and spent 2 hours everyday rinsing out the gravel with a hose outside and a bucket. For future knowledge, the new strainer inside the bag dose work, just put your hose on the jet setting and put it in the bag. The sand was like mud however.
Finally the day arrived (February 11th) where I would get a chance to make it the way I envisioned. I did this on a Saturday so if something went wrong, I had Sunday to fix it. I tore out all of my plants, and put them in my quarantine tank as I would reuse some, along with my fish, driftwood, and some cups with the old gravel in it to help restart the new tank. A little crammed, but it worked:
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