Hello from Oklahoma

[NLeigh]

Hello everyone! I'm a married mom of two. Not new to the aquarium hobby, but determined to get it right this time! My husband and I have tried keeping fish 3 times. The first two times were freshwater, the third was saltwater. I don't think I'm ever doing saltwater again, lol, the fish are so cool but it's SO much work and we just couldn't keep up.

I'm trying to do my homework this time and actually research before we start a new tank. We don't have our aquarium set up yet -- we ordered a bunch of supplies online, and we're waiting for those to come in so we can start setting up. One thing we're planning to do differently this time is use live plants. For some reason I always assumed that having live plants meant more work and less chance of success. I don't know where I got this impression. But now I'm excited to find plants to help make our aquarium beautiful and healthy.

Since we have a 29ish gallon tank that's a hexagon, we're planning to stick with tiny fish - guppies and maybe tetras, with a few corydoras and a small pleco.

We're fairly new to Oklahoma, just moved here last August, and I'm still getting to know people here. In the meantime I'm looking forward to developing my aquarium knowledge and meeting you fine folks.

 

[Sisserydoo]

Hi, Welcome to AA

I had to respond because I was born and raised in Oklahoma, and I miss it so much. I lived there until I was thirty, but I'm living in Illinois now. My whole family still lives there.

I'm fairly new to the aquarium thing too, so I don't have tons of info! I think the main issue with growing plants in a hex tank is that hex tanks are normally tall, and you need some pretty bright lights to get enough light to the bottom. Did you buy some extra lighting for the tank?

Guppies are beautiful and lots of fun, I have them too. If you get males and females you will have hundreds of babies very soon! If you don't want to deal with that get all males...that's what I've done!

 

[NLeigh]

Hello Sisserydoo! Oh that's awesome. It's hilarious because we actually moved from Ohio so you're not far from where we used to live. It's like we swapped!

We have really, REALLY bright lighting - it's what we used for our marine aquarium, there are like 6 or 8 bulbs in the fixture and they're all super-bright, so that should fortunately not be a problem. I hadn't thought about the hexagon issue though, I was actually afraid the light might be too bright for the plants (and we'd be raising an aquarium full of algae ) so that makes me feel a little better.

We'll probably get either all males or all females for the guppies... don't know that we want to deal with all the fry, lol. And I failed to mention that we might get some of the glofish danios. My younger daughter has her heart set on a pink one.

 

[Sisserydoo]

Definitely get all males then...usually females are pregnant when you buy them!!!

I'm glad you got the brighter lights. I have a 27hex, and the bottom is really dark. It has mollies and guppies in it.

I also have a standard 20 gallon, which happens to have some glofish in it. I think they're really cute, but some people don't like the genetically modified aspect, and think they're frankenstein fish! I've got three regular zebras, and a pink and a purple glofish. I love them, they're so cute and really active.

Good luck with your tank. You joined the right forum, there are so many really knowledgeable people here who have helped me so much!

 

[NLeigh]

Oooh, good tip on the female guppies. Hadn't thought of the possibility that they'd be pregnant already, lol! (and I know guppies breed like rabbits, so that totally makes sense )

I suppose I should be more concerned w/the whole genetic modification thing with glofish, but they're just SO cute! The one fish we had left in our saltwater aquarium before we took it down was my younger daughter's favorite, and when it died she was so heartbroken. But you should have seen the way she lit up when she saw the pink glofish at the store. She wanted to take it home right then!

I definitely joined the right forum to be sure. I've been reading the other member introduction threads, and the folks here are so wonderfully informative. And nice. I'm looking forward to hanging out here!

 

[redsea]

Welcome . Thanks for joining us!

 

[NLeigh]

Our undergravel filter is here! Yippee. Now we're just waiting for... everything else.

I ordered our plants today, they should be here sometime next week, hopefully after the rest of our aquarium supplies have arrived.

I had to have a talk with my husband about glofish danios. He didn't like the whole genetically-altered facet of them. I did some research & found out that not only did the genetic alterations happen many generations ago, but that they were actually done in the name of environmental science. My husband is a lab assistant, so that made him feel better about the glofish. I told him that he should feel compelled to own glofish, as a member of the scientific community.

So at the moment I think we're considering 3 male guppies, 3 glofish, 3 danios of another variety, 3 cory cats, and a pleco. Not all at once, of course.

I've been spending so much time researching that my head has been spinning!

(can you tell I like smileys? lol)

 

[Sisserydoo]

Wow..It sounds great so far. Really sounds like you've done your research! I'm glad he's decided to give the glofish a second chance, I really like mine.

 

[Fishie]

Welcome to AA great place and a lot of helpful people ^.

 

[NLeigh]

Thanks Sisserydoo, so am I. I've fallen in love with them! I think our "other" danio variety will be Glowlights - so we're going to have glofish and glowlights. hahaha.

Thank you Fishie! This is such a cool forum.

 

[NLeigh]

Update: we have our gravel. Unfortunately the air pump we got is defective. I'm thinking maybe we should just send it back for a refund and get a powerhead instead. A reasonably nearby pet store has several of them, so that might be the best.

I rinsed our gravel for a long time, but it still seems to be quite dirty, judging by all the black stuff I see on the bits of coral and green gravel we added to our primary black substrate, lol. Oh well.

We also got our water conditioner, our test kit, and our fishy food. Our plants should be arriving next week. This seems to be the slowest process ever, but hopefully it will be good practice for when it's time to start cycling our tank.

 

[NLeigh]

Our plants are scheduled to be delivered today! So excited. We have all our other equipment, and it's all set up. So once the plants get here, we'll fill the aquarium with water and start running the equipment.

The only thing that bothers me is that we don't have our cartridges for the power filter yet. But we do have our undergravel filter installed, so I'm not too concerned. I figure when the power filter cartridges arrive, we'll just throw 'em in and start up the filter. In the meantime the UGF should be enough, I think.

I can't wait to put our new plants in. Then our aquarium will start to feel real!

 

[NLeigh]

I have the plants planted, but planting them made our tank all murky again - after I waited out the early murkiness so I could see to install the plants. Oh well. Shouldn't be too much longer till it all settles, hopefully.

Currently the undergravel filter is running and everything is looking good. I'm waiting to make sure the plants don't come floating back to the surface before I start up the power filter. I'm afraid of loose plants clogging up the filter! Once I'm relatively certain that the plants are going to stay put, I'll run the power filter. From what I can see, at any rate, the plants look beautiful. I'm so excited!

There's one last piece of our aquarium puzzle, and that's a piece of Malaysian driftwood I bought for our future pleco. It's soaking right now to hopefully get all the tannins leached out. I've saved a space for it. Looking forward to putting it in there when the time is right.

This is so much fun & I don't even have the fish in yet! lol

 

[NLeigh]

Argh. Power filter won't start. I can hear it humming so I know it's getting electricity, but no water is going in. I took out the impeller & intake tube, took a good look - everything's clear, nothing seems to be blocking anything. I can't figure out what's keeping it from running. I'm keeping it plugged in for a little longer and then I'm going to say "forget it" and unplug it. And let my hubby take a look when he gets home.

Aside from that though, everything looks great. I think I may do my first water testing. Never done it before. Whee! LOL

ETA spoke too soon. It's working now! The impeller was seated improperly inside the filter. I fiddled with it a little while it was plugged in (always a risky proposition, but I was desperate, lol) and then voila! Water going in, water coming out, everything is awesome now.

 

[severum mama]

Welcome to AA! Sounds like you are off to a good start!

 

[NLeigh]

Thank you! What a coincidence, I was just looking at your stock in the Classified forum. I'm hoping you'll still have those purple passion danios by the time it's time to add fish.

 

[NLeigh]

Did my 2nd water tests today. Interestingly enough, my ammonia level went down & my nitrite level went up. Not by much, either way, since there wasn't far for either to go, lol. Still thought it was interesting.

After the water cleared from my plantings, I discovered I have 2 itsy-bitsy snails that must have snuck in on the plants. Ordinarily I might freak, but I'm not now because a) I figure they can help get the BBs going, even if only a tiny bit, and b) they're SO CUTE! lol

So since I'm still fishless, I occasionally go to the aquarium and look for the snails. Sometimes I find them, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I find only one. Every time I do find one or both, I talk to them like I would fish. I'm hopeless.

Tomorrow I would love to travel to Tulsa (our closest big city) and see if we can find some danios we like in lieu of beginning our stock w/online-bought fish. I'm not hopeful though. The pet/fish stores around here have left me pretty incredulous with either the quality or the selection of fish. But maybe I'll get lucky. If we can get to Tulsa at all, that is!

 

[Sisserydoo]

You might get lucky, almost every place stocks zebra danios. I have three regular colored ones, they don't look like much at first, but after you've had them a few months their colors get darker and their fins get longer, they're quite pretty!

 

[Viperchaos]

In the UK were not allowed to sell glofish
:/.
Ive never actually layed eyes on a living one

 

[NLeigh]

Sisserydoo, we'll see. I hope you're right. I've certainly seen zebras everywhere. The difficulty is that somehow I need to placate my older daughter, who's a little bummed that a betta is probably not going to fit in our stocking plans, lol. So whatever fish we get needs to make her happy.

Viperchaos, I've heard a lot of countries don't allow glofish. Even our state of California doesn't allow them. Such a bummer.