_brokenglass_
Aquarium Advice Apprentice
some of you may have read my post here a while back... here's what ended up happening 
my boyfriend and i decided that we were going to tackle the tanks nastiness (refer to previous post for picture) together and get it cleaned once and for all. so come wednesday evening, we drained the 30 gallon tank to about 4 inches of water, and moved the fish into my 10 gallon spare for the time being. got the tank emptied to where we could carry it out into the garage, and then set it on top of 2 5 gallon buckets to start cleaning. my plan was to stick a hose in one side of the tank, and have a gravel vac stuck in the other side, with the other end in the sink. that way, we'd have a constant flow of water to work with, and wouldn't have to deal with emptying buckets and refilling the tank all the time. things were going fine, we pulled the UG filter out and were having a go with the rocks, the water was getting clearer, and i was getting excited (finally a clean tank!) my boyfriend turns to look at the side of the tank, and notices (uh-oh) a bit of water dripping down by his foot. he assumes that it's the glass separating from the plastic (it's an old tank), and says "lets move it a bit, readjust." so we go to pick it up, and the water that was... trickling out becomes more of a "pouring out"... we kinda looked at each other like "oh crap" lifted it a bit more, and out came the bottom of the tank, rocks and water everywhere ^^ things were going so well too... in any case, i went out hte next morning and bought them a new (bigger) tank...
55 gallons... the nitrate levels are down near 0 (instead of near 200...), all water levels seem to be doing much better. there's a powerhead on the left side to get water moving, which the 3 clown loaches love to swim against (up and down that corner of the tank, it's rather amusing to watch). i'll be adding more plants in soon, and... things seem to be ok so far. hopefully they'll stay that way. ^_^
my boyfriend and i decided that we were going to tackle the tanks nastiness (refer to previous post for picture) together and get it cleaned once and for all. so come wednesday evening, we drained the 30 gallon tank to about 4 inches of water, and moved the fish into my 10 gallon spare for the time being. got the tank emptied to where we could carry it out into the garage, and then set it on top of 2 5 gallon buckets to start cleaning. my plan was to stick a hose in one side of the tank, and have a gravel vac stuck in the other side, with the other end in the sink. that way, we'd have a constant flow of water to work with, and wouldn't have to deal with emptying buckets and refilling the tank all the time. things were going fine, we pulled the UG filter out and were having a go with the rocks, the water was getting clearer, and i was getting excited (finally a clean tank!) my boyfriend turns to look at the side of the tank, and notices (uh-oh) a bit of water dripping down by his foot. he assumes that it's the glass separating from the plastic (it's an old tank), and says "lets move it a bit, readjust." so we go to pick it up, and the water that was... trickling out becomes more of a "pouring out"... we kinda looked at each other like "oh crap" lifted it a bit more, and out came the bottom of the tank, rocks and water everywhere ^^ things were going so well too... in any case, i went out hte next morning and bought them a new (bigger) tank...
55 gallons... the nitrate levels are down near 0 (instead of near 200...), all water levels seem to be doing much better. there's a powerhead on the left side to get water moving, which the 3 clown loaches love to swim against (up and down that corner of the tank, it's rather amusing to watch
). i'll be adding more plants in soon, and... things seem to be ok so far. hopefully they'll stay that way. ^_^
