Hello my fishy friends. It has been a while! I moved this tank up to my office last fall, but it has been sitting empty since I moved into this house. UNTIL NOW 
I added some moisture to the seals by hand to hopefully avoid breaking any while I was filling it up. My very first 10g tank purchased new from Petsmart broke a seal as soon as I had it filled up. One never truly understands how much water 10 gallons is until they are sopping it up out of carpet. This tank is 46 gallons, I have hard wood floors, and I do not wish to find out what happens when someone spills 46 gallons of water on it. I filled it up a couple of inches and let it sit for an hour or two before filling it up some more and repeating until the water level was high enough to start the filters up. It was running a reverse UGF with a tower on each side, and a good quality HOB filter. They all seemed to work (I was pleasantly surprised).
Of course my driftwood was all dry again, so it had to be weighted down with rocks.
Anyway, I fully intended to do a fishless cycle, but I failed to locate my ammonia here at the house. I remember it being tough to find the first time around, so after 3 failed stops I decided I would just go to Petsmart and scope out their tanks. If they looked terrible I wouldn't get anything, and if they say had a bunch of good looking danios I might just get some of those
35 dollars and a few hours later, I had 13 new fish Now I know that it would have been less frustrating to do a fishless cycle, better for the fish etc, but I also decided that I didn't want to look at an empty tank for a fishless cycle. I had a conversation earlier that day with a friend who's new to fishkeeping and she had picked up some danios, and I think they are among my favorites because they're just so resilient and fun to watch, not picky eaters, and now there are all of these varieties Petsmart's tanks were actually in very good shape, and they had several different danio varieties, but they were all very tiny. SO I ended up getting 10 of them. Something like 2 gold long finned, 4 zebra long finned, 2 zebra and 2 leopard long finned. Then I decided since their platies looked pretty good and I hadn't ever had any before, that I'd get some female platies. So there are 2 sunburst platies and a blue platy that I'd never seen before, very pretty fish! I think I may get some more of those, but I obviously have a while before I will even consider adding any more.
I decided to take the rUGF out, so while I was doing my water change yesterday I yanked those and it makes the tank look so much bigger to have those big towers out. I've used an old expired test kit and it is telling me that the ammonia is already high, so between that and the tank just being dirty from its past life I am planning on doing about 50% water changes until my new test kit gets here.
I did lose one danio today, but it wasn't acting right since I brought them home so I am 99% sure I didn't cause the death. Everyone else seems to be doing well. Of course the platies have to learn to be a little faster on the uptake if they're going to get their share of the food since the danios are such little pigs LOL
I have ordered some stuff online to add, and some things that have disappeared since the last time I had a running tank. For now I'm just really excited to have fish again.
I added some moisture to the seals by hand to hopefully avoid breaking any while I was filling it up. My very first 10g tank purchased new from Petsmart broke a seal as soon as I had it filled up. One never truly understands how much water 10 gallons is until they are sopping it up out of carpet. This tank is 46 gallons, I have hard wood floors, and I do not wish to find out what happens when someone spills 46 gallons of water on it. I filled it up a couple of inches and let it sit for an hour or two before filling it up some more and repeating until the water level was high enough to start the filters up. It was running a reverse UGF with a tower on each side, and a good quality HOB filter. They all seemed to work (I was pleasantly surprised).
Of course my driftwood was all dry again, so it had to be weighted down with rocks.
Anyway, I fully intended to do a fishless cycle, but I failed to locate my ammonia here at the house. I remember it being tough to find the first time around, so after 3 failed stops I decided I would just go to Petsmart and scope out their tanks. If they looked terrible I wouldn't get anything, and if they say had a bunch of good looking danios I might just get some of those
35 dollars and a few hours later, I had 13 new fish
Now I know that it would have been less frustrating to do a fishless cycle, better for the fish etc, but I also decided that I didn't want to look at an empty tank for a fishless cycle. I had a conversation earlier that day with a friend who's new to fishkeeping and she had picked up some danios, and I think they are among my favorites because they're just so resilient and fun to watch, not picky eaters, and now there are all of these varieties Petsmart's tanks were actually in very good shape, and they had several different danio varieties, but they were all very tiny. SO I ended up getting 10 of them. Something like 2 gold long finned, 4 zebra long finned, 2 zebra and 2 leopard long finned. Then I decided since their platies looked pretty good and I hadn't ever had any before, that I'd get some female platies. So there are 2 sunburst platies and a blue platy that I'd never seen before, very pretty fish! I think I may get some more of those, but I obviously have a while before I will even consider adding any more.I decided to take the rUGF out, so while I was doing my water change yesterday I yanked those and it makes the tank look so much bigger to have those big towers out. I've used an old expired test kit and it is telling me that the ammonia is already high, so between that and the tank just being dirty from its past life I am planning on doing about 50% water changes until my new test kit gets here.
I did lose one danio today, but it wasn't acting right since I brought them home so I am 99% sure I didn't cause the death. Everyone else seems to be doing well. Of course the platies have to learn to be a little faster on the uptake if they're going to get their share of the food since the danios are such little pigs LOL
I have ordered some stuff online to add, and some things that have disappeared since the last time I had a running tank. For now I'm just really excited to have fish again.
