The tank that fibre paid for......

Yes quite literally.  Not the tank but the upgrades needed to get it up and going again...

I ousted the previous tennants, the frogs, to this new home...

So frogs are happy in their new home.  It has more plants in it now.

And the tank was free to fill with water and warm it up for Tropical fish.

I did have most of the stuff for it already but needed some new bits.  We found an external bio filter for a really great price at a clearance outlet. 

Had to get new gravel, but I did have a heater from last time.....until it broke...

So here is the result, there is a huge story along with it but I'll put the pics in first.

Now if you have never had a tropical tank you may think that you just add water, heat it up and vah'laa, put your fish in....but no...

Setting up and keeping a tropical habitate is a lesson in bio chemistry.

To begin, you must cycle the tank..

First you have to check all your chemical levels, PH, KH, GH, NO2, NO3 and Ammonia.

The ph, kh and gh is something that you monitor mostly with your water changes on a weekly basis, your alkalinity changes weekly depending on how much waste is produced by the fish and plants.  Water hardness depends on what the water is like coming out of the tap, so you may have to adjust this when you put new water in.

Ammonia is what comes when plant matter starts to decompose along with fish poop and dead fish.  You generally manage this with water changes too.  It makes it impossible for the fish to get air out of the water so will kill them pretty quickly.

NO2, or Nitrites and NO3, Nitrates are the most important chemicals and the ones that take the most time to achieve the right balance.

NO2 will kill your fish quick and you need fish poo and plants to add a bacteria to the bio filter which converts these into harmless NO3.  This is the bit that takes the time and you basically try to change the water enough to keep the NO2 and the Ammonia levels low so as not to kill your fish while you are waiting for enough good bacteria growth to convert it. 

Yesterday my NO2 levels dropped to zero, a megre 3 weeks into the cycling process, which means that enough bacteria has established to convert it to NO3.

Now I just have to keep an eye on the levels, making sure I don't populate the tank to quickly for the bacteria to take care of their bi-products and change the water often enough to keep the balance.

I started off with 10 Neon Tetras in the tank, of which I have lost 4,  I think only 2 were because of an ammonia spike I had, one was injured being transfered to the bag at the store and one was bullied by the others (they are vicious little buggers and any weakness is dealt with brutally).

A week after they went into the tank and I got the ammonia level down I decided to add some more surface dwelling fish.  The neons are mid-bottom dwellers.  So I got 3 Platy's, one male Micky Mouse Platy and a female Micky Mouse (or Minnie Mouse as we call her) and another female who is visible in one of the tank pics.

Then a friend who I had given some fish to a few years back when I was emptying my tank, decided she was sick of her tank and needed to get rid of the fish in her tank.  She had been systematically neglecting them to death for a while but had a few hardy souls left.  I was only planning on getting the couple she had of mine still but ended up rescuing them all.

My tank being far too new to stand an influx of so many fish at one time, I quickly rang my local pet store and asked if they would take them.  They did, and I ended up only keeping the Kuhli loach that I had originally given her and her sons Siamese Fighter who was the most pathetic fish I have ever seen.  He'd been living in a tank 4" square by 2" deep, his fins were all tattered and he was very sad.

His fins are coming right and he's gradually learning to swim in a big tank.  He needs to build up his stamina again so most of the time he just sits on the bottom of the tank.  Sporadically he swims to the surface and gradually he is playing in the bubbles and filter current more each day.

Here he is taking an interest in what the Loach is doing...

The loach is the hungriest fish I have seen in ages and I have never seen a Kuhli so active all the time.  When I last had a tank they would mostly hide, this little guy is cruising around almost constantly.

And fighters are a very maligned fish.  Mostly you see them in little jars looking pretty and pathetic.  But put them in a community tank and you see a completely different fish.  They have great personalities, they can turn their heads and look around corners.  I love them!!

Well that is it on the photo front for this time.  Today I am off to see if I can find some more plants for the tank.  Of course the plants I have will grow but I still need more of them and the ones on eBay have exorbitant postage costs.