The "Right" Way to Set Up Your First Freshwater Aquarium
by John Farrell Kuhns
(1) Buy a recommended book on the subject of aquarium care. The Complete Aquarium by Joseph Levine is an example of just such a book.
(2) Join your local aquarium club and those national aquarium groups which may have information of value to your personal hobby.
(3) There is no such thing as a stupid question. When getting advice, solicited or otherwise, try to separate the advice giver's personal experiences from facts. One person's experiences are just as valid any the next person's. Question authority!
(4) Buy two of the largest affordable aquariums you can (big aquariums pollute, but considerably slower than small ones). One will be the display aquarium and the other one will be the quarantine/treatment, Q/T, aquarium.
(5) Paint the outside bottoms of the tanks black so that you are not tempted to someday look up under than tank become unnecessarily concerned by the accumulation of the (usually) thin layer of inert "mulm" that eventually accumulates under the undergravel filter plate (see #4). Unless you have a better choice it is also a good idea to paint the outside backs of the tanks black. This color serves as very good background color for most fishes and plants. However, any darker color is usually fine; avoid white and other bright colors since these may cause washed out colors in some fishes.
(6) Set up undergravel filters, UGF, (e.g. Perfecto brand) equipped with glass-bead airstones (e.g. Kordon's coarse, or medium, porosity Mist-Air) in the airlifts which are powered with a diaphragm air pump (e.g. Whisper 1000). Always have 50% more airstones than what is required to set up the UFG initially. These extra airstones will be used when one of more of the installed airstones become clogged (which they will do eventually). Clogged airstones will cause the air pumps to work harder.
(7) Use two to three inches of substrate consisting of 1 pound of calcareous substrate (e.g. hen-grade, crushed oyster shell) for every 4 to 9 pounds of silicate-based gravel (e.g. 1/4" x 1/8", red flint filter gravel). The actual ration of substrates should depend upon the native alkalinity of your tap water. If the alkalinity is good (say, 65 mg/L as CaCO3) then the ration can be 1 to 9 (calcareous to silicate). If the alkalinity is low then use the 1 to 4 ratio.
(8) Install outside power filters, OPF's, (i.e. Eheim brand canister-type) capable of turning approximately 4 to 5 tank volumes every 24 hours. Pack (from top to bottom) the filters with coarse mechanical filter media (i.e. filter pads), fine media (i.e. filter floss, tightly packed), granular activated carbon, GAC, (i.e. Marineland brand), and then medium to fine mechanical filter media (to retain the GAC). Make sure the entering water passes though the coarse mechanical medium first. The mechanical media must eventually clog. If it doesn't then it isn't working properly. This why one should be cautious of those hang-on-the-back filters which simply have a packet of GAC inside a fiber filter cartridge. These filter cartridges will usually not clog and will allow the water by-pass the media, and the material from which the cartridge is constructed will not properly protect the GAC from fouling particulate matter.
(9) "Tune" (with the air valves) the air/water flow from the UGF airlift tubes so that at 4" of emergence a steady, smooth flow is achieved (no gurgling or jerking of the airlift tube). The air-water mixture flowing from the diverter tube atop the airlift should resemble the water flow coming from a kitchen sink tap.
(10) Refrain from cleaning the substrates for at least the first six months of operation; then only clean enough to maintain the flow of water through the substrate. The only sure way to determine whether or not the substrate is clogged is to routinely measure the ammonia and or nitrite in the aquarium water. When the substrate is clogged (or otherwise restricted) the nitrification will be impaired.
(11) Replace the GAC on a regular basis as determined by permanga-nate test, and perform regular, partial water changes and condi-tion the water as needed. Use both NovAqua and AmQuel to condition the new water.
(12) Do not use nitrification inhibiting chemicals in the water (e.g. erythromycin, methylene blue, tannins) of the main display aquarium.
(13) Quarantine all animals for a minimum of 10 days beyond the disappearance of the last signs of any stress or disease in the Q/T aquarium (this will mean some fishes will never make it out of quaran-tine). Typically, if the newly acquired fishes show not disease problems, a two-week quarantine period is sufficient.
(14) Break-in the biological filtration by adding 1 to 2 mg/L of ammonia, and the requisite AmQuel, daily until measurable nitrite has appeared and disappeared; then add the first quarantined animals. The AmQuel is added to reduced the measured ammonia to zero. The bound ammonia is useable by the nitrifying bacteria.
(15) Plan all plant and animal acquisitions so that some semblance of species and geographic compatibility can be maintained. Never be an impulse buyer.
(16) Keep a journal. Write down everything!
|
