Soon to be posting Pics of my 55 Gal

Jan 5, 2011
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#1
I am a fairly new aquarist. My wife and I started off with just a littel 10 gallon tank and a few neons and a frog. Then my mother in law gave us her 30 gallon and we upgraded all our equipment and had 10 neons 2 cory cats that mate like rabbits and a Albino cory cat (little lucy...fer), our frog and some rasboras. After about a year and alot of plecos dying (6) we learning little tricks and my brother in law gave us his 55 gallon and stand *celebrate. we love it. I have 8 of the 10 neons left, they are getting pretty old, our horny catfish finally had a baby survive the other fish eating the eggs and us taking everything out of the tank and cleaning twice without knowing about it. and we have added a angelfish, a pleco, a clown pleco, 3 "rainbow" fish my wife loved and a few other fish i forget at the moment. Our tank is almost self cleaning! our catfish eat the junk off the bottom, our plecos clean the glass and our plants absorb the bad chemicals. we have to change the filters about every 3-4 weeks just cuz of all the fish food and other junk and we add water every now and then plus the occasional gravel cleaning but i haven't cleaned our glass in 2-3 months and it is still clean, I have pics on my phone but i haven't had time to transfer them over. Once i do i will put some pics on and if i can a video or two.
 

Newman

Elite Fish
Sep 22, 2009
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Northern NJ
#3
Hi,
I checked out the pics and the tank checks out nice.

Just had a few tips because your description raised a few concerns. now you might be doing this already, I do not know but here are the concerns:

1. filter changes- all you need to do here is replace the carbon bag if you're using that. the sponge/foam filter media should not be replaced, just rinsed out well in old TANK WATER. never use tap for anything that goes in or touches that tank. the other type of media you might have is those ceramic ring things that are porous. do the same rinsing on their bag as the sponge, and reuse. basically all that gets changed out ofter a good rinsing with old tank water is the carbon bag which should be replaced once every month or two months if you care. i say old tank water because its easiest to do filter maintenance during a water change where you use the tank water that's about to get dumped as the water to clean and rinse your filter stuff.

2. in the case that your filters are the cartridge type, things have to be done a bit differently. if the carbon material is embedded inside the cartridge, you dont have to replace the cartridge each time. saves you money right? here's the important part though: if there is carbon inside, you cut a small slit in the filter cartridge, then empty and throw away all that used up carbon. rinse he cartridge out as you would with the foam/sponge media i mentioned in #1 and put it back in the filter. if you want to use carbon is much easier now to just buy a small bag of active carbon from the store. you can get the bag from any brand, it doesn't even have to be your filter brand, just as long as its small enough to fit nicely into your filter.

3. Gravel cleaning and the water changing of the tank should be done at least every two months, and much more frequently if at all possible. preferably your tank would appreciate weekly water changes. but if its not possible at least once every month like i said.

4. back to the filter because i am inconsistent lol, you dont have to change out the entire machine, just the carbon bag like i said. you can rinse out and reuse everything each time. I know you probably didnt mean that you change the whole thing, it just sounded like you did..