Monthly Archives: October 2010

Our freshwater aquarium 30.10.2010 – Or how I made my freshwater aquarium beautiful.

Posted by on October 30, 2010 No comments

Below in an image of our aquarium taken 30.10.2010.

Our freshwater aquarium - 30.10.2010At least to me the aquarium looks more or less like an aquarium I would like to have. Recently I have been more focusing on good plant growth since to me that is the basic for any good and beautiful aquarium. Good plant growth without algae shows immediately that the aquarium is healthy and to me at least showing nice looking, healthy plants is to show that I keep good care of my aquarium in the long run. Anyone can drop in a few fish and buy some plastic boats that will spit air bubbles, but having healthy plants requires some effort.

I have also had some troubles with the fish in the past, especially in the beginning of our new tank. I had some issues with the N-cycle but it is looking all better now. I haven’t changed the water in three weeks and my readings look good: pH: 7.0, NO2: <0.025 ppm and NO3: 10 ppm. To add to this, we are also having guppy babies in the tank. We got five of them and they are all still alive. They are now two weeks old and about 1-1.5cm long and it looks very promising for them to reach full growth. People say that this is not a big deal for guppies as they give birth so often, but to me this tells that my aquarium is healthy!
Especially people that are new to aquariums and getting their first tank, I think they start wondering shortly how they can achieve these results and a healthy looking aquarium. I will give you my advice below so you don’t need to wonder what are the secret to have a good looking aquarium. Read more »

Images of today: Sunset Platy

Posted by on October 30, 2010 No comments

Today I post some pictures of our Sunset Platy. We have two Sunset Platy, one male and one female. The Sunset Platys are very easy to keep as they can tolerate big variety of water temperatures and pH values. They like to play around in the tank by chasing each other. They like to hide behind the plants together, but are playful enough to be one of the more fun freshwater aquarium fish you can have.

If you are looking for some fish to start your aquarium hobby with, I definitely can recommend Sunset Platy for you. They are both beautiful and fun to look at but also easy to keep.

JBL test shows false high nitrite level

Posted by on October 17, 2010 1 comment

What would you do if you get a nitrite test result showing your nitrite levels are at 0.8-1.0 ppm? At least I would panic at first. Just take a look at the picture below and you see what I mean.JBL Nitrite test shows false positive

The result to the left is the one I got from my first sample and it got me panicking for a brief moment. It shows a nitrite test result as high as 1.0 ppm which basically means that my fish are about to die. At this point I was still wondering how this could have happened since only a while ago the results were fine. What could have happened?

Then I thought I better take another test just to verify the reading. That result is in the middle in the picture above. As you can see it looks normal. I confirmed this by measuring the nitrit level a third time and you can see the result of that one on the right. This also showed normal. What had happened? All of the tests above were taken withing 5 minutes of each other.

Well, when I took the first test for nitrite I also took a test for nitrate. I had the both test bottles in the same hand shaking them violently to have them mixed well. This is what the instructions for the JBL nitrate test says I should do – but the nitrite test does not say I should do this. Apparently if you shake the test bottle of JBL nitrite test too much, you will get a false positive reading as a result. I never thought that shaking the test bottle would cause any harm – I mean it was not explicitly forbidden or anything. But apparently you shouldn’t do that. Only gently see that the two different liquids you dropped into the water are mixed and leave it alone for three minutes.

Joined Aquarium Advice community

Posted by on October 16, 2010 No comments

I’ve been looking for sites on the Internet that would gather freshwater aquarium hobbyists together and also give advice to beginners. This hobby is so changing that you just can’t do it by only reading a book (but it of course helps a lot). Just as I have been writing about on this blog, there are many people giving different kinds of advice and in the end it all depends on your tank and what you have in it. So it is good to have someone to ask or share and exchange your own thoughts to others.

So today I today joined the Aquarium Advice community at http://www.aquariumadvice.com. I been a member for only a few hours, but already my initial post got many replies from people who really seem to understand this and know what they are saying. It feels nice to have a place to ask questions from and also share good moments. Already from this first day in the community I have to say that I changed again my opinion about water change frequency. It really makes sense to change the water quite often since in the nature the water is flowing and changing naturally, while in an aquarium it’s you who have to do the changes – so why not change it as it would in the nature. It really seems there is no harm in changing the water too often (that is, if you are not doing it daily – that would cause unnecessary stress to the fish :)) if you are careful with vacuuming the gravel too intensively. So I will probably follow the following pattern in water changes from now on: change 10-20% of the water weekly with light gravel vacuuming and once a month 30-40% water change with intense gravel vacuuming.

My freshwater aquarium pH value jumped in a week

Posted by on October 15, 2010 No comments

I am confused. Again. But I guess this is the fun in having a freshwater aquarium 🙂

Last weekend, six days ago, before a water change, I checked my water’s pH value: ~6.6. Today after changing the water, it has jumped to 7.4. This cannot be good. I did a 30% water change. Should a 30% water change (on a 180 liters tank) impact the water pH this much? I am also not sure why the pH would go up – I have understood that overfeeding will lower the pH. So I guess this is good news in a way. But 7.4 is still too much.

Any ideas?