72 gallon up and running! *Have a pic now*

[Icewall42]

Thanks! The rock is actually a large chunk of Malaysian driftwood that I recently bought. The loaches have dug a little sand cave underneath it.

The clown loach is a 9-10 year old fish, and I've roughly measured him to be about 8 or 9 inches from nose to tail tip. He's my baby Albeit a rather moody one. He hogs the algae pellets and feels the need to occasionally assert his dominance over Orion, the 6-7" clown that is also in there. They like each other and frequently snuggle, but Fornax reminds the small one of his place. When I was about 13 or 14 years old, I made the mistake of not keeping an odd number of clowns... I had three clowns at one time, but one died young, leaving these two fatties that I have now, haha.

[brett_fishman]

haha, wow, thats a big clown!!

i meant the rock on the right-side of your last pic...not the driftwood...at least it doesnt look like driftwood....

This one:


-brett.

[Icewall42]

That is indeed the Malaysian driftwood. It's a dense piece that weighs probably 10-12 lbs. The other piece is the bogwood. You're right though, the driftwood ddoes look like a rock! Would have been marvelous if it was, but the driftwood looks just as nice

[brett_fishman]

haha, wow!!

from that angle, i'd swear that was one COOL rock!!

still, thats a sweet piece of driftwood...haha

-brett.

[Kitishane]

Hey Icewall,

Lovely tank, I can see that it will really be lovely once everything starts coming together.

I was just wondering what sort of cycling you used on the tank, and if you were continuing with a cycling product (such as Sechem Stability) while cycling with the fish in the tank. I know not everyone believes in a fishless cycling method, so I was wondering what your procedure was!

[Icewall42]

Well, I usually try to transplant as much yucky junk (big rocks, bogwood, ornaments, live and fake plants) into the new tank from the old tank, as that helps to get the established bacteria going in the tank. I usually add a large portion of the old water into the tank too. Yucky filters are also good for getting bacteria into the new tank, but those have to be cleaned a few days later. It's only recently that I've started using tank stabilizers like the one you mentioned, as I felt before and still rather feel that they aren't necessary--but only if you have material from an old, established tank to put into the new tank. Chemicals are probably helpful if you're starting a completely new setup.

For this tank, I actually did use much of the old water, and I did use some stabilizer, because the old tank is completely chemically out of whack. It wasn't an established setup at all because I needed a bigger tank for the fish and couldn't get one until now.

But before when I had a 55 gallon setup, I bought a 90-100 gallon used tank and made the transfer of fish and planst from the 55 to the 100. That used the same precedure I mentioned, without chemicals--established plants, wood with algae growth, and old, established water. The fastest way to get a new tank to cycle is to get long-standing, established bacteria in the tank, and this is how I've done it in the past.

Basically, you need to balance out the fish and the plants, as those are what the cycle is based around. It's best, I think, to cycle a tank with both live plants and fish, instead of just plants or nothing at all, since the cycle relies on the balance of plant byproduct and fertilization, while the fish prove the "manure" for the plants and the ammonia for the bacteria to work on.

I don't know the effectiveness of the stabilizing chemicals as I've only recently started using them. Hope that helps

[Kitishane]

Thanks for responding so quickly, and I appreciate your candid response! I find it fascinating to see how people do things, so I hope you didn't think I was trying to attack you.

Our first tank, a 30g, was set up before we realized what cycling was, and what we would need to do and watch for. Knowing what I do now, I feel so bad for what we potentially put our fish through. Our loaches were added only after we realized the amount of care and space that they would need, and after we got tank paramaters to where they needed to be.

The 120g was set up and was run fishless for about 4 weeks, while adding Stability, and doing water tests every day. This tank was also planted, so some may say that doing a fishless cycle was unnecessary, but I didn't want to take any risks, especially since this was going to end up being a home for our loaches. Once our tests determined that the cycle was "over", we added some worker fish (4 bristlenose pleco's, 3 siamese algae eaters) to get things started. We've since slowly upped the inhabitants of our tank, and about 2 weeks ago, finally added 4 of our 6 clown loaches to their new home. They LOVED it, and have been doing the loachy dance and finding all the neat hiding spaces my husband and I built into the design. The other two loaches were kept in the 30 gallon for treatment of CWS, and saddly, we lost the littlest one last week. We both feel that we just realized what it was a little too late. The other seems to be doing well, and should be joining the rest of his family soon.

Have you noticed that your fish are enjoying the new space, or are the pensive and skittish?

[Icewall42]

Don't worry, I didn't feel it was an attack at all. Recently, I've been feeling rather bad, because my fish practices have been pretty dubious... I've mentioned before that a couple big clowns and Modestas and some smaller loaches were horribly squeezed into a 30 gallon for about a year until I could afford a bigger tank. I wanted to get my fish into this new tank as soon as possible since the water chemistry of the 30 gallon was getting very worrisome.

But the fish love the new tank now, and have regularly been doing their loachy dance. I haven't seen the Modestas this active for quite a long time, and the other fish seem to revel in the sand. So it looks like it's going pretty well.

It's too bad about the one loach that died on you But it sounds like the bigger tank is great for them.