KittenFishMom

While I am waiting for my well water problems to either sort them selves out or go to the water lab on Monday, I thought I would shift projects and start research on setting up a sump for my 120 gallon tank for my summer native tank. It is a major job trying to keep up with a canister filter, four sponge filters and several hang on back filters. Water changes with buckets at or above shoulder level gets old fast. I toss lots of sea weed in, but the adult bull head catfish and crayfish really make a planted tank impossible. I looked on Amazon searching in "books" for "aquarium sumps" and very few came up and all seemed to be for salt water. I found lots of stuff on YouTube, but would rather have something that is organized like a book with an index. YouTube videos tended to says things like "depending on the flow you need" with out saying much about how to figure out the flow you need. I have only seen sumps on YouTube. With COVID, I haven't joined the local fish club that is over an hours drive away. Any advice of where to find organized sump info? It doesn't need to be fancy or pretty.

no water softener system. Just a "paper" mechanical filter and a UV light on coiled glass tubes. That is the water as it comes out of the well. 4 companies have tested it to be completely soft with a high pH.

I'm just learning how to take fish pictures. I snapped these while taking photos of my cloudy fish tank water. Hope you like them. @Guppysnail Sorry, the guppies all turned out blurry. I'll work on them more when I get the cloudy water under control. My Blue betta in cloudy water (tips of his pec fins are red and the very tips are white): My lighter greenish multi colored betta in the QT tank (the ends of his fins are rather red., can not wait to get him in a glass tank for side views): My long tailed Goldfish:

I am trying to come up with a working game plan for my well water for my fish. See Can I use cloudy well water for water changes? Water parms included . I am trying to figure out if RO is the way to go, and what I need to do to RO water before I can use it. I think I will need to heat it to tank temp, which will take space. I may need to remineralize the water. I am not sure what is involved, or how long that will take. Any other useful information I need to know? Any recommendation on the type or size system I need? I have a 55 tank, 2 15 tanks, 2 10 tanks, and some live food tanks. More phots in Can I use cloudy well water for water changes? Water parms included (added photos)

I can't get it test professionally until Monday. All my tanks are coming due for water changes, but are not urgent yet. I will cut back on feeding and see if that helps. The well is deep, but very close to the lake. The well has always had a moodiness to it. No one in the area drinks their well water.

(I added photos at the bottom to compare normal water with cloudy water.) I filled my new cleaned 15 gallon tank with the cold cloudy well water, added Seachem Stability and new polishing filter media in a cleaned Marineland Internal Water Polishing Filter (high volume, I think 5ated for 75 or 100 gallons) and ran it all night. I still can not see through the water this morning. Note: We have a mechanical filter and a UV filter on the well. The water parms this morning are: Ammonia: a little under 0.5 ppm (using ACO test strips, have ordered API test kit) Nitrate: 0 Nitrite: 0 GH: 0 KH: 120 ppm pH: 8.0 temp 78 Can I use this water for water changes? If yes, at what percent of the tanks? Photos: Empty new tank after water polished for 14 hours: Betta tank after 2 water changes over a week: Tank where I have not done water changes:

Well that didn't turn out as I had hoped. The tap water was cloudy, so we changed the partially clogged filter, now the water is gray from the sediment that built up while the flow was reduced. I also found ammonia in in the tap when I tested it. Won't be filling those tanks for awhile. ☹️ More details under the thread Tap water has ammonia

@StanF They LOVE to eat snails. I put gave them a wide range of snail sized. All the small snails are gone. I think they have lived on stale flakes for the past 2 years. They really like brine shrimp too. The look so healthy after pigging out on the live food. The driftwood I put in there is cover with snails and snail eggs on all sides of the wood. I talked to the LFS, and they said they would be happy to take them. I can tell COVID has hurt them. I am glad to give them the fish, I will just wait a week or 2 to enjoy them a little longer.

I put some fry in my betta tank and noticed it getting cloudy. I figured I must have over fed the fry and did a water change, even though the test strips did not indicate it was needed. Now the tank is cloudier. I was washing my 2 new tanks in the bath tub and noticed that just an inch of water was cloudy. We changed the house filter, now all the stuff that settled in the pipes when the filter was restricting the flow is stirred up and the water is gray. I tested the betta tank, which had some where under 0.5 ppm ammonia and no nitrates or nitrites. Strange. So I tested the well water. BINGO! The well water has ammonia at 0.5 ppm. We have a UV filter as well as a mechanical filter, so we are not getting live bacteria. We don't drink the tap water, but the fish do. Now I have 2 new 15 gallon tanks, and won't be able to fill them with my well water. And I am starting my 55 build, so that will need to wait until the well gets better to be filled. With the lake rising and the rain we had, our well has gotten messed up. Not sure how long it will last. I wasn't keeping fish last year. I am wondering if bottled spring water might be a better option than distilled water. We could bring chlorinated water from home and treat it. I have never thought about chlorine. I will have to call the treatment plant tomorrow to see if they use chloramine. Then find out how to treat the water. I'm so glad there is a meatloaf in the oven to cheer us up. It has been a rather discouraging evening.

It is suppose to snow 8 inches tonight... I think I will use the bath tub 🙂 (Note: I have thick pads in the tub for insulation. The tub is cast iron. I put 3 bathtub pads crosswise and the water stays warm enough for a good soaking)

I just bought 2 new 15 gallon aquarium tanks, from a store. What is the best way to clean them before I setting them up? I remember seeing a video saying to use Dawn to get any oily film off them, but I can't find that video. The manufacturer says to just wipe with a damp cloth. These tanks look a bit dirtier than what a damp cloth can handle. How do you clean an aquarium that has never been used before? Thanks in advance !!!

It might not be the cause of your fish dying, but it if the fish are reacting when the cats are there, then I would move the cat tree next to a window and feed the birds outside the window. Put a wind chime on the feeder so the cats know when a squirrel is there. They cats will love it, and the birds will be happy for the food and the ability to escape as far away as they wish.

@Ken Burke Thank. The water and solids smelled a bit funky when I vacuumed it out during the water change. I cleaned the sponge filter too. All the fish including the guppy fry are looking and acting normal.

@Ken Burke Do I need to do anything about it? I didn't know you could get biofilm on the bottom, I thought it only floated on top.

Here are some photos of the 3 goldfish. Not great, but I was taking photos of a problem in the tank next to them, so I tried to get a few shot of them while I was standing there. I think they have eaten all the smaller snails I put in the tank. Anyone know what kind of goldfish they are? The white with orange splotches: The orange one that is built like the white and orange one below the long tailed one: The long tailed one

In my plastic tote tank, I have notice some white stuff that seems to be growing on the edge of the stuff on the bottom, a bit of dead hornwort, some stones, etc. It kind of looks like it settled there. the tote/tub is sitting on a board on a blue frame. When I tested the water, there was less than 0.5 ppm ammonia, and almost 0 nitrates and nitrites. The tank has a bit of a swampy smell when I lift the cover. I will be doing a water change after I post this. It contains 1 male betta, 2 blue neon tetras that I need to catch and move to the tank with the other neon tetras, and 5 guppies and a few guppy fry. This tank has been cycled for 2 or 3 months. This photos are cloudy because it is in a plastic tote, not glass. I will try taking some from the open top as well. Any idea what this might be? This is photo from above. the white stuff is on the edge of one of the IAL. the driftwood is covered with snail eggs. The white ceramic ring in this photo is the same one in the photo above.

This too shall pass. Think of happy healthy fish as you deal with the mess. It might not help, but it couldn't hurt.

Please pass the beer this way. Cheers

I have been dealing with leeches that I am pretty sure are from the plants from the lake. When I found some on the native fish in a tank this fall, at first they looked like thin white thread attached to the fins, rather close to the body of the fish. As they ate, they got darker. I netted the fish and remove the leeches by pulling/scraping them off the fin. It is very had to see which side of the fin the leech is on, and the fish don't want to co-operate. If you don't like leeches, get someone who can stay calm to do this for you. If the fish are panicking, they don't need the person working on them to be panicking too. Once the leeches were removed, the fins healed very quickly and you could not tell there had been a problem. If you remember "The African Queen", salt applied to a leach with kill it rather instantly. I have always use table salt on any leech I found of me or removed from a fish or tank. It works very fast and very well. You can buy leech traps on Amazon. I think it was on YouTube where I saw someone recommend the glass tubes with 3 tiny pipes leading into the tube. I don't think a trap can catch will catch every leech, but it will help give you monitor if the population is increasing or decreasing. My female flagfish liked eating the leeches that it found on the glass of the tanks. My betta suddenly started picking on the flagfish, so I moved the flagfish to a different tank and am starting to see leeches in original tank again. I will be moving the betta to a new tank as soon as I get one cycled. I plan on cleaning the tank with peroxide. Then probably a saturated salt solution just to feel sure. Then wait a few days and rise all the salt out several times and let it dry for a week or more before rebuilding the tank.

I trust bacteria to detoxify ammonia, They have been doing it a lot longer than chemist have 🙂

@Torrey Thanks to you, I just got the "Aquarium Co-Op Tough Specimen Container" in the mail so I will start taking photos tomorrow !! @GardenStateGoldfish I just ordered some "Hikari Saki Fancy Goldfish Fish Food for Premium Grade or Fancy Goldfish" tonight. I fear my resolve to rehome these beautiful fish is weakening. But I will need to rehome them at some point. they will need more room than I have for them here.

@Torrey Thanks to you, I just got the "Aquarium Co-Op Tough Specimen Container" in the mail so I will start taking photos tomorrow !!

@Guppysnail I believe you know how fish think. Do you think light under a tank as described above would bother fish?

The stand for my 55 tank has a self a few inches below the tank. I have been daydreaming about keeping an curved area front and center bare on the glass bottom and putting some LED lights under it, so it looks like a pond reflecting moon light after dark. The lights would not be very bright, and would only run for a short time after the real lights go out. I think it would be fun to watch some of the "after sunset" activity in the tank. Has anyone ever done anything like this? Did it bother the fish or the plants or anything? I am thing about using a curved strip of plastic backed be large stones on each side. Then have smaller stones/pebbles going to the "shore" of the "pond", with sand at the edge. I might put an arched piece of driftwood over the pond with java moss as "Spanish moss" hanging down. What do you C.A.R.E. forum folks think?

I do like them. They are very beautiful and graceful, but I am running out of room, and they will need a bigger tank at some point. I have only had them a week, and they aren't that messy yet, I just remember reading that they needed a clean up crew, but I may be remembering wrong. @Ken Burke They are fun to watch and feed. I agree, is it sort of a nice problem. @GardenStateGoldfish I live in centrally isolated Central New York, so it is a long way to NJ. I will keep them until I find a good home for them. Any advice on keeping them happy and healthy while they are here is very welcome. @Flumpweesel I think the one with the long tail is a comet, and I think the other 2 are not. but I really know nothing about goldfish. @StanF I will find them a good home. There isn't a rush. I will find out how to care for them.