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65 Posts
Here's the backstory. My brother in law had a 125 that he needed to get rid of because of his newborn needing a room in the house. So he sold it to me,I proceeded to hook up everything that he had that he threw in with it, the Filstar x3, some generic HOB filter, 300W heater, some black gravel substrate he had, a roman colosseum looking thing, and a 12" piece of driftwood attatched to slate with a screw. I cycled it. Then deposited 2 Jack Dempseys, a firemouth, 2 Convict Cichlids, 2 Pink Convicts, 2 Texas Cichlids, a julli cat, a panda cat, and upside down cat, 3 generic plecos(came with the tank). I later found a little blue mystery snail that my daughter just had to have. Then I unknowingly planted some onion plant I got from Petsmart in there, a cambomba(sp?)from Petsmart,and Amazon Sword from my LFS(already knowing that cichlids eat plants), and also threw in a moss ball from PetCo for good measure. Oh yeah, the canopy has a 40W compact flouro bulb. So that gives me ooh about .3 WPG, talk about low light!!!
So in hopes of eventually finding some aquatic plants to put in a decide to pull out the UGF, the stand that the aquarium sits in I can see the bottom of the tank, and I've got fish mulm from the bottom of the glass to the top of the UGF. Well the time comes to pull the UGF. I change the filters on the HOB, and in the canister, figuring a clean filter will catch some of the crap. I pull all the ornaments, driftwood, Colisseum, broken clay pots, and ceramic tile(leftovers from a bathroom project). The moment of truth hits, I pull out the airlines, grab the tubes of the UGF, and reach in up to my armpits into the aquarium. I pull out the left side, instant green cloud, I pull the right side, now a nice color of brown to add to the green with a mix of black gunk. Oh wow, a ghost shrimp from last month zips by, it's about the size of my thumb. Oh yeah I left all the fish in, if they can survive this, they can survive anything, especially after the 3 day power outage last week.
So I then grab the gravel vacuum, and throw it in the tank, and proceed to pull out 50 Gallons of water out of the tank. I had 30 Gallons of water that I had prepared earlier in the week for the project, so I only had to put 20G of tap water into the 125. The only casualty of the UGF removal was the smaller of the 2 Jack Dempseys, who was a pain and chased everyone around the tank anyway, he swam under a mountain of gravel. So I net him and pull him out, and replant the Amazon, and the onion plant, the cambomba stuff is sitting in some water on the front porch as the fish have eaten it down to the stalk. I grab the camera to take pictures, and realize it got broken a couple of weeks ago, time to go out and buy a new one!
So here we are on day 2, the water has cleared up and everyone is swimming around just fine.
I know there are some things I could have done, like 1. Not put in the UGF in the first place. 2. Remove the fish. 3. Just pull 1 side of the UGF, and do a water change, and do the other at a later time. But oh well, almost everyone is alive!
Now to get some Anubias b. and, some java moss, and maybe a fern. I definitely will be adding an apple snail or 3 if I can find some, and maybe a couple other snails.
Thanks for reading sorry about the length.
So in hopes of eventually finding some aquatic plants to put in a decide to pull out the UGF, the stand that the aquarium sits in I can see the bottom of the tank, and I've got fish mulm from the bottom of the glass to the top of the UGF. Well the time comes to pull the UGF. I change the filters on the HOB, and in the canister, figuring a clean filter will catch some of the crap. I pull all the ornaments, driftwood, Colisseum, broken clay pots, and ceramic tile(leftovers from a bathroom project). The moment of truth hits, I pull out the airlines, grab the tubes of the UGF, and reach in up to my armpits into the aquarium. I pull out the left side, instant green cloud, I pull the right side, now a nice color of brown to add to the green with a mix of black gunk. Oh wow, a ghost shrimp from last month zips by, it's about the size of my thumb. Oh yeah I left all the fish in, if they can survive this, they can survive anything, especially after the 3 day power outage last week.
So I then grab the gravel vacuum, and throw it in the tank, and proceed to pull out 50 Gallons of water out of the tank. I had 30 Gallons of water that I had prepared earlier in the week for the project, so I only had to put 20G of tap water into the 125. The only casualty of the UGF removal was the smaller of the 2 Jack Dempseys, who was a pain and chased everyone around the tank anyway, he swam under a mountain of gravel. So I net him and pull him out, and replant the Amazon, and the onion plant, the cambomba stuff is sitting in some water on the front porch as the fish have eaten it down to the stalk. I grab the camera to take pictures, and realize it got broken a couple of weeks ago, time to go out and buy a new one!
So here we are on day 2, the water has cleared up and everyone is swimming around just fine.
I know there are some things I could have done, like 1. Not put in the UGF in the first place. 2. Remove the fish. 3. Just pull 1 side of the UGF, and do a water change, and do the other at a later time. But oh well, almost everyone is alive!
Now to get some Anubias b. and, some java moss, and maybe a fern. I definitely will be adding an apple snail or 3 if I can find some, and maybe a couple other snails.
Thanks for reading sorry about the length.