A note to preface this post: This is a historical post, just a recording of what happened. In the time frame between this posting time (March 3rd) and now (May 25th), I've become much more knowledgeable about what I'm doing and what the tank is doing. I'm not saying that I won't make any further mistakes, I'm just saying that I'm really no longer a "newbie". That said, I'm looking back at what happened and am really disappointed by how and what I was sold by Lang's Tropical Fish. I guess, more specifically by a particular person at Lang's. Just a quick recap: I purchased a NEW tank from Lang's just four days before this, and I specifically asked what I could put into my tank without overloading the tank and really what would THRIVE in my tank. The salesperson led me to do what follows.
For the fish stock, I purchased (again from Lang's Tropical Fish) a 4" Clown Loach, a 5" Elephant Nose, and a 4" Irridescent Shark. I also purchased 2 Amazon Sword plants and 1 "Long Leaf" plant (really Jungle Val). I purchased a "Medium Wrecked Car" by Penn-Plax as a hiding place for these fish. I also exchanged the top mounted 100W heater with 100W submersible wall mounted heater.
Per the directions of Lang's, I acclimated my newly bought fish by floating their bags in the tank for a FULL 15 minutes and then pouring the fish and water into the tank.
A major problem that I specifically need to point out is that acclimation DOES NOT HAPPEN in 15 minutes of "floating the bag." That's not acclimation, that's temperature equalization (if that even happens in 15 minutes). A really good acclimation guide found on the Internet is LiveAquaria.com's Acclimation Guide. That acclimation guide is fairly close to others that I've found in other books, plus it makes more sense than just equalizing the temperature.
More on my tank later!
Wednesday, March 3, 2004
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment