A New Start in a New Tank

We moved, so I decided to take the opportunity to switch to a new tank. The old tank was a bow front and I really didn’t like it. If you looked at the tank from directly in front of it, it was great. Sometimes the fish looked as if they were floating. If you looked at the tank from even a slight angle, you were suddenly hit by weird distortions due to reflection and refraction.

I was also a bit tired of dealing with plants. I’d never gotten things completely stable and then I ran into an issue with hair algae after not properly cleaning some floating plants that I’d bought off the internet. I will take pride in the fact that the guys at the LFS raved about the three think leaf Amazon Swords that I sold them. I really regret throwing out four or five other swords in the last few months due to laziness.

At any rate, here’s the new setup. Currently bare bottom, but I’ll probably get a thin layer of sand and additional driftwood down the road.

Unfortunately, my canister filter wouldn’t start immediately after I set up the tank and I wasn’t able to work on the tank for a day. By that time, all of my beneficial bacteria had died. That means we’re currently in the middle of cycling the tank. I got my first nitrite readings today, so hopefully we’re almost done with that.

It was tough to say goodbye to the old setup. I’ve been looking back at the old photos and the tank really did look pretty good as a planted setup. On the other hand, this is a brand new start on something that will eventually be impressive in it’s own right.

Enough talk, time for pictures.