Welcome to my fish page!  Here are the details of my fish and my tanks.  If you just want the pictures, go here.

Here I'll try to keep up with pics and info on my fish and tanks.  I currently only have 1 tank (although a second is in the planning stages). 

The Fish

Coming Soon

The Main Tank

This is an Oceanic 46 gallon bowfront aquarium that Christa and Emily got me for Christmas!  I got it all setup, and here's what it looked like initially.

I did a lot of research online, and stumbled upon a great website, Aquarium Advice.  This is a message board that is filled with very knowledgeable and helpful people.  After a ton of reading and learning about the nitrogen cycle, I decided to do what they call a fishless cycle.  This is basically a way to run a full cycle of the nitrogen cycle without fish, making the tank safer for fish and allowing you to fully stock all at once.  The normal way to cycle is to buy a few fish, then to keep changing the water until the cycle completes to get things going, then slowly add fish once it's done.  The Fishless method is a lot easier and a lot quicker, and if you follow all the tips from AA (That's aquarium advice, not what you were thinking), it can go a lot quicker than normal as well.

Naturally, I ran into some glitches along the way with my cycle.  It ended up taking 33 days to finish my cycle.  Yes, that's 33 days having an aquarium all setup, and no fish in it.  I'm sure Christa thinks I'm nuts, but the plan is that it'll all work out better in the end.

I kept a log of my cycle, documenting the daily water readings I took and the things I did to the tank to keep for reference.  It's an excel spreadsheet, and you can see it here if you're interested.

Along the way, I found out about what they call Moonlights.  Little 1 watt LEDs that slightly illuminate the tank at night.  Saltwater tanks benefit from this type of stuff, but for freshwater it's just cool.  Here's some pics of the moonlight install, and tank with the moonlights.

Then, I went searching on eBay to find some real wood pieces to replace the plastic ones in there.  The plastic ones aren't bad, they look nice, but I wanted the look of real wood, and I wanted to find something make some caves out of.  Luckily, I found both.  So below is my new wood centerpiece, and 1 small hollow pieces of wood that makes a nice cave. 

Since this wood was found in a river somewhere, it has to be prepped before going in the tank.  This involves several hours of boiling and treating to make sure there's no living organisms on it.  The large piece is taking a long time to treat, but 1 of the small cave pieces went quickly and made it into the tank when I removed the fake decor.

The Planted Project

Coming Soon