Sat next to me on a nice (if unnervingly thin) cabinet is my fish tank. It’s approximately a metre long and holds somewhere around 100l of water. Combine that with the 20kg of gravel and the five or so kilos of stones that make up the display it’s quite a substantial size. The only thing missing is the fish.
Today I went to the pet shop to get some fish, but in that strange twist of fortune that always happens I came back with something entirely different. Instead of fish swimming around in the tank there’s now a tank heater. When I went to the shop I had the intention of buying some small goldfish – I’ve always wanted a small shoal of fish rather than a few monsters. The pet shop had a sign on their tanks saying all goldfish were undergoing treatment and weren’t for sale. This left just tropical fish, which I don’t know much about, the idea of having fish that require a specific temperature is something I’ve never had to deal with before.
After a small chat with one of the shop staff I decided a small shoal of Neon Tetras would be nice. They could dart around and hide amongst the rocks and plants in my tank. The heater should do it’s job and keep the water at the right temperature (somewhere around 25 degrees C).
I also came back with a tank thermometer and a water testing kit. This time I’d be doing things properly with the right equipment. The man in the shop had informed me it’d take another three weeks before the water would be fit for fish to live in.
Arriving back home I put the tank thermometer in and suckered the heater inside behind one of the tank filter tubes. Strangely enough the water was already at the correct temperature, maybe keeping tropical fish wouldn’t be so difficult after all. I opened the water testing kit and began reading…
The tests contain little bottles of various solutions (plastered in warnings telling me not to get it on my skin or in the tank) and colour charts. The pH was correct, the ammonia content was nil but the nitrite content was at the top end of the scale. Putting fish in this water wouldn’t be healthy. From the results I concluded some of the required bacteria had started to grow in the filter gravel, but the filtration system wasn’t completely formed yet. These tests have to be done once a week so I’ll see what next week’s results show. I might get some “quick start” formula that when added to the water causes the necessary bacteria to grow quicker. Some of the plants are dieing which could also be another cause of the high nitrite levels.
