Pet Forum / Aquaria / Goldfish / December 2004

My new tank is up and running! It's a ~30 gallon (weird shape, hard to
figure out). Right now I've got 1 goldfish in there for cycling, and
I'll add one or two more eventually.

I left it bare bottom, because I'm tired of vacuuming gravel. But I
wanted plants, so I took some brandy glasses (the low, fat ones that
are extremely hard to knock over) and filled them with an inch or so of
red gravel. Some of them I left empty and some of them I put plants in.

(I'm not sure about the etiquite of placing HTML tags for images in
usenets posts, I seem to remember it was taboo years ago so I'll just
post links)
http://pics.livejournal.com/kellbot/pic/0000zkpr/g8
http://pics.livejournal.com/kellbot/pic/00012dy1/g8

That second picture was taken *before* Weebl devoured the hornwort. I
was feeding him smaller portions to make the cycling less stressful,
and I think he decided that hornwort would make a nice meal supplement.
I'll replace it once the tank is done cycling.

The gravel is nice and easy to clean, just take the glass out, rinse it
in the sink, add a few drops of AquaSafe for good measure, and you're
good to go.

I also put the bubble curtain in at an angle so my fish can swim
through it easily. Since I don't have any gravel, I hid the suction
cups with some clumps of Java Moss.

http://pics.livejournal.com/kellbot/pic/000118f1/g8

And of course, pictures of Weebl himself:
http://pics.livejournal.com/kellbot/gallery/0000acfy

He seems to enjoy the tank setup, especially the glasses without
plants. He gets into them and swims around in circles for a bit. At
first I thought he was getting trapped inside, and had to "rescue" him,
but after watching him get himself out in the event he wanted something
(say, food) I think he's just playing around.

The only real concern I have about my tank is that the glasses of
gravel will accumulate anaerobic bacteria since water does not flow
through them. But a weekly gravel washing should be enough to keep that
in check, right?