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From: bc@mit-amt.UUCP
Newsgroups: alt.aquaria
Subject: Fishtank Moved
Message-ID: <1753@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU>
Date: Wed, 18-Nov-87 15:46:18 EST
Article-I.D.: mit-amt.1753
Posted: Wed Nov 18 15:46:18 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 21-Nov-87 16:21:17 EST
Organization: MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 76
Keywords: Sex, Drugs, and Water


I'm a student at the MIT Media Lab, studying the simulation of animal
behavior. For "research" purposes, we bought a 90 gallon tank, with
two Eheim 330 filters, undergravel, reverse flow, a BIG airpump (24"
of stone), all that groovy stuff.

I read up on aquaria, and got the impression that it would be a
challenge to maintain one. All this stuff about pH, ammonia,
temperature, etc.

Well, I set up the tank (fresh with plants), got it all going, dumped
in about 20 fish, and it went great.

Then the weird part: things didn't hardly matter.

Sure, it was important to make sure that the chlorine was gone, and
the hardness was low, and the pH was right -- when I set it up. Since
then, I've not had a problem. My heater got unplugged for a week.
Nobody cleaned the tank for three months running. We lost half the
water due to evaporation. (The last two were due to untrained people
leaving the top off for the entire summer.) None of the fish died. The
pH and ammonia were NOT outrageous.

So what I guess is this:
	Big tanks are just as easy as small tanks, day to day.
	Having way too much filtration is "insurance". (The Eheims
each are almost twice as much filter as we need.)
	Using diatomaceous earth filtration will clean damn near
anything out of the water quickly (hey: all visible particulate matter
-- i.e. all cloudiness -- gone in two hours with one Eheim diatom
charge!).
	Lots of fish are far more fun (see below!).
	Your aquarium stand should be a cabinet type, so as to make
the whole setup quieter.
	Everything looks expensive, especially the good stuff (Super
Ammo pellets are $30 for the big jar, but that jar lasted 6 months!),
but is actually a very cheap hobby by comparison.
	Get a knowledgeable friend to help you buy a used setup. It's
half the cost. Then buy a twice as big setup.
	My total tank setup weighs about 750 - 1000 pounds. The fish
could weigh as much as 2. So that's a 500:1 ratio of support systems.
Almost as bad as an Apollo rocket!

In short, I'm a big believer.

Oh yeah, say something reasonable:

I moved the tank recently -- from the messed-up state mentioned above,
I put all the fish in a 25 gallon trach bucket (clean...) and dumped
the tank, half filled it, stirred up all the gravel to float the
-ahem- waste products, diatomed them out, scrubbed the sides, filled
the rest of the tank, diatomed all the rust out (from dark orange to
sparkling clear in two hours!), and dumped in the fish.

THE GOOD PART:

So if you were a fish, and you were in this dirty, dark tank one day
and a clean tank with much more water flow (turned on the second
filter) and much brighter and much chillier (couldn't wait for the
water to warm up), what would you think?

Springtime!

So all my males are turning bright colors and are much more energetic.
The females are currently not receptive, but since they are getting
the right markings too, I guess that will change.

We'll have to see if we get little babies soon (and how many of them
get eaten).

Nicest present for staying up all night I ever got.

(I'm usually much more coherent, but moving the tank for 12 straight
hours and then eating coffee to stay awake through class has really
messed me up. And I wanted to be the first real note to this group.)

"Think like a fish" -- St Augustine...............................bc