The Tropical Fish Page

I have been keeping tropical fish since New Years Eve 1995. I started off with a 5 Gallon Living Picture (28"x3.5"x18"LDH), show below. This tank is filtered using an Eheim 2006 internal canister filter, and heated to 77°F using a Visi-Therm 75W heater, the lighting is a Denerle 18W 24" tube. I originally started off with live plants,2 Peppered Cats and about 6 Guppies, (4 metallic females, 2 double Sword males), the Guppies soon did what Guppies are good at (multiply), so a stock tank was setup, this is a 18"x12"x12" again using a 2006 and 75W heater, this was used to breed Guppies, the best would then be displayed in the Picture Frame Tank.


Picture Frame Aquarium

The Picture Frame Aquarium, is now home to 2 Octocinclus(for algae removal), 3 Male Guppies and 2 Silvertip Tetras and 2 White Cloud Mountain Minnow. The plants are now mainly plastic (with the exception of some java moss), the live ones, suffered from algae and due to the narrowness of the tank it was difficult to keep the plants clean.


Some of the original fish are shown here. These pictures will soon be updated and added to. Gourami and Tetras


Dwarf Gourami

On New Years Eve 1996, 1 year after the first fish in my first tank, I ordered a 32"x15"x22"LDH aquarium and cabinet, this holds about 36 gallons of water, the larger size also allows me to have live plants, and a selection of different and larger fish. This tank will allow all the filtration equipment, lighting controllers and other equipment to be hidden in the cabinet below the tank.

The Filter used to be a Fluval 203 canister filter, gravity fed, from a inlet pipe at the back of the tank. Filtration consists of 3 chambers, one contains ceramic hoops (used to slow the water down and remove the largest particles. The second can be either peat, ammonia remover, charcoal, or foam, the final is a foam block, this cleans even the small particles from the water, water is then pumped back to the tank via a spray bar.

This has been replaced by an Eheim Ecco 2231 Filter, this filter is very easy to maintain as it has a self priming action, and easy release taps on the top making filter cleaning quick and simple.

The heating is provided by a Visi-Therm 200W heater, heating is monitored by a digital thermometer with alarm (for over and under temp). Lighting is provided by 1xTriton 20W with enhancer, 1 x 30W Aqua Glow and 1x30W Blue Moon, (used for night viewing and to prevent shocks of lights going on/off suddenly), the lighting is controlled by two digital time clocks, one for the day time lighting and one for night.

The tank shown below has now been up and running for about 5 years, at the moment all fish are happy, the filter only needs cleaning out every 6 months, 10% water changes are performed about every 2-3 weeks, currently ammonia, nitrite are both at 0ppm, nitrate is about 15ppm.


Main Tank 36 Gallon

The images are taken either on a Canon UC9Hi Hi-8 Camcorder and captured on the computer using a Pinnacle DC30+ card or using a Canon Powershot S10 digital camera.  The resolution of the pictures will depend on the capture device (the camcorder being 640x480) the digital camera (1600x1200max). I will put thumbnail pictures of about 110x100 with links to a higher resolution image. The original full resolution picture at 1600x1200 are about 1.4MB each. These will be available on request by email.

All the Fish pictures are Copyright Martin Baines 1997,1998,1999,2000,2001,2002 and may be used on other web sites with my permission. All the fish images are invisibly marked using Digimarc to protect copyright. Anyone requesting images for other sites will be provided with non marked images as long as I get credit for the pictures.

The fish and almost all of the equipment was purchased from The Water Zoo, 439 Lincoln Road, Peterborough, PE1 2PE. Tel (+44 (0)1733 312142). The staff are helpful and knowledgeable and are willing to help with fish problems.


Copyright © 1999-2003 Martin Baines, Last Updated - 18/05/03 00:00:00