After a long week of waiting for finals to be over I finally got the time to set up my new aquarium. I knew if I started during finals week I wouldn't get any studying done and even without the tank it was hard to keep off of youtube and fishtank tv to learn about everything!

So I got a 55 gal fishtank off of craigslist and decided to go with a dirt tank. I wanted to go with a blackwater setup because I wanted to get a school of cardinal tetra and keep them in their natural environment however the idea of lots of plants was way to enticing to keep it a strictly blackwater biotype. I removed the carbon from my filter and added peat moss instead. This is to release tannin into the water to raise the ph and lower the water hardness for my fishies that like this kind of water. After adding miracle grow organic potting mix and covering it with black rock we slowly filled it with water to prevent the dirt from coming up and making a mess. We used the small hose from an air pump and filled it through that and it worked pretty well! We added stresszyme to try and get the good bacteria growing and let the tank cycle before we got our fish! We now have 7 zebra danio and 4 ghost shrimp. We are letting them get the tank all ready so we can get our cardinal tetra which from our last experience are pretty delicate so we are trying to be more careful.