it appears that gravity pours water into the wheel - we do have two filter cartridges in the penguin, charcoal and blue something (sorry to sound ignorant here, but I think it's the blue fiber stuff others have spoken of. the charcoal and the blue stuff are combined in each filter cartridge.
Hubby poured some finer gravel in tonight to help root the plants and we mixed it in with the 1/4' gravel - brought our substraight (sic?) level up to a solid 3 inches. Problem is he forgot to rinse it, so the water is cloudy, but clearing up. We bought 2 java ferns, two thingies that look like clumping plants that send runners up to the top with big leaves on top of the water and the fish lady gave me another fast growing low light plant for free, told me to pinch it in half and palnt both halves together. She said they all grow pretty rapidly and do well in low light. They came from tanks with fish in them - established tanks, and should help with the cycling since they should have the right bacteria on them. So now that I put the plants in, I should leave the light on during the day? we have a single florescent light in the hood.
the ammonia is still up to 1.0 and the nitrites are still around .25, but just a but more I think. I will keep checking - the little (one gallon) tank is at 0 ammonia and down to .25 nitrites so I think it might be finishing up it's cycle, although it won't be used for much but an emergency and quarantine tank.
I think we decided to make the 20 gal a community tank with some small but colorful schooling fish. Neons and such. The 55 gal will eventually become our semi agressive tank and we are going to wait on the marine tank until we buy our house.
But everything is going to cycle fishless from now one, because we can't take another massive loss. Too heartbreaking.
Will keep you posted on our progress. Seems like we both have been feeding the empty tank (oops) so there is plenty of food for the bacteria!!! Guess that's better than no food!!!
Hubby poured some finer gravel in tonight to help root the plants and we mixed it in with the 1/4' gravel - brought our substraight (sic?) level up to a solid 3 inches. Problem is he forgot to rinse it, so the water is cloudy, but clearing up. We bought 2 java ferns, two thingies that look like clumping plants that send runners up to the top with big leaves on top of the water and the fish lady gave me another fast growing low light plant for free, told me to pinch it in half and palnt both halves together. She said they all grow pretty rapidly and do well in low light. They came from tanks with fish in them - established tanks, and should help with the cycling since they should have the right bacteria on them. So now that I put the plants in, I should leave the light on during the day? we have a single florescent light in the hood.
the ammonia is still up to 1.0 and the nitrites are still around .25, but just a but more I think. I will keep checking - the little (one gallon) tank is at 0 ammonia and down to .25 nitrites so I think it might be finishing up it's cycle, although it won't be used for much but an emergency and quarantine tank.
I think we decided to make the 20 gal a community tank with some small but colorful schooling fish. Neons and such. The 55 gal will eventually become our semi agressive tank and we are going to wait on the marine tank until we buy our house.
But everything is going to cycle fishless from now one, because we can't take another massive loss. Too heartbreaking.
Will keep you posted on our progress. Seems like we both have been feeding the empty tank (oops) so there is plenty of food for the bacteria!!! Guess that's better than no food!!!
