Converting my aquarium to tropical - any tips?
I currently have a 200 L planted aquarium. I want to convert it to a tropical tank – maybe with angelfish or something interesting. I use to have a goldfish in it – so I am wondering if I need to completely gut the tank, or will it be alright to just do a massive water change and gravel vacuum – as well as heating it up, changing the filter media and giving it a few weeks to stabilize.
Will I need to do much more than that to make it suitable for tropical fish?
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If your planning on doing angels I would personally drain the whole thing and start over. The reason for this being that angels like a much lower pH so it will be much easier to do this from starting fresh than messing about with what you already have.
If you had success with the planted tank, I would think tropical fish would be a cake walk for you. And no, you wont have to do much more, maintenance is pretty much exactly the same.
If your going to do angels and stuff, why ditch the plants? Ive seen some planted amazon themed angel tanks that looked breath takingly beautiful.
I will drain it and probably remove some of the plants, (the goldfish weed, etc) and add a few ‘tropical’ species, since I was more limited with the cold water. I don’t really want to change the gravel though – do you think it would be okay to just give it a really good siphoning while I drain it?
Although I take immaculate care of the tank, water testing, adding the chemicals…. I just can’t keep those goldfish alive. I had one for over a year, it was always healthy – I never fed it a lot of food either, so I know it couldn’t have been swim bladder. One day he was just sick out of the blue. I’ve got a few minnows in the tank, and they are perfectly fine, I know if it was something to do with the water or filtration those would also be sick because after reading about them I found out they are pretty sensitive little fish.
Anyway, my Mom had the same problems with her goldfish, so I am just giving up on them now – I have a small tropical tank, (one of those Fluval Edges) it is much less maintenance and I’ve had all the inhabitants for over a year with no problems yet. I have always loved Angels though, I saw a pair once which were mainly white, with some black stripes and orange spots near their head – they were absolutely stunning!
@sarahjane90 yea if your tank is in good condition now it really shouldn’t be a problem if ya just want to give it a little cleaning and then drop the pH and go from there.
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