Plant update

Just wanted to post a quick update on the plants that I found 3 days ago. I still don't have a positive ID on them yet, but I have put them in that tank and actually seen great growth from them in the 3 days I have had them. Here are some pictures of the plants.

I think I will go back to this same area later in the week and look for some more plants.

3/28





3/31





Here is the other plant in the tank

3/28





3/31

Native plants and more rocks!

Today I went back to the same creek as before to look for more rocks for my tank. I plan on building up a wall of rocks on one side of my tank.

While looking for the rocks today I found some plants in the water as well. I'm still trying to identify them before putting them in my tank, but here are a few pictures of the plants I was able to find.

Tank finally setup

I was initially planning on using sand as my substrate and bought a 50lb bag of all purpose sand, but even after rinsing it out and then having it in the tank for 5 days it still didn't want to clear up. Instead I'm going with a natural looking gravel that I picked up at Walmart. So I swapped that out when I got home today and I like the way that it looks.

Also today on my way home I decided to take a detour and go past a creek that I know is in a quiet area where I wouldn't be bothered. I wanted to get some rocks, driftwood, and plants for my tank out of my native waters. I was unable to find any plants yet, but hopefully once the waters warm up more they will start showing up. I was able to get some rocks and wood though.

So now I have the tank all setup and cycling so it will be ready by the time I'm able to go and start catching and collecting fish. I'm not able to catch anything for this tank until April 12th so its going to be a few weeks before I can do that, but I will update the blog with any info I have.

First here is the creek and area where I gathered the rocks and driftwood





Full tank shot of it all setup.





Left half of the tank





And finally the right half





Let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions let me know

Possible change in gravel

Well my tank still seems to be staying extremely cloudy. Last night I decided to try and change out my water to see if that helped clear it up some. The water change didn't seem to help any last night, but later on this afternoon it seems to be a little bit clearer. I'm going to give it a couple more days to settle without really touching the tank. If everything clears up then I will probably change the water again to see if it clouds up. I picked up 15 pounds of brown natural gravel today at Walmart that I will use instead of the sand if it keeps being cloudy like it is.

I also picked up a few other items for the tank today. I bought a timer that I will use to automate the lights, and I picked up a 4'x4' seine as well as a dip net to try and catch minnows with. I got my fishing license as well while I was out today. I believe that is all that I picked up for the tank today, but I did also place an order online for a container to put minnows in so I can take better pictures of them to help me get a good ID on them.

I will post some pictures of the tank when the water clears up just a little bit more. Hopefully I can collect some rocks for the tank in the next couple of days as well.

I will keep you posted!

Setup my new tank!

After starting up my blog yesterday, I decided that I really wanted to get my tank going as soon as possible. Last night I went out to Walmart and picked up a new 10g kit for my native tank. This kit comes with 2 incandescent bulbs and I knew they wouldn't be great so I also picked up a couple 10watt compact fluorescent bulbs to put in the tank instead. These lights will give the tank a more natural color and bright then tank up.

Here is a picture of the new light bulbs I bought to replace the stock bulbs. They were about $5 each at Walmart.




And I also wanted to post a picture showing the difference between the two bulbs. The stock bulb is on the left here and the new one is on the right.




I filled the tank up with sand I picked up at Home Depot for about $3 for a 50 pound bag. The sand is Quickcrete All-Purpose Sand. I was afraid that this sand would be bright white like play sand tends to be, and that wouldn't look natural in a tank like this. Luckily this sand seems to look more like brown mud and is going to give the bottom of my tank the perfect natural look that I wanted. The water is still pretty cloudy and muddy at the moment, but hopefully it will clear up more in the next couple of days.

Starting my blog and my search

This is my first post in this blog, but they all have to start somewhere.

I have been interested in aquariums and keeping fish for a few years now, but just recently became interested in keeping native fish. These are going to be fish that I will actually collect on my own and also some plants that I find from my local waters.

Eventually I will be setting up a large 75 gallon tank to keep some larger native fish, but for the next 2 or 3 months I'm going to be using a 10 gallon tank to learn as much as I can prior to stepping up to the larger scale.

This 10 gallon tank will be getting setup in the next couple of days, and once I get it all setup I will start catching and trying to identify as many native fish as possible. Some of these fish will also make it into my tank.

This blog is mainly going to be setup for people to be able to follow along with my collecting trips and I will also post all the updates for my tanks. I will be posting plenty of pictures of the fish I find, some from where I find them, and also some pictures of my tank.

Feel free to leave comments!