Aquarium newbie

[Bedlamer]

I was looking at petsmart and the have a 25 gallon aqueon kit and a 29 gallon top fin kit. Anyone got experience with either or know which is a better setup/brand?

All things being equal I'd go with Aqueon as well--and I did. I purchased two Aqueon 29 gallon starter kits last year at Aquarium World 13157 Northwest Freeway, Houston, TX 77040 (713) 329-9989 http://aquariumworld.net/ for $89 a piece during a little promotion they were having. Those guys tend to run a little pricey—but have a printable coupon for usually about 20% off of one purchase per month (the coupon isn’t there at the moment—they might be waiting for March to roll in). Call them up and see how much they want for it. That is a fairly bread and butter item—I’m guessing most local fish stores that carry Aqueon products will also carry that 29 gallon starter kit. I know you are in Deer Park and the above store and two more of my favorites (City Pets & Fish Gallery) are over on the western half of Houston—but it makes for a nice Sunday afternoon drive just to see all of their stuff. There are several small LFS in your area—you’d have to call them to see if they stock the starter kits or not.

There is a thread on here http://www.houstonfishbox.com/vforum...outhEast-Texas that lists most of the LFS (beware--the earliest posts in there are from 2006—call to see if they are still in business first. There was also a map of the LFS for Houston somewhere, but I can’t find it at the moment.

[Complexity]

The map is on the front page. Click the "Articles" link to see it.

http://www.houstonfishbox.com/vforums/content.php

[Totenkampf]

+1 to craiglist or the Buy / Sell Forum on HFB for a tank (you will save a bundle on a tank with stand), to not buying anything Top Fin branded, and to American Flagfish (I kept them in the past and they REALLY cooler up nicely. The males may fight and they have pretty big mouths so select tankmates accordingly. They are also highly underrated algae eaters.)

[Chris.d514]

Ok so the filter in my daughter's tank started "coughing" last night after clearing the water from it and restarting it a few times alot of clearish/white stuff came out of it. The filter started sounding right again and my ph went from 8.2 to a 7.4 and the ammonia dropped from .2 to .05. Is this normal, bad, good, or what? The clearish/white stuff settled at the bottom and I was planning on gravel vacing it up today.

[Complexity]

Whenever I've cleaned a filter, only to have it spit out white looking crud when I started it out, what I've seen is the filter pushing out the crud that had lined the outflow hose.

Cleaning the filter allows it to run at a higher flow rate (it's not as clogged as before) which applies more pressure to the outflow of water, and that higher pressure pushes out crud that had accumulated over time. It has never harmed anything (my fish even eat some of it), and the filtration just cleans it out (but I have very high flow).

I can't say you're getting the same white crud, but it's possible.