Chapter 2 Jumpstarting the Tank

Okay so you’ve had a tank dropped off with a bunch of plants and tupperwares of fish.

1. Prepare water to go into the tank. Try to make sure the water isn’t super cold. Just a little cooler than what could be similar to lukewarm. Put it in a big bowl and add a drop of Prime. Let that bowl sit for a few minutes. Pour the water slowly over the rock or Neptune’s house to only disturb the gravel minimally. Repeat this until the tank water is close to the black rim. Fish jump, so don’t fill it up too much.

2. Plug in the filter. You need to pour water into the basket to jumpstart it’s motor. Make sure to move the tube thingie so that the water flow is as low as possible.

3. Plug in the heater, set it to 79 and forget about it.

4. Dip a test strip and wiggle it twice and pull it out. Pray that the top two squares are white.

5. Let the aquarium run and get heated up for a few hours, then slowly introduce the fish to the new temperature / water parameters by swapping out tupperware water with bits of tank water every 15 minutes.

6. See next chapter about what to do with all the plants and fish.

7. Set up the smart plug with the kasa app to turn the lights on every morning at 9am and turn them off at 7pm. It just keeps things regular and you don’t need to worry about the lights with your ever changing schedule.