cheap aquarium

I recently bought a couple platys and put them in my tank, and then they had babies. Its cool and all, but i dont have another aquarium, and i cant drive to the store to buy one. My other fish had already started eating them! I had to save them! So i ran down to my scary basement and found my 10 gal tank where i used to keep mice, so i rinsed that out, patched up the cracks (with ductape, of course) and the leaks were fixed. Then i rinsed off some driveway gravel to put in the bottom. i also found some waterweed in the spring and planted it in there too. Now all i needed was a filter. i finally found an old 4 in. filter. (i know its way too small, but its all i had.) For the inside of the filter, i used some stretched cotton balls. all the babies are doing great, and the aquarium is beautiful.

Wow, talk about ingenuity. Good job. Now just be sure to keep an eye on your ammonia levels since your tank has not cycled. It needs to read 0 or it will kill your baby fishies. It can take several weeks to fully cycle so even though it is probably fine now you will have spikes. You will also need to watch out for the nitrites. They are just as bad. Some nitrated can be tolerated so you may not need to worry too much there. Also, keep an eye out for organisms other than fish since you pulled the plants from the spring. You may have transfered in some unwanted larval or egg stage pests. They may appear later.

I'd love to see a picture of your innovative aquarium setup. Did you put the duct tape on the inside of the aquarium? If so, you should replace it with silicone aquarium sealant. Since transportation is a problem, have you considered buying aquarium supplies from one of the on line stores? They're sort of like Alice's Restaurant, because you can get anything you want. They're cheap too.

I always take a little gladware bowl, and collect some gravel out of one of the well established aquariums and put it in the new aquarium. That helps to add the beneficial bacteria to the new tank.

You don't have to spend the money on expensive aquarium sealant, you can use 100% silicone, like used for window caulking and similar. Just don't get anything that says Mildew repellant, or anything like that. It's not good for the fish.

Also, a lot of folks use aquarium nets or breeder boxes... you might want to try to aquire some for future broods.