 |
Pettex Roman Gravel
by katykicker
I have two fish tanks in my home, two cats and two turtles. It is fair to say that I love pets despite not owning many until about two years ago. Prior to that I used to house sit for friends a lot so I gained my fair share of pet experience and knowledge that I can now use in my own home.
Last year I purchased a large (over ... 100 litres) fish tank and so the decorations that I had from the tank I was upgrading from were just not sufficient. I discarded the gravel in my old tank, as it was a Biorb and not suitable for a standard Marina Style tank, and promptly purchased four bags of this Pettex gravel. This gravel is suitable for use in my tropical tank.
As this particular tank lives in my living room (which is red and grey) I opted for the red gravel, which I believe is the one in the picture above, and I paid £2.99 for each bag. This isn't necessarily the cheapest price available, as I know now from looking online, but I felt it was reasonable enough for each 2 kilogram bag and I was happy to pay this for the convenience of buying my gravel at the same time as my fish tank.
The bags that contained the gravel were sturdy and simple to hold. From what I remember there were no handles or holes to grip on to but we were soon at the checkout getting them bagged up. The bags were quite strong and I cut them open with scissors when I got home and wanted to start rinsing the gravel. I used plain tap water when I rinsed him, using my shower head to thoroughly clean very small amounts of this, as this was then placed in our tank and left for a full week before any fish were then added to the water. When rinsing this gravel I removed any very small pieces that fish could potentially eat.
When it came to placing this gravel in to our tank I just tipped it in to the tank with a few litres of water in and it sunk down to the bottom in seconds. Once I had this gravel in place I then set about filling up the tank and then I smoothed the gravel out across the bottom of the tank. The red of this gravel makes it very simple to see and the red is nice and vivid and vibrant and looks great in my tank. This has been submerged in our tank for over six months now and I've had no problems with the colour fading or being removed at all.
With regards to cleaning this gravel we use a gravel vacuum. We basically use something that sucks up the gravel and swirls it around and then places it back at the bottom of the tank. This is great as it sucks up any pooh or debris from our fish and leaves the gravel clean without us having to remove it from the tank.
Overall this gravel looks brilliant, is vivid and bright and it is reasonably priced. It is simple to put in place, spread out and gravel clean as required. Our fish do not seem to be able to eat this gravel, even the larger fish we have, and so I am rating this gravel 5/5.
Read the complete review |
 |
Blue Ribbon Column Ruins Aquarium Ornament
by katykicker
I love pets and in particular I absolutely love helping my husband with the decorations in our fish tank. When we first starting keeping fish we had a smaller fish tank and because of this we were limited to small ornaments and plants just to avoid overcrowding the tank.
One ornament that we used for around a year, on and ... off, was this column ruins ornament. We bought our ornament back in 2011 from Pets At Home for around £6.00 on a buy 3 for the price of 2 offer. We have stocked up on numerous ornaments over the past 18 months or so and recently I have been cleaning through our collection of ornaments and selling some on a local Facebook selling site to make way for a larger sunken ship that I have my eye on.
We picked this particular ornament because we have something of a ruin look going on at one point in our tank. We have also have a Spongebob theme running through it at one time and now we just have lots of large plants and bigger ornaments that we love without having a specific theme at any one time.
This ornament is made from polyresin, as are many of the ornaments that we have used, and stands at approximately 8cm high, 8cm wide and 4cm deep. This made it an ideal smaller ornament for our first ever tank and we have used this for several months on and off in our newer, much larger tank also. Polyresin allows ornaments to be very durable, as this one was for all the time that we used it, and it stops the ornaments being damaging to fish or polluting the water. This was very lightweight, at under 100 grams but it stood down at the bottom of the tank without falling over or moving at all unless knocked by myself or my husband.
This ruins ornament is in a T shape and there are six complete columns. The columns are spaced evenly apart enough and allowed my smaller fish to swim between them with ease if they chose too. Generally my fish preferred to just sleep right next to this in one of the corners perhaps to give them a little bit of shelter.
Obviously I really liked the look of this ornament when I picked it and we picked up 6 different ornaments, if I remember correctly, in one trip because there were lots of different themed ornaments that we really liked. The colours of this are rustic looking with beige, grey and other dull colours mixed in together. This makes the columns have a distressed looking and is really fitting with there being particularly damaged columns too. There are some damaged looking edges (that are not sharp at all) and there are even some cracks around the ruins to make them look more distressed and generally older than they would without them.
Overall I really enjoyed this ornament. I have just recently sold it making £4.00 back on it and after a good scrub it was almost as good as new. Obviously it is a little difficult to tell if much damage has occurred to this in the time that I was using it because I just gave it a scrub under warm running water and any green that had built up on it was scrubbed off easily enough with just a bit of elbow grease! The detail that was applied to this ornament was fantastic and this was one ornament I was reluctant to part with, however we had so many ornaments I had to cut back on some of the smaller ones to allow more room for the larger ones and also to cut back on how many things I was storing for the fish tank! While using this ornament I was really pleased with the quality of this and how well it added to my rustic theme - when I was doing this. Because this ornament is nice and small, by yet detailed, it looked great in my fish tank and I would definitely recommend it. This ornament gets 5/5 stars from me and it is worthy of every single one!
Read the complete review |
 |
Pineapple Home Spongebob Aquarium Ornament
by katykicker
Almost 18 months ago my husband and I got interested in fish tanks and keeping tropical fish. We initially started with a Biorb fish tank which was quite small in size and because of this we were limited in what ornaments we could have. One ornament that we purchased not long after we got our tank was this pineapple. Now initially it ... might just look like an odd ornament but this pineapple is actually the home to Spongebob Squarepants and that was the reason for this purchase. It started with a legless Spongebob that we found stuck in a toy grabber machine at the fair and we have loved Spongebob Squarepants ever since.
This ornament is currently £8.00 at Pets At Home, as I think it was when we purchased ours, and we got ours as part of a 3 for 2 deal on ornaments, like basically every ornament we have ever bought there!
The ornament itself is really detailed and looks great in the tank. This pineapple has a top, five windows and a doorway also plus a little bit that comes out of the side, a looking glass type thing I believe but the name of this escapes me! I love the orange of this ornament which is a little like a burnt orange colour. The windows are all lined with blue and have white spots. The blue is a lovely colour and again is quite vivid. The size of the windows are functional and my smaller fish (tetras, mollys and a few others) can fit through the windows and comfortably swim around in the pineapple and come back out of the other windows with ease. The door is an even larger size making this ornament accessible to my young corydoras' and some of my cichlids.
One bad comment I would have to make about this is that this is likely aimed towards the childrens end of the market and I can't imagine a goldfish, traditionally the fish of choice for first time child fish keepers, to be able to comfortably use this ornament. That could lead to a goldfish getting stuck in one of the windows and injuring itself or worse, not something you want a young child to have to witness or see the aftermath of.
This ornament is made from polyresin and mine was submerged in my tank on and off for around 8 months total submerged time. This was used in two different tanks during this time and the colours survived surprisingly well. This ornament is light weight which is useful too of course but not so light weight that large fish can knock it over.
Our fish absolutely loved this ornament for the time that we used it. There were lots of different fish that were able to use this, which is always good, and it gave the smaller fish a nice place to relax with its light interior if they were perhaps getting chased by some of our territorial fish just after mealtimes. Lots of our fish enjoyed this but when it came time for some larger ornaments, to accomodate larger fish, there just wasn't enough room to have lots of little themed ornaments any more. Some of my ornaments were sold, as this was one, and some of them have been kept for when I get my second tank in the near future.
Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the time that we spent using this pineapple ornament. I had a few other Spongebob Squarepants related ornaments which I always used together, in various areas of the tank, and even though I have recently sold this ornament, for £5 which I thought was great, and this is just because we have much larger ornaments for our tank now and these started to look out of place and were just not getting used any more. When I sold this on it looked almost as good as it did when new, after a quick rinse, and while some green had built up on it over time I was able to bring this back to good condition using boiling hot water and a little gentle rubbing with a sponge. I am rating this ornament 4/5 stars. The price is a little high, but the resell value for me more than made up for that, it is just that this ornament could do with being dark inside to give the fish somewhere to sleep if they want to or just relax while hiding in the dark, as fish seem to love doing.
Read the complete review |
