Setting up 3 Gallon Eclipse

[bettalvr]

You can buy a culture to grow in the tank that speeds up the process drastically, but I've not seen that it is "cycled" in a few days. It's safer, but not completely cycled.

[wiccansinger]

I would recomend using the apple snail, as for the waste as long as you clean the tank once a week by removing about 30 - 50% water and replacing with conditoned water at the same temp, as well as using a gravel filter (or as someone on this site recomended a turkey baster for a small tank, sorry i cant remember who suggested it but i know someone did) you pick up all the gunk from the gravel with them.

[slk]

Thanks very much for the advice -- I'll let you know how it goes!

[wiccansinger]

cool ^.^ its always good to hear sucess stories!!

[PsychoKnight]

I had the same 3gal Eclipse. It worked nice. For 11mo, 2wks. Then I noticed the ballast was brown and cracked open, exposing the florescent ballast components directly to open water. I took the receipt and the warranty document back to Petco (warranty states seller must accept warranty returns for the entire period) and exchanged it for a replacement. 14mo later, the same problem, but this time no warranty. If you have an incandescent model, no worries. Otherwise, I would check the underside of the lid twice a month.

[LauraL]

You might want to try a ramshorn snail as opposed to an apple. They're smaller, eat less and poop less (yay), and still do a pretty good job on algae in a smaller tank,

[wiccansinger]

the golden apple is better in my experience because it does pick up more waste. honestly i say one or 2 golden apple snails per gallon at medium size. you should be cleaning the gravel once a week anyway so buildup is nothing.

[slk]

Thanks. I'm thinking that I probably won't add anything to the tank at all -- I now have my betta happily liviing in there alone, and the weekly gravel cleaning is going well. The lighting is limited to my office light and the aquarium light (i.e. no sunlight shining in) and the plants are not real, so there is no visible (at least not yet) algae growth. Things are going so smoothly now that I don't want to take the chance of any changes causing disruption!

[wiccansinger]

you should seriously consider a snail and some live plants. honestly it will be beneficial for your betta. change your fake plants to live plants at least, it wont cause a disruption, they help keep the water clean.