On Water Quality

It's one thing if you keep an aquarium, or aquariums in a house you own, you have no problem making the permanent plumbing fixes that you need to support your hobby, but it gets different in a rental apartment.

To make your own water or not 

For a salt water aquarium, you will have to, but for freshwater maybe you don't, unless you are a stickler like me. How could I not? For myself, I don't use tap water, so why would I for the fish? Personally, I use the ZeroWater filter, which does a pretty thorough job. Then I use Concentrace mineral supplement to add back the good electrolytes.
For the aquarium I use the same ZeroWater, with Seachem Replenish, to replace the necessary minerals (adjusting GH), and I may use some sodium bi-carbonate (baking soda) to adjust KH, as well as the Seachem alkaline and acid buffers, if needed. After a while, you get handy at keeping the water parameters in check.
Now that my 29 gallon tank is operational, I have plain ZeroWater in a top-off reservoir, and when I do a water change I will supply the necessary minerals, but for top off water I need only the pure zero water, since in that case evaporation leaves the minerals behind.

Since my discovery of the wealth of information on the AAP website, I began to explore using the Wonder Shell-Aquarium Mineral Block that they so highly recommend - obviously, I use the plain, non-medicated ones. Presently, I don't have long enough experience with this product to tell you if I like it or not, but the explanation made sense, so I have added it to my routine, and we'll see how well we do...

The first picture shows the basic setup. Very sparse for now, and all I have are some inverts, Malaysian Trumpet Snails, tubifex et al., seen here devouring a blanched leaf of organic spinach. There are also a half dozen of Amano shrimp around.

Starting up the tank

This time I decided to build up the tank very slowly, and I will stick with the invert cultures for a while, before I add any fish. I think I may have a little plantation of Amazon swords on my hands... So far I have not yet attempted water changes on the new tank, but I'm monitoring water conditions on a weekly basis. The wisteria in a terracotta pot is an experiment, for in the pot is some garden soil, covered with some gravel from the previous aquarium, thus providing a starter culture for healthy bacteria growth, and combining that with my very slow path of adding occupants to the tank, there will never be an opportunity for the dreaded "new tank syndrome." So far Ammonia and Nitrates consistently read zero, and nitrates and phosphates are not an issue, vindicating this slow buildup of the water conditions.
The AAP article on aquarium cycling is here, and is one of the best resources you can find. 

The only plants I have right now are easy ones that do not need a lot of light, and I use some Seachem Excel as well as a few Flourish tabs to help things along. In all, I am trying to keep PH at 6.8-7.0, and KH and GH between 100-200 ppm. Clearly, the Amazon swords are doing really well. Soon I will have a little plantation going on. All of which is fine by me, at this stage of the tank all I want is a few plants, just to grow a natural environment, and then in a while I plan to do a proper aquascaping project, once I have CO2 and serious lighting. The most interesting thing that I will want to observe is to what extent the plants and the filter compete or complement each other. Diana Walstead does her aquariums without filtration because the plants are the filter, and with heavier planting that would be true, nevertheless in my little 5 gallon nano tank, I still tend to see some nitrates and phosphate, and now I am trying to grow some duck weed, to see if that mitigates it. I also have reduced the population a bit, since moving the Amano shrimp to the 29 Gallon tank. Clearly, establishing a healthy plant life is the next most important thing after getting the nitrogen cycle started. In the beginning I'm using some fertilizer, and with increasing biological activity in the aquarium, I should be able to reduce my reliance on fertilizer - that will be a focus of my experimentation in the future.

What is most interesting about the information from the American Aquarium Products website, is the focus on ORP, oxidation reduction potential, This makes a lot of intuitive sense, since it would indicate the health of the water, and support a healthy immune system in your fish. For human beings it is known that many healing waters have extreme negative ORP, which is the reason for the popularity in certain quarters of water electrolyzers, popularly known as ionizers, to produce Electrolyzed Reduced Water (ERW). Clearly, the nitrogen cycle would cause a shift towards lower ORP, and thus healthier water. At some point I am planning to look into this more deeply.