After disasters....What fish next?

[beginner-stressing]

I am pretty new to all this so excuse my ignorance!

This is the story so far. I got a small tank form a friend who had given up due to moving so I began by following the books and cycling it for a month letting everything settle.

Now I was ready to add my first fish, 2 dwarf gouramis and four platys. It was going well a month later they were all well settling in, happy fish.

However I went away for a weekend and used the weekend pellets. On my way back I went to the fish shop and bought 6 neons and 2 angel fish to add to the tank.... Disaster struck and when I walked in the door I found all 4 platys dead and the water was terrible. I did a 50% water change and cleaned it out before adding the new fish but I had nowhere to put them so they went in.

The 2 gouramis were fine, but the new fish died one after the other in the space of a week.

After they were left alone the bigger male gourami chased the other until she was dead... SO I was left with one fish which I left in there for a month...

I decided to try again now the tank was settled and bought another female gourami and 2 clown loaches. The male bullied the female so i decided to take her back to avoid the same thing. The loaches are fine.

I was told on the advice of the fish shop to get somethingh to hold its own with the buly gourami so i bought 6 green tiger barbs whihch are doing fine. It all seems good now, but I have made enough bad fish choices and need some advive to maybe add 2 or 3 more fish...

Got any ideas....I think I need hardy fish that wil be suitable for a small tank....

 

[Becca]

I've had nothing but problems with the sinking pellet weekend food. I used them last week when I was on vacation and when I came home, I've had a nice ammonia spike, lost all my loaches and both of my fire eels...which were all of my scaleless fish. Fortunately the cichlids, synodontis, common pleco and the new King Tiger Pleco were just fine.

I'd sum it up to weekend food, invest in the $15 power feeder that (i believe) runs of batteries and distributes a premeasured amount of flake every so often.

 

[beginner-stressing]

Maybe I will invest in one, I don't want to go through all that again....

Any suggestions on what fish to add next?

 

[wrs]

what size is the tank?

 

[sinistral]

Sorry to hear about your losses Like wrs, I'm curious about what size your tank is. Also, when you say you cycled the tank, what method did you use?

Finally, if you're going away for the weekend, or even a full week, you could let most tropical fish fast.

 

[beginner-stressing]

It is around 50 litres 10 x 8 x24. So quite small.

 

[wrs]

you shouldnt add anything else to that at all! Especially not any angels! And no clown loaches either! They get huge and need a 70 gallon tank!

 

[sinistral]

Have you got a test kit? It would be helpful to know what your water parameters are (good tests to have would be ammonia, nitrites, pH at least).

You might also look at the post on "Avoiding and Treating New Tank Syndrome" in the pinned topics in this section. Here is a link. That should go a long way towards addressing some of the questions you have, or might have. HTH~

 

[beginner-stressing]

The guy at the shop said the clown loaches take a few years to double in size, They are only about an inch and a half at the moment...but that was on his advice. He said most of the bottom feeders tend to grow excessively. By the time they are a bit larger I will hopefully set up a bigger tank.

I get the point about angels I definitely won't be getting anymore unless I have a much larger tank.

I have a test kit and everything is fine at the moment all the levels are 0 or 0.1 and the PH is around 7.5.

 

[wrs]

did you know that thats only 8 gallons? That wil stunt the clown loaches!

 

[beginner-stressing]

I obviously got poor advice from the shop, I will have to take them back for their welfare or get a new tank that is quite a bit larger....

 

[Helium_Junkie]

I obviously got poor advice from the shop, I will have to take them back for their welfare or get a new tank that is quite a bit larger....

Shops do give bad advice 9 times outta 10. Check everything with the people here first, as the experience of KEEPING fish differs from the experience of selling fish

Could you tell us how you cycled the tank, and what kind of filter you are using?

 

[beginner-stressing]

In terms of cycling the I got some gravel from my dads tank and added some plants and put in ammonia until I got a nitrite spike and then cut it back. After this was settled I added the original Platies and dwarf gouramis which were fine until the fated weekend food....

Shall I take the loaches back? Or will they be ok for a while before I get a bigger tank?

 

[beginner-stressing]

The filter is a Elite stingray 15 underwater internal filter.

 

[Becca]

I obviously got poor advice from the shop, I will have to take them back for their welfare or get a new tank that is quite a bit larger....

Well, first off...don't beat yourself up about the bad advice from the pet shop. We all get it now and then, and those of us that are new to the hobby have no idea that most of the time these guys don't know what they're talking about. But don't lose hope, there are still good LFS out there, you just have to shop around for them. And when you find it - latch on and don't let go.

Don't stress too much about making a mistake with the size of the Clown Loaches - we all start out somewhere, and most of us have made at least a few mistakes along the way. (Some will tell you that they researched everything and didn't make a single mistake when they started, not sure I buy that though. )

Anyway, I did the same thign you've done when I first started out. I'd head up to the store and get soem fish that I thought were cute and had no idea how big they'd really get, so I'd bring them home and plop them into my tank. And then someone from the forum would kindly inform me that I've made a poor choice. Over time, it's just become habit to stock fish in the appropriate aquariums according to their adult size. Now when I see a fish in a store, instead of thinking, "Oh, how cute, they're so tiny..." I think "Ok, he's an inch now, but he's gonna get to be 7....so he's got a lot of growing to do." It becomes almost second nature.

Someone recommended checking with the forum first before making a purchase - that's not a bad idea, but if you'd prefer to do your own research, there are quite a few Fish Profile sites out there that have some good data, I recommend the following:
http/www.fishprofiles.com
http/www.fishbase.org/search.cfm

[url="http/www.elmersaquarium.com/000tropfishcareguides.htm"]http/www.elmersaquarium.com/000tropfishcareguides.htm[/URL]

Hope this helps, and good luck!