Correct Water? Help Guys

[maverick08]

i have a 90l tetra tank with the standard tricle filter. i have a mini air pump and 5 real plants. my fish are 4 neons, 2 black mollies, 2 plattys, and an otto sucker and 2 tiger barbs which 1 seems to have lost a bit of colour. the mollies spend a lot of time around the top and the plattys on the bottom and resting on the plants. the neons are perfect, i hope. have i got a water problem. i use 1 pipette of king british sate guard and same with safe water in a 10l water change. is this all sound normal. im new too all this so all the advise i can get will be great

 

[kim03333]

hello and welcome. first of all do you have a water test kit? if so can you post the results on here? make sure you test at least for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and ph. you can also test for water hardness (gh and kh) and minerals, but these are not as important. if you don't hae a test kit then you need to get one. don't get strips. i made that mistake and they're no good. 5 in 1 but they are inaccurate and don't test for ammonia. get a liquid test api or nutrafin best brands.

for the water changes, different people reccommend different amounts of water and some people suggest more frequently than others. for you, it will depend on the stats of your water (as i'm assuming your tank is fairly new and i'm eering on the side of caution as i don't know water stats). eg if you have high ammonia, nitrite or nitrate, you will do a large water change and then may need to repeat about 12 hours later after testing to see what the new levels are. assuming water is fine and is stable because the tank is cycled, water changes are less critical but about 25 % once a week works well for me. it also is good for the plants as well as fish. also when you do a water change, you only really need to add a dechlorinator. is your tank cycled? and if so how did you cycle it? ppl will advise you better if they know the situation of the tank

finally, i don't know anything about plattys, ottos, mollys, but increse tiger barb numbers to at least 5, they are shoaling fish and prefer to be in a group. so do neons, although you may get away with 4. someone else will advise you better on this.

hope this is not too long winded and makes sense. hope it helps.

 

[waterdrop]

Welcome to TFF!

Excellent advice from kim. Liquid-reagent based test kit like API or Nutrafin is definately the first step. The only thing I would modify a bit would be the advice about fish - I don't think you should add any fish until your water chemistry is well known and we know how well the tank is cycled. Let us know the purpose of the chemicals you mentioned and probably don't use them until further advice can be given.

If we find you are in what we call a "Fish-In" cycling situation, which is highly likely from your description, then the new test kit and some new water change skills, as kim has begun to describe, will come into play quickly. The behaviour of your fish could easily be caused by ammonia and nitrite poisoning.

Ammonia burns the gills and causes permanent damage, even in small amounts. Nitrite (NO2) causes the fish to suffocate, because the nitrite takes up position where the oxygen should be on the fish blood hemoglobin. The "cycling" we are mentioning is the way we build a filter that can take away this ammonia and nitrite poisoning.

At some point here, perhaps after you get your test kit, you'll want to start up a thread in the "New to the Hobby" section and tell us clearly all your tank specs and tap and tank water test results and start asking questions. Also, it helps for various answers that might depend on geography if you put your town,country or similar in your new profile.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the forums. I hope youn have some more success with your fish than many new fishkeepers have. There is a link in my signature to fish-in cycling that will get you on the right path if you reaqd through the thread and follow the advice. As WD said, most of us hang out in the newbie forum and wil answer typical questions that new fish keepers have fairly quickly. I will repeat what others have already said, if you don't already have one, get a liquid reagent based test kit so we can trust readings you give us and thus be able to give appropriate advice.