Could'nt Get My Fish Today!

[whitefish]

Hi guys & girls

im new to this hobby, im a 19 yr old lad and have just purchased my first tropical aquarium. I brought myself the elite 95 tank (95 ltrs) and now have it set up in my living room!
I went down to the japanese koi karp in henlow, beds to get my fish and took my water sample being a newby but my nitrate wasnt settled yet so i was unable to purchase my fish today! not a problem he only said it'll take a couple of days to settle! so hopefully ill be returning friday to get the fish without any problems.

anybody else had this problem?
how long did it take for you guys to get your first fish?
what first fish did you get?
whos got the elite 95 tank & how many fish & what fish do you have in it?

Happy fishing guys
Jack

 

[Sofia]

Are you going to stock your tank with koi's?
Or is it going to be a tropical tank and that just happens to be the name of the shop?!

 

[waterdrop]

Hi whitefish and welcome to TFF!

It might be a lucky thing you couldn't get fish right away. Its often very misunderstood and misrepresented that fish can go into a tank in a short period of time. You've stumbled across a real hobbyist forum and although much of the advice you'll no doubt get at first will seem weird, it will probably be very good advice, so I'd take a pause from your plans and begin reading the Beginners Resource Center and chatting here in your thread in the beginner section before going out and getting fish.

It generally takes about 2 months (or a little less if you're lucky!) before the filtration equipment in a new freshwater tank is ready to support fish. The LFS's of course can't sustain much business if they give out that kind of info, so its mostly only from hobbyists that you'll find out this straight story.

The problem is caused by the small size of an aquarium (compared to a natural body of water) and the various waste products of the living things in it. When fish respire by moving water through their gills, they give off a lot of ammonia, in addition to CO2. That ammonia, combined with fish waste, excess fish food and plant debris will quickly cause a tank to have an ammonia concentration above the 0.25ppm level that's pretty much the limit beyond which fish will sustain permanent gill damage, shortened lives and possible death.

Aquarists do a pretty arcane thing of "growing" a "biofilter" by monitoring and encouraging a couple of specific species of bacteria to colonize the sponges and other biomedia of their filter. It generally takes between one and two months to do this, assuming you've been given the information of how to do it. That's what goes on a lot in this beginner's forum.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the forum Whitefish.
I agree with everything that WD has said but must add to it. A 95 litre, about 25 US gallons, tank is too small to keep koi in. Koi are very large fish and should not be kept in such small quarters. Even when the tank you have has been cycled, something both WD and I often help people get right, your tank should be the home of some smaller species instead.

 

[whitefish]

Are you going to stock your tank with koi's?
Or is it going to be a tropical tank and that just happens to be the name of the shop?!

tropical fish! koi is the name of the shop

Welcome to the forum Whitefish.
I agree with everything that WD has said but must add to it. A 95 litre, about 25 US gallons, tank is too small to keep koi in. Koi are very large fish and should not be kept in such small quarters. Even when the tank you have has been cycled, something both WD and I often help people get right, your tank should be the home of some smaller species instead.

im not getting koi, its just the name of the shop!

 

[OldMan47]

OK, no koi.

The main thrust of WD's post was that you really don't want any fish right now. If you take the time to properly develop the filter all it really takes is some time and patience. Over the period of a month to 6 weeks you add a total of a few ounces of ammonia to the tank and you take a lot of measurements to monitor how things are going and adjust the amount of ammonia that you add. At the end, you do a huge water change and add in your fish. The other alternative, and where you almost went, is to get fish early on. When you do that you also have to go through the same month to 6 weeks of cycling the tank. The fish add the ammonia at whatever rate they happen to produce it. You still do lots of monitoring but this monitoring allows you to know how much water to change every day. That amount will likely be in the range of 30 to 75 litres each day and on some days you will change water twice. At the other end of your time, you will have a cycled tank using either method but, if you did a fish-in cycle, you will not be able to add the rest of your fish right away. Instead, you will be able to add a small number of fish at a time while continuing to do lots of testing in case the filter can't handle the added biological load.

 

[Sofia]

I had a 20 litre as my first tank, a good size i think my stocking list ....if I remember correctly was:
1 Male blue gourami
1 male pinapple swordtail
3 female swordtails
1 male guppy
2 female guppy's

I'm thinking of getting a 20 gallon tank again and making it a live bearer tank, i really loved my swordtail..he lived to a ripe old age!

You're restricted to smaller fish with a 20 gallon, perhaps you could get a shoal of small tetras like some harlequins to make your tank look active?

Just to add that the general fish keeping rule is 1 inch of fish per gallon that is fully grown. So if you buy a fish that grows to 2 inches you can keep 10 of them in the tank. However some fish are mre active than others and need loads of room to swim ...basically do your research-there's loads of pinned articles about fish stocking on the forum and use your common sense!