Fairly New To Forum

[lkpolovchik]

Hi, I found this fish forum when I was recently looking for answers to questions in regards to baby fish. I did eventually figure out with help who the mother of the babies was. Unfortunately, after having three broods, my female swordtail passed away yesterday morning. I do however have some nice little ones swimming around in my 55 gallon tank. I have had fish in this tank for 2 years now. Beginning a new tank not knowing much was tough. I had some fish death as you can guess. Then when I got the cycle going well, I had fish that actually didn't like each other. I had Serpae eating neons and I had swortails eating fry. That was two years ago and alot of reading and trail and error. Most local fish shops aren't much help. I have read what was posted about tankless cycling. Two years ago, I came across something called Fritz-Zyme #7 and another chemical called EasyBalance. The Fritz-Zyme stuff did help me get the "cycle" going well, but I had another problem. It was and still is alkalinity. That's where the Easy Balance came in. I have well water that is softened through a water softener, but that's not truly soft water in every sense. My general hardness was perfect, but the carbonate hardness was the problem. My normal water ph out of my spigot is 7.6, which is ideal for my swimming pool, but not so good for a community tank. I had to patiently lower the ph to break the "alkalinity" hold on it then keep it there with the Easy Balance. That stuff keeps my ph good for months. Otherwise, each time I add water to replace the evaporated water, I was raising my ph up again, but luckily not adding deadly cholorine. After a while, I realized that most of the stuff fish shops are selling is directed more for people who have public water with chlorine in it and for water that is more acidic. I am the exact opposite. Within a month of using these two things, I had fish living and getting along with each other. After 3 months, I had Rainbows: Bosmoni, Red Iran and Turquise looking so beautiful that I couldn't believe it. Now, it's two years later and my Rainbows are very large as well as my Congo Tetras. I am starting to think that sooner or later these large fish will die of old age and I want to introduce more of the same into the tank, but they are quite bossy at this point. I've not had luck getting new fish of the same kind to survive in this tank, simply because they are either attacked or starved by the larger fish. The larger Rainbows are male and the two Austrailian Rainbows look female. The Bosmoni that is left is female, her partner got stuck in a hole of a rock and wiggled himself to death while I was at work. How can I tell what sex the Congo Tetras are and how can I add more fish to this tank and have them survive?