Fintro

[Hawkins]

rutland waters thats were thy fly fish ant it hawkins lol

yeah they get in the way

 

[Ian H]

i can understand why you should quarantine fish but i havnt for years and its been fine. Had the odd outbreak of ich once or twice but no tank wipe outs so i wouldnt say you learn early on. Personally i dont see the point in the fintro as its just a bit lazy really!

 

[Tolak]

Sounds like an answer looking for a problem to me. If you don't have a knife in your house eating dinner gets rough at times.

 

[Bignose]

Bignose about the q tank how much would you clean it out each day if you didn't have a filter? 50% Also i don't have a spare heater and can't buy one as i've run out of money and my dad won't buy me one. I could put in some decorations not gravel though. Also what kind of plastic container. Minimum size. Also could you just put in in the tank and let it float like i did with my fry which are now in a breeder net. (Nearly a week old how sweet lol). Also if i did convince my dad to buy a heater how many watts? Wouldn't they get stressed in their? When its christmas i'm gonna buy a q tank from pets at home.

So long as you use water from the same source and same temp, you can do 100% water changes if need be. Water from the same source should have matching pH and hardness. So long as you match pH, temp, and hardness, there is no harm in doing as large a water change as you want.

Perhaps instead of having your dad buy you new fish, apply that same money to a small heater. The size heater would be based on the size Q tank. Otherwise, just get a heater for something like a 20 gallon. It would be enough to keep your show tank close to temp in case its heater breaks and probably be enough to keep almost any size Q tank at temp.

The fish are stressed from the move from LFS to your house anyway. Just keep the tank dark and away from other people/animals and the fish will be fine.

Like I said, you are taking a risk if you just put fish into your show tank. But, it is how I've kept my tank disease free for almost 4 years now. And, the Q-tank has paid off. I bought a few juvenile tiger barbs to help fill out a shoal that lost a few members (old age) and put them into a Q tank. They must have had ich from the store, because they developed ich, and unfortunately I didn't catch it early enough and they died. But, my show tank didn't get ich. Only 3 fish died instead of 40 something. Well worth the few $ it cost to have a Q tank on hand.

 

[Spishkey]

terribly sorry if this has been answered but ive only skimmed through the first page (am a little ill and cant sit up for long periods of time lol!)

can anyone tell me - where does the water from the bag (from the lfs) go? does it go in your tank?

ive always been taught not to put the water from the lfs in your tank for fear of transferring infected water??

 

[raptorrex]

terribly sorry if this has been answered but ive only skimmed through the first page (am a little ill and cant sit up for long periods of time lol!)

can anyone tell me - where does the water from the bag (from the lfs) go? does it go in your tank?

ive always been taught not to put the water from the lfs in your tank for fear of transferring infected water??

Really? How do you achieve that without stressing the fish, even more, by taking it out of water? .

 

[oakes]

terribly sorry if this has been answered but ive only skimmed through the first page (am a little ill and cant sit up for long periods of time lol!)
That's ok, you don't have to be ill to find it taxing sorting out the wheat from the chaff.

can anyone tell me - where does the water from the bag (from the lfs) go? does it go in your tank?
Yea, when the container sinks.

ive always been taught not to put the water from the lfs in your tank for fear of transferring infected water??
Most references recommend this as good practice, shop water can contain a multitude of nasty or just nuisance organisms, though i agree that parasites are more likely to be transferred from infected fish than water.

On the other hand if you have a quarantine tank, which i agree is definitely best practice, you can just dump the whole lot in, cure any diseases that occur, and then tell everyone how your little Q tank saved you from catastrophe.

Really? How do you achieve that without stressing the fish, even more, by taking it out of water? .

Serious? The way shop assistants in the LFS go about catching the fish in the first place, now that's stressful (for me almost as much as the fish!)

Please note, all the above written with a high degree of cynicism and tongue firmly planted in cheek. It's late here too!

 

[puppyjess123]

At christmas i'll buy them cute little hexagonal tanks and use that but for now i'll take the risk. My dad doesn't think he'll be able to pay the electricity bill lol any advise on saving electricity?

 

[raptorrex]

At christmas i'll buy them cute little hexagonal tanks and use that but for now i'll take the risk. My dad doesn't think he'll be able to pay the electricity bill lol any advise on saving electricity?

keep cold water fish

 

[andywg]

So anyhow -an ideal way to introduce fish to your tank-stressfree too.

Maybe. Maybe not. There is a hypothesis that just dumping the fish straight in is best as the water in the bag has a higher CO2 content driving the pH down and thus putting the ammonia-ammonium balance further towards more ammonium and thus less dangerous to the fish. Once the bag is opened the CO2 gasses off and the ammonia-ammonium balance adjusts and suddenly your fish is exposed to far more ammonia than it would have been if it had just been dumped.

Bignose has posted research and others seem to have similar experience that pH shock isn't a major problem so much as hardness shock so a change in pH isn't too much of a problem so long as the hardness is similar. Similarly, a temperature change of a degree or two won't cause major issues either.

Obviously the dump the fish straight in will have more support on fish that are shipped and so have spent longer in their bag than a quick 10 minute run back from an lfs, though if the lfs is that close there is a fair chance the water is of similar parameters as your tap and the temp won't have dropped so just dumping them could still work.

 

[Piltdownpaul]

 

[Tolak]

At christmas i'll buy them cute little hexagonal tanks and use that but for now i'll take the risk. My dad doesn't think he'll be able to pay the electricity bill lol any advise on saving electricity?

Unplug the tree. It will use more electricity than a small heater in a hex tank. I usually keep my fish room closed up to conserve heat/electricity, long ago I tried leaving it open to check heaters. At an ambient temperature of 70-72F 1/3 of the heaters were running at any given time. I keep most tanks on the warm side, a 25w heater running 1/3 of the time might add a dollar or two to the monthly bill.