Hello - 8 Weeks In

[damwee]

I got a a Fluval tank 90L, Fluval U2 filter and 1 plant. I started with 3 fish 2 peppered corys and 1 Platy(Of course the pet shop didn't tell me about fishless cycling!!)

My Platy died 2 days later. The cat fish soldiered on for a couple of weeks until one died leaving only one. He made it until my water tests came good(pets at home have been testing the water for me).

My water went cloudy and overnight has gone crystal clear. I got loads of algae at this point

So now my tank was cycled i bought another cat fish, 2 Guppys and a loach.

My loach has cleared the tank of all its algae(in a couple of days).

Is he now gonna starve???
Has he eaten the cat fishes food source too???
Im waiting on my API test kit to arrive from ebay, but on my last test just after i added my 4 new fish the Amonia was almost zero, but the nitrite was 0.50 ppm
Is this why my guppy died, the other one is fine. I've done a 10% water change before he died. And since then another 20%

So what do you guys think?

Cheers, Dan

 

[waterdrop]

Hi Dan,

With a new tank, prior to having a good test kit, you need to assume you are still in a "Fish-In" cycling situation. The goal in fish-in cycling is to be a detective and figure out the percentage and frequency of water changes that will always keep both ammonia and nitrite below the 0.25ppm (yes, that a quarter of one part per million!) before you can test and potentially perform yet another water change.

Prior to having a kit to perform these tests, you can move in the safe direction by performing rather large (50 to 75%) water changes on a daily or every other day basis. You have to use good water changing technique when you do these, using conditioner (to remove chlorine/chloramine) at at least the recommended dosing (or 1.5x would be better) and roughly temperature matching (using your hand is good enough.)

When you get your test kit, be sure to post up both your tap water and tank water results for the members to see and comment on.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[damwee]

Cheers water drop. I'm glad I'm already doing alot of what you have already said. I hand test the water temp, i use conditioner. i will have the test by Friday i hope.

On the water changes, on the packet it give how much dose to use for 38L. That fine for filling an aquarium but when your doing 15 litres are you supposed to get on your calculator and divide it down to 12 litres or just does it with enough for the entire tank(thats what i've been doing)?

 

[waterdrop]

When filling with buckets you only need to treat the bucket volume. When filling the tank directly you need to dose conditioner for the tank volume, even if its only a percentage fill. With new tanks its a good idea to dose conditioner at 1.5x or 2x the indicated amount in the instructions, but not more than 2x. The bacterial colonies are young or non-existant yet and could be killed by the overdosing of chlorination products that the water authorities use in unpredictable amounts. After your tank is 6 months or a year old, these guidelines can be reconsidered.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[mayurkirti]

He made it until my water tests came good(pets at home have been testing the water for me).

What does this mean? is there a pet shop with that name? or do you have pets who can do water tests for you? If its the latter, I want to know what pet can do that. I want one too.

 

[waterdrop]

Pets@Home is the name of a bigbox pet chain in the UK I believe.

 

[JenCliBee]

Pets@Home is the name of a bigbox pet chain in the UK I believe.

waterdrop is correct a big chain with a very bad reputation

 

[arobinson1984]

Yes, you are correct waterdrop, Pets at home is probably the largest chain of pet stores in the UK, many of which get a bad reputation though.

I dont personally use pets at home as they are a general pet store, I much prefer using dedicated fish stores.

Do you have pet smart in the USA? if so then pets at home to us is what pets smart is the the USA

Andy

 

[waterdrop]

Lately most of the USA shopping centers I've seen have had either a PetSmart or a PetCo if they have a bigbox pet chain store. The PetSmarts seem considerably better than the PetCo ones at least in the fish dept. There have been some articles detailing PetSmarts efforts at doing their own large distribution centers for fish, with considerable holding tank capacities and efforts at keeping the stock healthy.

[In the end of course you really just have to browse all these places, both the chains and the independents, and watch for the odd happening here and there when things look ok to buy. There is a pay-off to regular cruising of all your places in range I thing, if you can make yourself do it. Its still often very convenient to be able to obtain things directly, rather than having them always shipped.]

~~waterdrop~~

 

[damwee]

My water test kit should be here by friday, so i wont be going back to Pets at home(superstore).

I've taken everything on board but some questions still stand:

My loach has cleared the tank of all its algae(in a couple of days).

Is he now gonna starve???
Has he eaten the cat fishes food source too???

cheers, Dan

 

[waterdrop]

I do not know the best advice for feeding the various types of loaches and catfish, so will leave this to others. Its unlikely that you'll have a feeding situation that will be a problem. I believe there are various types of sinking wafers, both vegatable and others, that are used with some of these fish.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[OldMan47]

I am guessing that a sucking loach is probably what we might call an algae eater here in the US, WD. The question is a good one to my mind. I would start feeding the fish some algae wafers. Unless you have a very large fish, one wafer a day near lights out would be plenty of food for him. I suggest near lights out because the algae eating fish will continue to look for food in the dark and won't need to compete for their food as much if the other fish don't see it. I use spirulina "sticks" and algae wafers to feed my 3 small bristle nose plecostomus and they are thriving in my large grow-out tank. The tank has a little algae of a type that they don't care for, but when I fed the spirulina with the tank lights on, the mollies in the tank went crazy for it and my plecs didn't get any.

 

[waterdrop]

I am guessing that a sucking loach is probably what we might call an algae eater here in the US, WD. The question is a good one to my mind. I would start feeding the fish some algae wafers. Unless you have a very large fish, one wafer a day near lights out would be plenty of food for him. I suggest near lights out because the algae eating fish will continue to look for food in the dark and won't need to compete for their food as much if the other fish don't see it. I use spirulina "sticks" and algae wafers to feed my 3 small bristle nose plecostomus and they are thriving in my large grow-out tank. The tank has a little algae of a type that they don't care for, but when I fed the spirulina with the tank lights on, the mollies in the tank went crazy for it and my plecs didn't get any.

Is -that- why they're always going on about sucking loaches? Those blokes need to stir out of the old country and get their terminology updated.

 

[Gilli]

Your loach and cat fish will also eat flake food and any frozen live foods, but also drop in some algae wafers at night when the tank lights are off - you have to supliment their diets they cant live just on algae that grows in the tank.