Hello From Australia!

[Wilcey]

Hello Everyone!

My name is James, I am a 16 year old currently attending High School and live in the Hunter Valley region of NSW, Australia.

I have had a fascination of fish for as long as I can remember, and decided now would be a good time to start looking at becoming a proud carer of the little dudes as I am now mature enough to look after them.

In December I purchased a 3 foot x 14 inch x 24 inch tank with cabinet, hood, light, filter and all that other good stuff.

I decided I would do a fishless cycle with the aid of a chemical starter, and did that for a period of about 3 weeks. Also during this time I introduced some plant life, a fine grassy type plant, a reedy plant, and as an experiment I submerged 2 lucky bamboo plants as an experiment which for some reason seem to be doing better than the other ones! However at some point during this phase my aquarium seemed to undergo a break out of "Green Dust Algae" and LOADS of snails. I am currently managing this as best I can, but I still am concerned due to my lack of experience in the area.

Today I introduced 4 fish into my Tropical Fresh Water environment, 2 Guppy's and 2 Mollie's. They seem to be swimming and smiling nicely despite the Algae!
Photo of my two faves at: http/wilceysfish.h...es/IMG_5531.JPG Noobie question, what breeds are the fish in the photo? I cant remember which is which! haha

I hope to learn very much from this forum, share my experiences with you all and eventually return the favour to the community!

Thanks!

James

 

[techen]

Hi james and welcome to the forums. I expect you have a testing kit to make sure you're cycle was finished before adding fish? What plants do you have as sticking any plant into the tank sadly does not work. We also need the light type and wattage to give you an idea of what sort of plants you can have. Lasty limit the time your lights are on for. The more time there on the more algae issues you will face. I suggest 8 hours a day.

And once snails start breeding its almost impossible to stop.

 

[Baccus]

G'Day James

Welcome

to the forum
As Techen said its going to be an uphill battle with snails. You could use products like Snail Rid but I have not had any luck with these type products and if you later want to have shrimp or even some of our wonderful native snails they too will more than likely die from residual snail kill chemical. I would suggest at night cutting a carrot length ways and putting it in the tank, the next morning the carrot should be well covered with snails. Just wipe the snails off and keep putting the carrot back in until their is almost no carrot left or its gone all soft. Keep this up and evenaully you will get the snails under some sort of control. If the snails are small or young then even dwarf chain loaches will make a good dint in snail populations. Over feeding is usually blamed as the culprit for snail population explosions but I find just having live plants is enough to keep snails multiplying. I would suggest going the carrot trick and then investing in a snail type that you want like mystery snail (introduced) or something like our native Waterhouse snail to eat the excess foods and out compete the pest snails.

In the photo you have a nice female guppy and what looks like a grass or snakeskin type guppy. If they came from a pet shop where the female has had contact with any other males you will end up with a mish mash of colours, in offspring which can be interesting and fun. The only way to be certain of which guppy strain you have is to buy from a specialised breeder.

 

[Wilcey]

Thank you Techen and Baccus!

According the the testing kit the ammonia level was at zero and all the other levels such as pH seemed to also be fine.

I think i'm going to have to remove the plants currently in there sooner or later because they do seem to be struggling. As far as the light goes, I have a combined white and blue LED light, I tend to leave it just on the white lights which is 2 x 9.36 W. The blue strip is also 9.36 W. My lights are currently set to a timer of 7 hours. There is usually plenty of ambient light in the room also.

I'll try using the carrot for the next couple of weeks from tonight. Hopefully this will work, because they are breeding like rabbits!

So its day 2 and I've already noticed something strange, last night as I was going to bed, I noticed both of my guppies and one of my mollies were sleeping nicely just above the bottom of my tank. However my Black female Mollie was still being very active, after spending most of the day in a corner next to the water heater. This morning when I woke up I found her resting just above the gravel next to a plant with her male "partner" staying near her. Since then the male has left, however the female is still resting, and has only moved to the back of the plant from where she was at the side. Any ideas what this could be? Is she sick? Or is it Pregnancy?

Thank you all very much for being so helpful and welcoming! I really appreciate it!

 

[Zikofski]

hello i am moving to australia soon WOO