It's All Going Too Smoothly

[PeterCaulf]

Hi everyone. What a useful site this is for a newby like me. I have a 70L Juwel aquarium with their own built-in filtration system that includes a carbon removal filter, Nitrate removal filter and several other coarse and fine sponges.

I initially set up the tank with treated tap water, plants and substrate and left it for four weeks before adding fish.

I started with five male guppies and after a couple of weeks added four corys. I followed this a week later with a small shoal of Neons.

The water reading are perfect except for hardness (It's a bit high) and PH (Also a bit high). I understand that when I get the water hardness down, the PH should come down to a better level too.

Juwel state that with their filtration system, water changes can be extended to FOUR weeks!! I'm not sure I trust that advice and I'm changing 10 - 15% about every 10 days. (your comments appreciated)

The fish appear healthy and happy.

So here's my question - what the heck am I doing wrong?? Reading the forum it seems that keeping tropical fish is a delicate balancing act, but it's been such plain sailing that I'm getting worried. Am I missing something?

Cheers
Pete (A newby but a 58 year old codger at the same time!)

 

[5teady_2012]

I got juwel filter systems and i do a 20% waterchange every week..

 

[lovemyfraggies]

Enjoy your Fish!

 

[scooterchick]

it's the calm before the storm!

In all seriousness, like the above poster says enjoy your fish, however a couple of points. Reading between the lines I suspect you cycled your tank using the feed the tank method, add some food to. While this goes someway to cycling the tank it doesn't go the full way so your tank is probably still cycling. You're also a little over capacity and none of your fish are particularly hardy so you MIGHT start seeing some signs of stress in the next couple of weeks.

Keep up with the water changes, try and do a change a couple of times a week, and get a test kit so you can check for amonia, nitrite and nitrate. Fingers crossed but with regular water changes there's no reason your fish shouldn't continue to be happy and healthy!

Welcome to the forums!

 

[PeterCaulf]

Thanks for your advice. I've lost a couple of Tetra, but all the others are doing fine.............. so far!

 

[waterdrop]

lol, probably the fact that you're in your 50's is one of the good things you've got going for you! It might mean you are more likely to be methodical about actually doing the things that need doing. That's what maintaining an environment needs!

Of course you can read, and probably have, all the good articles up in the pinned positions that serve as good introductions. One thing I've found that is curious though is that it is very easy to read these basic things and think you've "got it." However if you are fairly regular about reading the advice that all these experienced people are giving to the newcomers, you will find perhaps, as I did, that there is a bit more to learn sometimes. The experienced people have much more of a feel of what to do given various symptoms. For instance, it took reading quite a few of the helper threads for me to realize more the core importance of water changes in resolving various imbalances people get into, case in point being your own situation where I'll bet the water changes you luckily had the intuition to do were probably a big help! Anyway, hope you get a chance and enjoy the reading, it really can be quite fascinating.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[rdd1952]

Hello and welcome to the forum.

As mentioned, enjoy the fact that you haven't had any problems although you did say you lost a couple tetras. Do you know what caused that? You mentioned that your hardness and pH were too high and that when you get the hardness down, the pH will come down too. Unless you are keeping very delicate fish that require low pH and hardness, I wouldn't worry about it. most tropicals can easily adapt to a pH that isn't in their optimal range. You generally get into more trouble trying to adjust the pH, GH and KH than when you just let them be. Lots of members such as CFC keep rays and other delicate fish in the high pH, hard water in and around London.