Lily Rose Tank No. 2

[waterdrop]

if you have female livebearers you have fry, or you are a day before fry, there's usually no getting around it! Congrats - its really fun for the kids. Won't take long before they max you tank bioload! WD

 

[LilyRose Tank]

Planning on getting a fry tank, whats the smallest I can get away with?

 

[waterdrop]

well, you know the drill, the smaller you go the harder you make it on yourself usually -- do you already have a quarantine/hospital tank running?

 

[LilyRose Tank]

well, you know the drill, the smaller you go the harder you make it on yourself usually -- do you already have a quarantine/hospital tank running?

No I Don't. I have seen a aqua one 320 up for sale for 39.99, thinking about that....24L

Ammonia 0 nitrite was off 0 but not on .25 so did 50% water change

 

[OldMan47]

24L is a small tank even for a fry tank LilyRose. I would go with no less than 38 litres and would favor a tank twice that size to get good growth from a drop of livebearer fry. I go all the way to 55 gallons, about 200 litres, for 2 fry drops with minimal care before the fry can be sold off. That is just 2 fry drops that I save and the rest I leave in the main tank until those fry have been moved along.

 

[LilyRose Tank]

ok thans Oldman47, will have a think

this mornings results
ammomia 0
nitrites 0
nitrates 10......how high should i allow this to go before a water change?
pH 7.4
temp 24
all fish are great...........when this tank is considered cycled....how many pygmy corys could i add to say 10 platys and 2 chinese loach?

 

[waterdrop]

Agree, anything less than 10G/38L is really pretty small.

On the 90L/24G you would want to plan to stick to 24 inches of mature fish body of average shape (fins don't count) as the guideline for the first year and a half or so. This helps to ensure beginner success, after which you could consider what sort of "overfiltration" you might want to do if you wanted to overstock the tank - at least that would be my recommendation.

Your current 6 platies, at 3 inches (their mature size) have used up 18 of your 24.

Ten platies, at 30 inches would already be overstocking the tank.

Why the emphasis on not overstocking a tank? With an overstocked tank, sometimes all it takes is an unexpected weekend out of town when you can't do your normal weekly water change and suddently you find that you've got ammonia and nitrite in the tank and nitrates are higher than you'd like. It can happen rather quickly. Even if you do a lot of maintenance and avoid this problem it creates more stress in your life worrying about is my feeling.

To answer your question about your nitrate(NO3) level, our guideline for a window to shoot for is as follows: a max of 15 to 20ppm above whatever your tap water nitrate level is.

So if your tap water measures zero ppm NO3, then you'd want your gravel-clean-water-changes to be maintaining the nitrate(NO3) at not more than about 20ppm. If your tap water NO3 level was 10ppm then the limit you like to see would be 30ppm. If the nitrate just holds somewhere in there then your maintenance regimen is working, if it keeps creeping upward on you then that calls for more frequent cleaning or larger percentage water changes or both.

This is after cycling of course. The end of a fish-in cycle is when you can go for a week without changing water and not any traces of ammonia or nitrite showing up in your tests.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[LilyRose Tank]

hi, this evenings results are the same
ammonia 0
nitrites 0
nitrates 10
pH 7.4
temp 24

 

[LilyRose Tank]

this mornings results
ammonia 0
nitrites 0
nitrates 10

 

[LilyRose Tank]

Pepper has had 6 fry ( one eaten)

so far! x

 

[waterdrop]

I assume this is major kid entertainment?

 

[LilyRose Tank]

I assume this is major kid entertainment?

Oh yeah, been sitting round the tank all day praising Pepper. lol

http/www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUvztf_7FGg

here's a video link to one of the births unfortunately it was also the one she ate, bless. she had 22 total. 2 stillbirth, 2 eaten. x

 

[waterdrop]

Nice video, enjoyed it!

 

[LilyRose Tank]

hello there. this evenings results
ammonia o, nitrites 0 Nitrates 10 pH 7.2 temp 25

http/www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUvztf_7FGg

this is a video link of the fry in the hatchery

 

[OldMan47]

Great video you have there. I love my new fry, even after doing this stuff for over 50 years. I still remember my amazement when my own first female black molly dropped her first fry in my tank. In those days we relied far more on plants to keep our water clean than we do today, so I had lots of cover and the fry stayed in with the parents. In those days it was common to have throwbacks in a drop, fish that were more like their wild ancestors than like the parents. In a drop of black molly fry, you might get 5 to 10% of the fry with the "green" color instead of the solid black. There is no such thing as a wild black molly, they are purely a domestic strain. The wilds seldom have any dark color on them, and then it is only a spot or two. The solid blacks we see today are highly developed in terms of the amount of breeder effort that went into creating them.