Neon Tetras, Yellow Guppies, And ...

[kepardue]

So I've had a fish tank for a while with some goldfish, but they didn't survive the power outage of the last hurricane. Recently, I've been thinking of getting some new fish and decided to upgrade from a 10 gallon to a 20 gallon tank, filling it instead with tropical fish. Presently, 8 neon tetras, 2 yellow guppies, and three... um, don't really remember what they are as I got them several weeks ago. Pics available here, though.

I've had one casualty, one of the neon Tetras, which I found in the intake for the filter. First question is should the air stone strip be located directly under the filter? I was thinking maybe that the upward force of the bubbles may have encouraged the tetra into the filter intake where it got stuck? Second question is that if I wanted a little less bubbling in my tank could I just get an airstone to attach to another ornament? Would that create enough oxygen for the entire tank?

When I turn the light on in the morning, the tetras all seem to be dull colored and almost lethargic at the bottom of the tank, but seem to perk up pretty quickly. I noticed that two of them keep swimming to the top of the tank and then back down to the bottom. Normal? The tetras *mostly* school together, which is really what i like to see. There seem to be a couple that kinda stay off on their own, though.

One of the yellow guppies seems to like to swim at the very top of the tank. I'm not sure if it's sick or not, it seems to be moving around pretty well when encouraged. I read tonight that yellow guppies worked best in groups of about 5 or so. I got two because that's all that the pet store had. I'd consider getting a couple more, but I don't want to overcrowd my tank.

Lastly, is decorations. As I asked before, I'm thinking about putting an air stone in a decoration to sit at the bottom. Specifically, this one looks really neat (small sized), along with this. Along with perhaps a few other minor stones in the bottom, do you guys think that would make for adequate hiding spaces for the little guys?

One thing that I have noticed is that the gravel that I have in various shades of blue and teal seem to hide the tetras' vibrant colors. Is there a decoration strategy that people have used to really bring out the colors of the tetras? The background panel perhaps?

Thanks!

 

[kepardue]

Well, guess that answers my question about the yellow guppie. Just a few minutes later I noticed the little fella bobbing in the water and falling to the bottom of the tank. He's still alive, but I'm pretty sure he's not going to make it. I read somewhere that adding a lot of fish to a tank would cause an ammonia spike, I noticed the ammonia pretty high earlier today, I guess that's what happened. Hopefully things will adjust before the same fate befalls the rest of them.

 

[fatheadminnow]

First of all, have you cycled your tank?

The sir stone can be placed where ever you want it to be placed, and is not likely that it encouraged the tetra to get stuck in the filter intake.

Black/dark substrate and background REALLY brings out the fishes colors.

I have all black substrate and background.

But the main question to you, is sis you CYCLE your tank?

-FHM

 

[DaveyG]

Well, guess that answers my question about the yellow guppie. Just a few minutes later I noticed the little fella bobbing in the water and falling to the bottom of the tank. He's still alive, but I'm pretty sure he's not going to make it. I read somewhere that adding a lot of fish to a tank would cause an ammonia spike, I noticed the ammonia pretty high earlier today, I guess that's what happened. Hopefully things will adjust before the same fate befalls the rest of them.

It sounds like the ammonia is the culprit then!

I would do a water change if possible to help get it back down to save the other fish. Also I wouldn't feed them for a day or 2.

How many did you add at once?

 

[lilfishie]

also the fish you don't remember are Harliquin's and either one is a little piggy and eats all the food, or is quite i'll (bloated)

as said to a water change to bring the ammonia down, even a reading of 0.5 is too much, do a water change, then retest after an hour

 

[kepardue]

Thanks so much for the advice. I'm afraid I did perhaps jump in a little prematurely, and hadn't really educated myself about cycling. That said, a good portion of the water in the new 20 gallon tank came from the old 10 gallon tank, where there were 3 neon tetras and 3 harlequins that had been established for probably around 3 months or so. Hopefully that will have jumpstarted the process, but I did add 6 tetras and 2 yellow guppies at once. I find it unfortunate that the pet store didn't advise me better when I bought so many at once.

Thanks for the advice on the substrate and background. The substrate I'll probably deal with as is, but the background I'll look for something dark to help set off the fish's colors.

I'll also do a water change as soon as I can today to help reduce the stress on the fish. The ammonia level was high, somewhere between .5 and .75.

Definitely lesson learned. All hopes that the rest of the fish survive, and if so I'm definitely going to wait 4-6 weeks before trying to add a companion or two for the lone yellow guppie that's left.

 

[lilfishie]

do you still have the 20 gal, if you do, just cut part of the filter sponge and add it to the 10 gal, that should really help with the cycle

 

[waterdrop]

Hi kepardue and welcome to TFF!

I'm confused. Did you transfer the filter from the old 10g to the new 20g? Are you running both the old filter and the new filter on the new 20g?

If not then you are probably in a serious "Fish-In" cycling situation, as the others above are worried about. The water in the pictures looks cloudy, which might indicate a bacterial bloom related to the newness of the tank situation.

In a "fish-in" cycling situation and any time you have detectable ammonia or nitrite(NO2) in the water, your actions need to be pretty strong and definate. Ideally, you should have a good liquid-reagent-based water test kit. Do you have one of these? You need the ammonia and nitrite(NO2) tests it contains to know how bad the situation is.

If you haven't got a liquid kit yet and you haven't got the old filter then I'd start with 50% daily water changes. Use conditioner (the product that removed chlorine and chloramine) and rough temperature matching.

Once you get the kit you should post up your tap and tank parameters (ammonia, nitrite(NO2), pH, nitrate(NO3)) here in your thread for the members to see. When a filter is not cycled you need to manually do water changes to keep both ammonia and nitrite(NO2) below 0.25ppm at all times. You want to adjust your water change percentage and frequency based on whether or not either toxin has gone over the 0.25ppm since the last time you water-changed. Your goal is that 0.25ppm should be the max either reaches by the time you are home and able to do another water change, otherwise you changed too little water last time or you need to change water more often.

Looking forward to hearing how its going...

~~waterdrop~~

 

[kepardue]

So far the fish seem to be hanging in there, but but the ammonia levels are still way too high. I'm at work at the moment, but the levels are somewhere between 1.0 and 1.5 at my best judgment. Right now all I have are dip strips for testing, but I've read here and elsewhere that these are terribly inaccurate. I'm probably going to run by the pet store on the way home this afternoon and pick up a liquid test kit.

I kept probably somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of the water from the old tank to put in the new one. So I'm guessing somewhere between 3-5 gallons of the 20 gallons are old water. I didn't continue using the old filter, BUT I do still have it. I hadn't considered using it in addition to the new one for a while. That'll be my first action when I get home this evening.

The water has actually cleared up significantly as of yesterday afternoon.

Thanks so much for the welcome, and to all for the advice.

EDITED: to add that I did change 25% water last night. I'll change 50% tonight pending looking at the ammonia levels again.

 

[waterdrop]

Your water changes are too conservative. Once ammonia or nitrite(NO2) get above 0.25ppm then this fact becomes the major source of stress and threat to survival for the fish. By comparison, limiting water change percentages to things like 25 or 30% is a technique that is concerned about more subtle things associated with maintenance of a normal healthy aquarium. In your situation you should be changing 50% minimum and of course the kit is a top priority.

For the kits, many of us, including myself, like and use the API Freshwater Master Test Kit although the Nutrafin Mini-Master Test Kit is also good.

Once you get the kit you'll be able to adjust the percentage and frequency of your water changes. A typical scenerio for people is to only have opportunities for water changes once in the morning and once in the evening, about 12 hours apart. (Even at that, its a killer doing a water change before work in the morning, I'd say!) You goal in that scenerio is that when you next get a chance to test, if you find the either ammonia or nitrite(NO2) has risen above 0.25ppm then you need to increase something (percentage or frequency or some of both.) You want it so that after you water change, those two chemicals seem as close to zero as possible when you test 20min later and then when you come back 12 hours later, say, that they havn't risen above the 0.25ppm.

If the biomedia of the old filter did not completely dry out, you can try inserting some of it somewhere in your new filter. If it dried out there's no point.

~~waterdrop~~