Neon Tetras

[tttnjfttt]

drip aclimation is a slower way to aclimate sensitive fish. Basically instead of pouring water into the bag, water is continually dripped in over a few hours. This is good if you have a dramatic difference in your water conditions compared to what your LFS has.

 

[bleechme]

oh. ok. But what do you mean by pour in bag? do you mean I should leave the fish in the bag I got them from and then drip my tank water into their bag?

 

[tttnjfttt]

Normally when you aclimate fish, you float the bag in your tank to get them used to the temperature, and also slowly add water into the bag, so the fish get used to your water. Drip aclimation is something that a previous poster recomended. I have never used this method, however, it may help aclimate neon tetras better since they are very sensitive.

 

[qwikimpss]

Drip acclimation is, in my opinion, the best way to acclimatize new fish. Pour the fish and store water into a bucket and take a piece of airline tubing that is long enough and create a siphon with the water going into the bucket. Tie a knot in the tubing just tight enough to reduce the flow into a moderately paced drip. about a drop every 2-3 seconds. As the bucket fills up remove some water from it every 10-15 minutes. Before you start test the tank for PH and all that happy stuff and every time you remove water from the bucket also test all the same params (as well as temp.). After about an hour the params should be the same, net the fish and introduce to your tank.

I have had incredibly good luck with this method and since I started using it about 2 years ago I have never lost a fish because of the introduction process. It takes a lot longer but is much, much better in my opinion.

 

[Nevergone815]

Neons develop a pecking order, since they are new this is probably what they are doing. Mine did this for the first few weeks and now they are content chilling. The two that died may have not acclimated well to the new conditions as Neons tend to be a little on the delicate side. If this was the case I would suggest doing the "drip acclimation" method. But, then again, maybe you just got one Neon that's an a**hole.

i agree wit hthis 100%. also i was wondering if you had like all males and 1 "eggy" female. the 1 male to 2-3 females rule applies to livebearers, but i am starting to think that this may be the case in some egg layers. i had a family member who had the same problem and when he sexed the "random" lot from the lfs he realized that they got mostly males and only like 1-2 females and the others were more aggressive. i myself have not experienced this so i don't know if it was just a fluke or not. i have had neons die from poor acclimation and even proper acclimation and just them being sensative to water conditions. i noticed that if the tank is less than like 6 months old they take forever to be "normal healthy fish". i am not saying that just because you're tank is new, that the neons will die. i have had success doing a full cycle with neons in the tank (i don't recommend this-what a headache!!!).

also from my experience... neons are nippy little bastards (sorry about profanity) and can never be pleased. i just stop getting them for this reason. they will nip at anything and cause chaos in your tank (even amongst themselves)

all of this may not be conventional and factual (relating to the species in general) but from my experiences (mostly bad) i don't deal with them much. i will get them if i have a lot of room to stock fish, but in a new tank with a bunch of other fish i will never do that again...

 

[bleechme]

Neons develop a pecking order, since they are new this is probably what they are doing. Mine did this for the first few weeks and now they are content chilling. The two that died may have not acclimated well to the new conditions as Neons tend to be a little on the delicate side. If this was the case I would suggest doing the "drip acclimation" method. But, then again, maybe you just got one Neon that's an a**hole.

i agree wit hthis 100%. also i was wondering if you had like all males and 1 "eggy" female. the 1 male to 2-3 females rule applies to livebearers, but i am starting to think that this may be the case in some egg layers. i had a family member who had the same problem and when he sexed the "random" lot from the lfs he realized that they got mostly males and only like 1-2 females and the others were more aggressive. i myself have not experienced this so i don't know if it was just a fluke or not. i have had neons die from poor acclimation and even proper acclimation and just them being sensative to water conditions. i noticed that if the tank is less than like 6 months old they take forever to be "normal healthy fish". i am not saying that just because you're tank is new, that the neons will die. i have had success doing a full cycle with neons in the tank (i don't recommend this-what a headache!!!).

also from my experience... neons are nippy little bastards (sorry about profanity) and can never be pleased. i just stop getting them for this reason. they will nip at anything and cause chaos in your tank (even amongst themselves)

all of this may not be conventional and factual (relating to the species in general) but from my experiences (mostly bad) i don't deal with them much. i will get them if i have a lot of room to stock fish, but in a new tank with a bunch of other fish i will never do that again...

You know what? I think you are right? now that you have mentioned this, I relize that out of all the fish, There is a very BIG, FAT "Eggy" female. all the other fish are very slim. now that TWO more has died from injury, I have 4 left and the BIG FAT one is still there. She is usally with my big male that I had for the longest. I think I will take them two out and see what happens. But that will have to wait. I need to take out one of my 10 gallon to cycle first. It will be a while..

To add to this, if this group dies, I will also not buy anymore neons. They look very pretty and nice at the petstore, but when you buy them, They turn to little devils. I lost two groups already due to the same problem.

 

[Nadine F]

I too have had experience of aggressive neons, but have found a reason.

I currently have a school of 16 neons in a planted tank and every month or so they go into attack mode and start battling each other like crazy. This perplexed me for some time until I later realised that each time this happened they were actually pairing off and spawning.

Unfortunately none of the eggs have survived and are so tiny I do not know how to collect them. Anyway this spawning coincides with alternate RO water changes which I do once a fortnight.

So look out for this one