New To Fishkeeping And This Forum

[Christo]

Hey guys

well, i bought myself a 15g tank in the beginning of feb. for my b-day. I started off with a rocky start - not knowing everything i needed to know. I soon realized how important it is to do the research before doing something without me knowing anything about fishkeeping. (for you fishnatics also thinking of starting with this great and fun hobby please read and learn from my mistakes) I just filled my tank with tap water and left the filter running for a week before putting in some fish. I thought i knew everything. How wrong was i!! One after the other my fish died. Talk about learning the hard way about cycling a tank. fortunately some fish made the cycling period. But another mistake soon followed. Somehow more fish died. At first i thought that it was just something "fishy" (no pun intended) going on. only later i realized that ive been boiling my fish with too high temp. i only had a heater and it was set on 24-26 degrees Celcius (76 degrees F). I didnt know how warm my room temp was. When i got my thermometer a temp reading of 30 degrees celcius basically boiled my fish... Luckily everything is fine now. There is no excuse for my stupid stupid mistakes. it just comes to show that knowledge is power

I now have a healthy tank. I recently added some plants and little statues and pots. With the plants i bought 4 female guppies for my male. They are pregnant. how long do they carry their young and what visible signs are there to know if birth is a day or two away. will i be able to see the fry's eyes? i will get a breeding tank for them.

any other advice for the future?

thanx

my tank

4 zebra danios
4 swordtails - 1 male and 3 female
5 guppies - 1 male and 4 female
2 chinese algea eaters
2 kuhli loaches - they dont have the nice pattern, they are just plain brown. what kind of loaches are they. i just call them kuhli although i know they are not
a couple of small mollies

 

[Jozlyn]

Firstly Welcome you'll find lots and lots of good advice on here.

The female guppies (livebearers) will have a batch of fry around every four weeks, you'll need to find someone to take them or you'll be completely over run within a matter of weeks. They will look a bit like they're about to explode, their tummies will be enormous, just before they deliver, they may go off by themselves and sort of "hide out", it's very dependant on the fish herself. Get your fry tank ASAP and start cycling it, read the pinned topic on cycling for the full explanation.

Swordtails are also livebearers so the same goes for them too! Although the gestation is a little longer.

If you don't want to be completely overun by fry you'll need to seperate the males and females, however, as the females "store" sperm, they will continue to have fry every few weeks for around 6 - 8 months! You have a LOT of fry on the way!!!

Chinease Algae Eaters (CAE) are not very nice fish to have. They grow to around 30cm's long and are VERY agressive once they get to around 10 -15cm's. They will latch onto the other fish in your tank and suck the slime coat off them, suck their eyes out (there's plenty of threads on here about what CAE's get up too), then once they've killed everything in the tank they'll turn on each other! Not very nice fish at all, see if you can return them to your Local Fish Store (LFS) ASAP!

Unfortunately I know nothing about danios or loaches so I can't help you there, but you'll probably be asked for a picture of the loaches, so if you've got one post it.

Good luck with your new hobby

 

[rdd1952]

to the forum.

Jozlyn covered everything pretty well. I agree totally on the CAEs. They are bad. The danios aren't suited to your tank. They are very active fish and need much more swimming space. The loaches could be black kuhli loaches but I'm not a loach expert either.

Besides the fry that you will soon have, your tank is very overstocked. A 15 gallon tank is really only suitable for 6 to maybe 10 (small) community type fish. You currently have 19 fish in there and unless you have really good filtration (you need a filter that can process at least 75 gallons per hour and preferable over 100 gph), you could really struggle with ammonia and nitrite problems. I would return the CAEs and danios for sure and probably the loaches and the mollies (mollies prefer brackish water). Just the guppies and swordtails are too many fish for your tank consider all they fry they will produce.

What are your current readings for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and pH?

 

[lilfishie]

to the forum,
continuing on what rdd said, the swordtails are also to large for your tank, they get to roughly 4/5 inchesand quite active, i think the minimum for them is 20 gal, i have a 15 gal, i started with 3 guppies i now have about 20 in there which is not ideal but they get gravel vacs 3 times a week and water changes 2 times a week, as for the loaches maybe post a picture in the Cyprinids, Characins and Atherinids area and someone will be able to identify them for you and advice you more on them.

oh and the general rule on stocking tanks is 1 inch (adult size of the fish) per gallon

 

[Jozlyn]

You know, I was just thinking about the numbers of fry your guppies could produce. I've decided to be conseravtive and say that they each have 30 per month, that's 120 fry per month, which after 6 months becomes 720, but by then all of the first couple of batches of fry will be reproducing, so you'll end up with 1,000's of them, and that's only if you take out your original male!

Then if you take into account the swordtails having 30 fry every 2 months, that's another 90 fry every 2 months for at least the next 6 months, which, after 6 months is another 270 of them and of course by then the first batches of swordtails will be mating and reproducing!

When you start adding it up that's really scarey stuff! Hope you've got lots of homes/buyers lined up and lots and lots of grow out tanks! You can guarantee that all of your females are now pregnant and will be reproducing for at least the next 6 months. LoL, you might want to consider moving the boys out sometime soon!

My dalmation molly had 33 fry in her first delivery (I have no molly males), she was already pregnant when I got her, which I didn't know, which meant I've had to buy a fry tank and a grow out tank, plus all the other stuff to go with it, heaters, filters, fry food, feeding 4 times a day, there's a lot of stuff to consider if you go down the breeding path. But, having said it all that, you'll never forget your first batch of fry, I know I wont!

 

[Christo]

hey

thanx so much for all your help. luckily a do have a plan for all the fry. my friend, living just a few houses down the street has a huge pond outside. fortunately here in south africa its fairly sunny and tropical fish do well in outside pools. In winter they have heaters for when is gets too cold. my plan is to dump all the "unwanted" fry in there and to hand them out to all my friends. I also work at my vet on weekends (im going to study vet science next year after school so i do as much as i can to get some experience) so i wont have any problem to get homes for my fry since there are always people wanting fish. Can the fry also be used as food for my adult fish? isnt it a bit murdurous, lol?

thanx for the info on the chinese algea eaters and danios. ill make a plan with them.

ill get myself a fry tank, or maybe ill make my existing tank a fry tank and buy a bigger tank to serve as a community tank.

am i doing this right: i do a waterchange every 2 weeks and change my filterfoam once every week. for the chemical issues i use tetraAqua's easy balance which i add once a week for the nitrates and to stabilize the ph and kh levels. I also use tetraAqua's aqua safe with every waterchange to neutralise the chlorine and heavy metals in the tapwater.

so far ive been blessed to have healthy fish.

thanx again for all your help Jozlyn, rdd1952 and lilfishie

this might sound stupid, but how do i upload a photo for you to identify my loaches? im not that good of a computerwizz like my twin bro and not he can even help me. i do see the icon "insert image" but then they ask a url. as i understand it, the image is on the internet then, but my photo is in "my pictures" of "my documents" any help? please

thanx again

 

[lilfishie]

make your self an account on photobucket.com upload them there then copy the I M G code and the picture will appear and it will automatically resize

 

[Canis-Equus]

Hmm, tol add to what everyone else has said, re returning the danios, CAE, and swordtails at least......


When you say you change the filterfoam, do you mean you take out and replace ALL the media inside the filter?

If so, dont!

Instead, water change once a week or even 2 x a week, and say once a month, rinse the filter foam in a bucket of dirty tank water before you throw that away when doing water changes. If you do need to replace some filter foam, only replace half of it, never all of it.

The media in your filter is what contains the bacteria that change ammonia into nitrites and then nitrates - if you remove that then every time your filter cycles again meaning the ammonia levels in your tank will be constantly swinging around - long term that will kill your fish!

Personally id keep in the tank just the guppies, and something that will hunt down and eat guppy fry if there is something small enough that wont also eat adult guppies.

 

[Christo]

my tank

one of my loaches. can you identify what kind it is? thanx

 

[Christo]

i trust your judgement. ill do as you say. thanx

 

[lilfishie]

nice tank, not sure on the loach are they both the same?

 

[Christo]

nice tank, not sure on the loach are they both the same?

yeah, both are the same...
thanx on the tank comment. try my best though.

 

[lilfishie]

guppy's look quite fat, they may be pregnant

 

[Jozlyn]

Your tank looks lovely, I love the heads and the ball! Buy the biggest tank you can afford and go for wider rather than taller unless you plan on getting some really tall fish. I also can's see if you have an air stone in your tank, it's worth investing in one of them to ensure the water is really well oxygenated. And move your heater to the opposite end of the tank from your filter. You need to let your tank cycle properly you shouldn't need to add a chemical to get rid of the nitrates as if you're tank has cycled properly the bacteria in your filter will take care of turning the amonia into nitrites and then to safe nitrates. Don't mess with your ph either, fish are pretty adaptable to ph, you'll do more harm than good to them by swinging the ph levels around rather than just letting them be stable. Also, unless your kH & gH are ridiculously high or low that's something you don't want to mess with either as the fish you have a fairly tolerant and hardy.

Do you have a test kit? You need to have a liquid based kit and check your amonia, nitrite and nitrate levels weekly. Test the water coming out of your tap against your tank for ph levels occasionaly, the same with gh & kh, so long as all of these measurements remain stable you'll be safe. If either your amonia or nitrite levels are above zero, you'll need to do lots of water changes (without cleaning the filter sponge) to bring them back down.

I can't really tell what your loach is from the picture, it's a bit too dark, so here's a picture of a CAE and some info' on them too http/www.petresources.net/fish/cyprinid/gyr_aym.html


As Canis-Equus says do weekly water changes of around 50%, don't change your filter media as you'll start your tank cycle all over again. I usually rinse my filter sponges in my old tank water each week as they seem to get very mucky. Given that your guppies are pregnant make sure you check inside the filter for fry and also check your buckets before you through throw it out in case you've sucked up any fry! I can't tell from the picture what sort of intake it has but putting a piece of panty hose over the intake will stop them from getting sucked in.

What else is in your friends pond? Something that will eat the fry? Can't say that that idea sounds an ideal solution to me tho, but that's only my opinion.

The most import thing when keeping fish is research, research, research, don't ever buy any fish on impulse unless you know exactly what you are buying and exactly what conditions and tank mates they need to thrive! Take the advise that your local fish shop gives you with caution as they are out to make a profit! I can't emphasise enough that research is your key to keeping happy healthy fish.

Wow, this turned into a bit of saga didn't it!

 

[vinylman]

Christo, if you do get a larger tank (and you will eventually, trust me), put a layer of fertiliser under the gravel, it makes so much difference to your plants. I'd take them out of the pots, too, as they can restrict root growth. A tank at least 4ft long looks VERY nice.