New To Tropical Fish Hobby

[riceboi]

Hi Everyone,

I'm quite new to to tropical fish and where i was fortunate enough to adopt an Aquarium from my Auntie as she no longer had the time to take care of it.

Here is a photo of our fish tank, its roughly 175 liters in size, here are some photos of the fish we have. The pics of the fish here are ones which I would like to know the breed of. I hope you guys can be of help.

Fish Tank


Silver Dollar - He's quite a large one, doesn't like the light much and is usually in hiding between the plants and only comes out when he's hungry.


My Favorite Fish, likes swimming in and out of my ornament - but i dont know what type he is?


What is he?


What is he?


I have 2 of these - not sure what they are though?


Only one of him, but he's quite aggressive and picked on the dwarf gourami i had in which later on died, what is he?



I've own the tank for over a month now and have done 2 water changes since then. pH is at 6.5 - 7.0 and Ammonia levels are low. Water temp. is sitting at 25deg. Celsius. Lights are switched on for roughly 5hrs a day as the room they live is quite dark. Fish all seems happy

Diet at the moment are blood worms twice a week, Fish Flakes & Veggie Kelp Pellets fed twice a day.

Quite happy at the moment with how its all going, though I've had a casualty with 2 x Dwarf Gourami where they were attacked by other fish. Being quite timid fish I guess that's the reason why they were picked on as most other fish in the tank are quite active.

Other fish which I've recently purchased are 2 x silver sharks, 8 x neon tetras, 4 x sword tails and 4 x platys which seem to get along with the other fish.

Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated as I would like to hopefully breed one day.
Are any of the fish i have worthy breeders?

Thanks everyone.

Dee

 

[Truck]

well i can pic out platys and pearl gouramis

 

[Davo86]

Hi Dee
ok, ids are a) kribensis pos Male b) Male Pearl Gourami c) female gold gourami d) buenos airies tetra e) 2 swordtails, 2 platys and a gourami of some sort, clearer pic is needed

you say ammonia levels are low? this should be 0 at all times, do you have the numbers for this as well as the nitrate and nitrite?

with the new additions you are really overstocked and certainly i see a couple of fish that could do with being rehoming, The silver sharks for one will need at least a 400litre tank in the next few months. their adult size is 13inches, Also the reason why the SD hides is because they shouldn't be kept alone and need their own kind for company, These also get big and could do with a bigger tank.

Do you know the ration of M/F with your platys and swordtails? both of these are livebearers and will readily breed in the aquarium, you need 3F for every 1M to keep them happy.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

Hi there and welcome to the forum, lovely looking tank. Few ID' then

This one is a kribensis



This is a pearl gourami



This is another gourami


can't remember the name of these which is very helpful i know


and this is a platy, a quite underfed one by the looks of things!

I've own the tank for over a month now and have done 2 water changes since then. pH is at 6.5 - 7.0 and Ammonia levels are low. Water temp. is sitting at 25deg. Celsius. Lights are switched on for roughly 5hrs a day as the room they live is quite dark. Fish all seems happy

can you let us know exactly what the test number is for ammonia, 'low' is no good, this should always be 0 or there are big problems. Also what test kit are you using?

also water changes are best once a week, if you read the link in my sig 'guide to weekly maintenance' then this will help you out no end.

Diet at the moment are blood worms twice a week, Fish Flakes & Veggie Kelp Pellets fed twice a day.

just need to feed once a day, i know the packet say's twice but that's just to get you to buy more!! fish can go 2 weeks without food so once a day is plenty!

Other fish which I've recently purchased are 2 x silver sharks, 8 x neon tetras, 4 x sword tails and 4 x platys which seem to get along with the other fish.

unfortunately you need to return the silver sharks, they get to around 16" long and are far too big for your tank. it does sound like you have quite a few fish, could you list out what fish you have and how many of each species and then we can let you know if there are any other problems.

Are any of the fish i have worthy breeders?

in a few months you'll be wishing the platys and swordies would breed less!! They're the rabbits of the fish world and peple often end up with overcrowded tanks from all the babies.

 

[riceboi]

Thanks Miss Wiggle and Davo86 for the helpful information and for identifying the fish I have.

I forgot to mention that im from the land down under (Australia) and live in Sydney.

With regards to Ammonia levels, these are at 0 and are not low, sorry for misleading you both.

I'll cut down on the feeding to once a day as advised

The pH and Ammonia kit im using is an Australian kit by Aquasonic
i dont have readings for nitrite and nitrate, should i be purchasing a kit for this as well?

A list of fish i have which you've help identified as well

1 x Silver Dollar
1 x Kribensis
1 x Pearl Gourami
1 x Gold Gourami
2 x Buenos Airies Tetra
2 x Silver Shark
4 x Platys
5 x Sword tails
8 x Neon Tetras
2 x Snails

sounds like a lot of fish there, i'll have to consider rehoming the silver dollar and silver sharks in time when they get quite large as per your recommendations.

Would pairing the silver dollar prove a little difficult as he's quite large now?

Would it be ok to pair the Kribensis with another?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

great, good news about the ammonia

is the test kit paper strips or liquid based? If possible you should have liquid tests for pH, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. Not sure exactly what's available in Oz to help you with particular brands but if you find you have problems finding stuff then pm a member on here called LauraFrog, she's in Oz and I'm sure she'd be able to help you out with soem websites to order from and such like.

Just a general guide to working out how many fish can go in the tank, for a new tank under 6 months old we say you can stock to 1" of fish per US Gallon of water, for tanks over 6 months old you can build up to around 1.5" per gallon.

Your tank is around 47 US Gallons so initial stocking should be about 47" of fish, and then build up to around 70" of fish. This is just a rough guide not an exact science, but it's a helpful tool to understand the sort of vulme of fish you can keep.

So what you have now is

1 x Silver Dollar - 10"
1 x Kribensis - 3"
1 x Pearl Gourami - 5"
1 x Gold Gourami - 5"
2 x Buenos Airies Tetra - 4"
2 x Silver Shark - 26"
4 x Platys - 8"
5 x Sword tails - 10"
8 x Neon Tetras - 8"
2 x Snails - 1" (depends what species of snail, have you got a pic?)

So that takes you to around 80" of fish in total, a bit over but not terrible.

Now what you do need to consider though is that both the silver sharks and silver dollars get too big for the tank and should be returned to the store. This would then drop you down to around 45" of fish which is just perfect for a newcommer to the hobby. It means you've room for some more additions later on when you've a bit more experience but you've still got a decent amount of fish in the tank for now while you research. I would pick up a few more of the tetras when you return the larger fish though as they're best in a group of 6+

Have you given much though as to what you plan on doing with the fry from the platy's and swordtails, often with newcommers to the hobby they get super excited when they breed for the first time, they keep all the fry and nurture them through to adults and are dead chuffed. Then another platy has babies, then another swordie does the next month and every time you've got 20 or so new fish. Then after a couple of months the babies start to breed as well and before you know it you're totally overrun, because livebearers breed so prolifically it's very difficult to find homes for all the babies, most fish shops won't take them and everyone runs out of friends and family with fishtanks eventually!!

So what a lot of aquarists do is just leave it up to natural selection, some of the fish in your tank such as the kribensis and the gourami's will happily have platy fry for lunch every single day of the week! It may seem cruel at first but it's what would happen in the wild so it's totally natural and much better for everyone that being totally overrun. You'll get the odd plucky fry that survives through to adulthood, but not enough to cause any problems.

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, I agree with all the above advice, as usual.

Welcome to TFF, riceboi, and nice tank.. particularly nice to see such a nice community. One thing not mentioned about the various stocking guidelines is that these are basically maximums that are being quoted and there's nothing wrong with going with less. There are truely different approaches, with nothing particularly wrong with either end of the scale. Some experienced aquarists like to have plenty of filtration, keep right on top of their gravel clean / water changes and overstock up above the 1 inch guideline. One small-percentage disadvantage of overstocking, depending on your power situation, is that fish can die a lot faster in an overstocked tank if the power goes out for a significant time and you are unable to remedy the problem. An understocked tank will have more of a water volume buffer for its population when these events occur.

I also have a question for Davo and MW: I was looking at the Gold Gourami and remember seeing some confirmation somewhere that this color variation was bred out of the older Opaline and Blue gouramis, right? In fact I think the Blue Gourami goes back the farthest and out of it came the Opaline, which is more green in the darker parts and somewhere more recently breeders were able to bring about a gold color, but I'm not sure how they pulled that out of the green and blue. Any idea?

Oh, and back on topic, I agree with MW: If your current two kits aren't liquid, then you could look for an entire liquid kit as a set but otherwise you could just add on the nitrite(NO2) and nitrate(NO3) liquid kits. Once you do that it would be good to post up results for both your tap and your tank water here in your thread. It would probably be a better habit to increase your water changes (which should include gravel cleans in the process of course) to weekly, although I won't say that's essential if there is some reason this would be a hardship.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Miss Wiggle]

I also have a question for Davo and MW: I was looking at the Gold Gourami and remember seeing some confirmation somewhere that this color variation was bred out of the older Opaline and Blue gouramis, right? In fact I think the Blue Gourami goes back the farthest and out of it came the Opaline, which is more green in the darker parts and somewhere more recently breeders were able to bring about a gold color, but I'm not sure how they pulled that out of the green and blue. Any idea?

no idea! i think the gold is the same species as the opalines but a different colour morph but that's as far as my knowledge goes.

i'm not particularly up on my gouramis, not my favourite of fish to be totally honest (although i did have a lovely pair of opalines once)

 

[waterdrop]

aaw, I love gouramis MW, I prided myself on having every single variation when I was young and coaxing them to build big bubble nests during the breeding process. Some of them are quite aggressive of course but I still get a kick out of them. Despite all that, I have no near-term plans for any of them in Oliver's tank. I suppose I should go on over to the gourami forum, if its active, with my golden question. Saddest thing is the poor genetic state of the dwarfs, as they were my favorites.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Miss Wiggle]

yeah i had a couple of ill fated experiences with dwarves, and i like the tiny gourami's like chocolates and sparkling gouramis. but the vast majority of the mid-large sized ones I just find a bit boring.

each to their own i guess!!!

 

[Davo86]

I also have a question for Davo and MW: I was looking at the Gold Gourami and remember seeing some confirmation somewhere that this color variation was bred out of the older Opaline and Blue gouramis, right? In fact I think the Blue Gourami goes back the farthest and out of it came the Opaline, which is more green in the darker parts and somewhere more recently breeders were able to bring about a gold color, but I'm not sure how they pulled that out of the green and blue. Any idea?
~~waterdrop~~

Gold / Opaline and Blue morphs are all variations that have been bred out of the 3-spot Gourami (Trichogaster trichopterus) and/or the Trichogaster trichopterus sumatranus species, so esentially all 4 are pretty much the same species.

 

[riceboi]

Thanks for all the advice again guys, especially MW
My test kits for both ammonia and pH are liquid base. Im going to find sometime this week to purchase a nitrate and nitrite kit as well.

If and when i do purchase the nitrate and nitrite test kits, what reading should i be looking towards?

Thanks for the guidelines for the fish tank fish capacity with the breeds i have.
Its very helpful and gives me a clearly picture of what to expect for the future.

If i have an further questions, i'll be sure to ask here.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

nitrite should always be 0, it's similar to ammonia in that it's toxic

nitrate is also toxic but much less so.

you can think of it like ammonia is being shot, nitrite is being stabbed, nitrate is a papercut

the first two can kill you pretty easily, the last one won't but if there's enough of it around it can make you pretty unwell.

nitrate levels will depend on what's in your tap water, so test both tank and tap and let us know what the readings are in each of them.

 

[waterdrop]

When you get your nitrite(NO2) test, its utility is very similar to the ammonia one. If your filter is cycled, you should never see any ammonia or nitrite(NO2) showing up when they are tested for, they should show zero ppm.

Ammonia, even in small amounts causes permanent gill damage. Nitrite, even in small amounts causes suffocation, leading to permanent nerve damage. The death of a fish sometimes happens long after an episode of high toxin levels of these two poisons has occurred.

For nitrate(NO3) it is often recommended that good gravel cleaning and water change habits will help to keep the nitrate level no more than about 5 to 20ppm above whatever your tap water nitrate level is to begin with. So if your tap water happened to have 20ppm (zero is best though, just for reference) then you might hope your maintenance habits would keep nitrate in the tank to 40ppm or below. Nitrate(NO3) is not nearly as toxic to fish as ammonia or nitrite(NO2) and is thought to be able to rise as high as 400 or even 1000ppm before fish would die from it, if then. However, high nitrates in an aquarium is nontheless considered bad practice. Nitrate testing is considered to be a good "reminder" test about water changes, even though a water change actually helps to remove -anything-, including trace metals and organics that we don't want in the tank, besides nitrates.

Nitrate(NO3) tests are difficult to design in a way that is both inexpensive and not too hard to perform, so the ones we get tend to be somewhat difficult to perform and not very reliable/repeatable in their results, but generally good enough for our uses. All the timed shaking instructions must be followed carefully.

~~waterdrop~~
ps. as usual, MW saw me here and typed faster

 

[foreignlegion]

Wow you sure inherited a lot of fish. Congrats!