Newbie..ish

[craig855s]

Hi all,new here, ill start with my experience of tropical fish which began 2 months ago

I got a little 19L (yes,that small) tank from acorn pet shop with the intention of havin a couple of "little goldfish". Came back from the shop and looked into how to care for goldfish properly and learnt straight away that a tiny tank like that is just cruel so i decided to go tropical so got the heater and so on and let the tank cycle for 3 weeks or so before adding 4 Zebra Danios one day and then 5 black wedge tetra the next..

Things were going well with doing 40% ish water changes once a week (every 6 days) and then one day about 2 weeks ago my only male danio died without warning or symptoms overnight.. (the females were all heavy with eggs at the time..maybe this had something to do with it)..them being left wanting?

Anyway i've now decided to get into the hobby properly and will be purchasing a tank upwards of 68 litres(there is a 68 litre one on ebay im watching now,failing that there is a 90 litre one at my work i can buy for 75 quid)

Just wondering what you guys would recomend placing in the above tanks. (5 black wedge tetras and 3 zebra danios will be moving in,and i want to make a shoal of danios so would purchase 4 or 5 more)

Quite fancy neons and black neons, what fish would go in a tank like this and get along?

Also,what ratio of males to females in each species do you recomend..especially when it comes to buying more danios..and would leopard danios shoal with the zebras or do i need to complete the shoal with more zebras?

thanks for any advice u give

 

[Ripley]

Well if you go with the 68 litre, I would get 6 zebra danios total and maybe leave the tetras at the same number. Because they both school, and like the middle to top range of the tank, it maybe a bit corwded. Maybe 2-3 cories for the bottom.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

Hi there, welcome to the forum and to fishkeeping.

Good for you on doing some research and passing on the goldfish! I'm sure you already know this by now but 19litres is too small for the danio's as well and possibly the tetras (not familiar with that particular species, there are a lot of different common names floating around, do you know the latin/scientific name or if not can you post a picture of them?) so the larger tank is definately needed!

In your research did you come across anything about the Nitrogen Cycle, it's really the cornerstone of sucessfull fishkeeping and if you didn't know abotu it that could explain why you lose the danio. There's a link in my signature called 'The nitrogen cycle' which will give you the basics, also look in the pinned topic at the top of the page called 'Beginners Resource Centre' which has a whole section on cycling.

The 68 litre tank is around 18 gallons, we use a general guideline for stocking which is 1" of fish per Gallon, so that means you can have 18" of fish in the tank. It's not an exact science and it does have it's failings (for example 1 x 10" fish obviously needs more room than 10 x 1" fish!) but for smallish community fish like the ones suitable for your tank it gives a good rough idea.

Once the tank has matured and been running stably for around 6 months you can add some more and go up to 1.5 or 2" per gallon if you have good filtration and are confident you can do a lot of maintenance.

So you would have

5 x danio's - 1" each = 5" total
5 x black wedge tetras - assume 2" each = 10" total

So you've room for a couple of inches more at first, then maybe another shoal in 6 months time.

What I'd do is find a small feature fish that you like for example apistogramma, honey dwarf gourami, kribensis, female fighter fish etc and add that once the new tanks been running with fish in for a few weeks with no problems.

Then in 6 months time add a shoal of cory's for the bottom of the tank.

I know that might not seem like a whole lot more fish for sucha drastic increase in tank size, but it's really because the tank you have at the moment is far too small for the fish you currently have in it.

Couple of other things, do you have a water testing kit at all? When you move over to the new tank be sure to use the existing filter media to set up the new tank, this should be self explanatory when you've read up on cycling but if not give us a shout and we'll explain some more!

 

[craig855s]

thanks for you suggestions.. probably best to go for the 90 litre then..what do you recomend for that (i definately want a shoal of colourful fish)

Ive learnt since stocking this wee tank that it is too small, there is no room to dart back and forth which the danios like to do (says they like a good 2ft long run)

The tetras are tiny,danios are much bigger and im not sure how large the tetras will grow..time will tell once i get the big tank.

As for cycling i dont think it would have been an ammonia or nitrite problem as the fish had been in for about a month before the death and i did add nutrafin "cycle" (which i assume is liquid ammonia) when i first set the tank up (3 weeks before adding fish) but i never dosed it daily so it probably didnt do much so u could say i done a fish in cycle. I have the API master kit.

Also,another Q. My filter instructions say to change the foam inside every month...is this right? how often should i change the foam and how often should i clean it (obviously ill clean it in old tankwater during waterchanges)

Pic of the tetra,the acorn pet shop listed them as "red/blackcurrant tetra" but wikipedia doesn't mention that breed,only blackwedge tetra seems to be a suiting name

 

[Ripley]

Looks like a Harliquin Rasbora in that pic.

If you went with the 90 litre you could add another school of fish. You have a good few options as well. Those rasboras would be ok in there, 6-8 of them.

About the filter media. I usually change the foam part, maybe once every 10-12 months. Depends on what tank its on I guess and the fish in it. But maybe you have to change it more often then that, I have never read anything on changing the media. But I'm thinking once per month would be too often, because the foam would be just getting some nice bacteria in it by then. But I could be wrong, this was just my understanding.

 

[craig855s]

yeah theyre harlequin rasboras so ill get 2 more of them once the big tank is here.

how many cories are we looking at in 90 litres?

 

[Ripley]

I would say 4 cories for a 90 litre.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

unfortunately nutrafin cycle doesn't contain ammonia, it mostly contains dead bacteria and snake oil

so you will have done a fish in cycle, it's fairly likely that the danio was damaged by the cycle and while their death may not have been directly from ammonia poisoning the extended exposure can cause permanent respiratory problems which often shorten a fish's life considerably.

just to be sure there's no water problems persisting now can you please take a test of your water and let us know the stats for pH, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate?

The ID above of Harlequin Rasbora is quite correct, they will actually only really count for 1" of your stocking each so you can adjust the calcs above accordingly and you'll see it gives you some more room.

90l is 24 gals, with 5 harlequins and 5 danio's you'll have 10 gals of that taken up but still have 14 gallons of 'spare tank' so you can definately up the numbers.

what i'd suggest is upping the numbers of danio's pretty much straight away when they get into your new tank, then gradually building up a few fish at a time leaving it a few weeks between additions.

you don't need to change the filter media that regularly, this is just a sales gimmick to get you to buy more, if you throw away your filter media you throw away the good bacteria that keep the tank free from ammonia and nitrite and you have to cycle again!

Some media like filter floss or carbon is designed to be regularly replaced but any biological media like sponges, funny ceramic/plastic shapes etc only needs to be replaced if it is literally falling apart, this will be several years and when you do replace it you just change half of it at any one time.

 

[craig855s]

Test results are in

PH = between 7.2 and 7.4
Ammonia = 0ppm
Nitrite = 0ppm
Nitrate = 20ppm.maybe a smidgen darker but certainly not as dark as 40

So the tank is now mature i take it. Is my nitrate ok? the API book in the kit says less than 40 is good for freshwater fish, im definately below that so im happy there.

When do i want to do water changes,so far ive been doing them every 6 days (about 40% change) but would it be better to do a test of the water daily and see how many days it takes for the chemistry to change and act on that? (for instance if the tank can go 2 full weeks with low levels like this then water changes every 10 days wouldnt be unreasonable would it?)

Also,what do people here use to help them do water changes (im using a syphon into an old mop bucket to get the old water out,and then the syphon into a new bucket to slowly put new water into the tank but i imagine when i get a 90 litre tank a bucket isnt gonna be enough to change such a % of the water (dunno the capacity of said bucket but its not huge..can u buy 30 litre buckets?)

 

[paulbr1]

Hi, when you do a water change it is mostly to remove NitrAtes as you filter removes/Converts the Ammonia to Nitrite and then to NitrAte (your live plants if you have any will take some of this away for food)

If you doing a 6day water change and the Nitrates are at 20ppm I would be happy with that at 2months old - just thought is the 20ppm before or after the water change.

If it is before the change great, if you tested after the change you figures would have been around 36ppm(took me a few minutes) beforehand I would be too worried with that but probably feed a little less.

Paul.

 

[greenscooby]

I've got a 110 litre tank, and i use a standard bucket to re-fill my tank, most buckets are around 9 litres, so if i do a 50%(approx) water change it's only 6(ish) buckets to fill it back up.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

test your tap water for nitrates as well, some places they come out of the tap at 40ppm so obviously you can't get it below that with water changes alone!

as a general guideline it's time to do a water change when nitrate has risen by about 20ppm, so if yours comes out of the tap at 0ppm then you'd do a water change, test the water the weekend after, if it's up by 20ppm from the tap level then you're about due a change, if it's less you can go to bi-weekly or just do smaller weekly changes.

however nitrate removal is not the only purpose of water changes, it also adds minerals into the water that the fish will have used up and removes/dilutes other substances that we don't measure for. so I'd suggest the minimum you want to do is 30% once a fortnight.

you can use a hose pipe to help with water changes on a bigger tank if you like, just pop one end into the tank, one out of the window/front door/down the sink etc and start the siphon going and let the water drain out then add dechlor directly to the tank, hook the hose up to a garden tap (or normal tap with an adapter on) and fill it up from there. depends if you have a garden tap and where your fish tank is in relation to it but it works for me on my big tanks.

 

[craig855s]

what do you do with regards to the temp of the water during the filling period? as hose water will lower the temp of the tank considerably until you turn the heater back on..is this bad

Ive been mixing boiling water with cold water to get water that feels the same as the tank before syphoning it in so far.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

a 30% change even with cold water straight from the tap will not drop the temp by more than 2oC, fish can cope with this just fine. what do you think happens in the wild when it rains?

 

[craig855s]

oh thats good then.

A question about my new tank when it arrives...what substrate choices do i have? It will be stocked with the harlequins,danios,corys and possibly neon tetra..

I currently have gravel in the little tank but would prefer some form of sand or sand with gravel sprinkled in for colour..how do you clean sand out..would it just get sucked up the syphon?