Newbie, One Goldfish Tank And One Tropical

[Mattysmama]

Hi I'm Deb, 33 and I have a 9 month old son, Matthew. Matthew has cerebral palsy, and also mild sensory integration disorder (as awful as all that sounds, he's really not as handicapped as that makes it sound!!) and his occupational therapist suggested an aquarium as something that may help him. My DH and I promptly ran out and got a 10 gallon aquarium and some fantail goldfish for him and he absolutely loves to watch his fishies! In the process though ... we fell totally in love with it! I had no idea an aquarium could be so much fun or so addictive. Soooo, we got ourselves a 14 gallon aquarium, set it up and this afternoon, we added 4 neon tetras, 2 cherry barbs and a bottom feeder. One of the cherry barbs is behaving in a very non-barblike way, at least from the descriptions I've read of them! He seems to think he is a neon tetra as well, and has spent the whole afternoon swimming in the school with them. I say 'he' - I'm not 100% certain but I think it may be an immature male. The other one though - I think we've got a female with a belly full of eggs! She's hiding underneath plants in a dim corner, and she's not coming out for anything. I have also read that they tend to be shy, which is why I bought a pair - I thought it would help, because it said they tend to ignore tankmates and spend their time chasing one another. Well. The one is spending all of its time chasing the neons and then there's this poor thing in the corner by herself. Honestly, I hadn't really counted on breeding now! I bought them to cycle in the new tank.

What on earth should I do?

 

[rabbut]

Hi, welcome to the forum. The first thing I would do is purchase a test kit. As you are cycleing fish-in, you will need to be testing ammonia and nitrite atleast twice a day. You should expect to see an ammonia peack soon, followed by nitrite, and a steady rise in nitrate. Ammonia and nitrite are very toxic in even small ammounts. Any detectable reading will caurse long-tearm damage to your fish, and readings above 0.25ppm can kill very quickly. If your tests show ammonia or nitrite above 0.2ppm, you need a large-ish water change to check these leavles before they can harm your fish. Liquid tests are most accurate, and both API and Tetra do very reliable kits. API are the cheapest of the two. Please do not buy test stripps, as they are not accurate enough for a cycling tank.
As for breeding cherry barbs, you will want a heavily planted tank, as they are egg sckatterers that will happily swim one way laying eggs and then swim the other way eating them. The plants will give the eggs and eventualy the fry (baby fish) cover to prevent them from eating them. It is most common to see them spawn after a waterchange, or just after feeding.
HTH
rabbut

 

[godsson]

helo

an yeah a test kit might do the trick for now good luck