Newbie With Questions

[deb24]

Hi everyone, my name is Deb. I bought my tank 3 weeks ago. I have 8 cardinal tetra's, 6 male guppies, 2 plec's and 2 albino cory's.
One of my tetra's disappeared after 5 days and I still can't find it. Then last night one of my guppies died. The rest of the fish all seem
fine. I am feeding them every evening but the guppies are very greedy. I also put a couple of sinking wafers in for the plecs and cory's. Do you think they need more food as I am frightened of over feeding them.

My other question is how often do I do a water change as I have looked at several sites and they all say various things.
I have a 64 litre tank.

Would appreciate any feedback.
Thxs

 

[chrisbassist]

Hi. Welcome

you are currently in what's called a fish in cycle. There is an article in the beginners resource section.

Feeding sounds fine, you could even cut it down.

Do you have a water test kit?

 

[deb24]

Hi. Welcome

you are currently in what's called a fish in cycle. There is an article in the beginners resource section.

Feeding sounds fine, you could even cut it down.

Do you have a water test kit?

No I don't have a water test kit got told not to bother with them

 

[Jenste]

with out a test, how you you expect to know whats going on in your tank? first thing you need is a liquid test kit for atleast ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate.
ammonia and nitrite should both be 0 - - - even in little quantities is can be lethal to fish. I suggest going over to the beginners section of the forum and reading up on cycling.

 

[steelhealr]

Agreed. Sounds like you got bad advice. As your tank matures, you can test less but in the beginning, it is critical to know what is going on in the water column. As for the lost tetra, probably in the filter. SH

 

[chrisbassist]

Yeah, good advice here...

Tests are important because ammonia and nitrite are lethal in really tiny amounts.

Considering ammonia enters the tank as fish food, and then as fish poo. It's something you need to be aware of.

At the very very least get ammonia and nitrite tests, test daily and if either are above 0.25 do a waterchange to bring it down.

As has been said, the older the tank gets, the less important this becomes. Because bacteria build up to turn ammonia into nitrite, then that into nitrate, which is much less hazardous.
Once you have a nice stable population of bacteria, you should never see any ammonia or nitrite so it's just a case of weekly (usually) water changes to kepp nitrate down.

As I've said there is a great beginners resource section here, so have a read through (at least the fish in cycling article) to help you understand what you need to be doing.

And I dare say most of us started in your position so don't worry too much.