Newbie

[gazzab06]

Hello guys and gals,

my names gareth aka gaz. a couple of month ago i got into keeping fish and as i didnt no to much about them i have been seeking regular advice from local my fish shop .

my set up consists of a 14.81 gallon tank, with visi-therm heater set at 27, a fluval filter and a 3 inch bubble stone. the set up was all run in correctly and after a couple of weeks i added 5 Vallisneria spiralis, 2 lumps of bog wood covered with moss and java fern. my first hardy fish were 2 silver molly (1 male,1 female) and 2 red platy (again 1 male, 1 female).this was again left for a couple of weeks,over them 2 weeks my molly gave birth to 9 babys (which i have in a nursing box). i then had a dose of white spot which i cleared up using protozin ??,again it was left for a couple of weeks.

then last week i added 5 neon tetras, 2 corydoras loxozonus, 2 frogs and 2 apple snails.


all seems to be going well in the tank.but i have a few question ......

1 .. over the last couple of days my 5 plants seem to have started to not look very healthy.there all droopy and i keep finding bits that seem to have snapped off. ive tried using some plant food fertilizer but it doesnt seem to help. any ideas on what could be the problem ?

2 ..maintance..as of yet i have only used an algae magnet to clean the glass.so where do i start? do i need to do a water change??

3 ..what would you say is the maximum amount of fish i could put in my tank ?

4 .. it looks like my platy could be pregnant,when she gives birth will her young be ok in the nursing box with the 9 molly young that are 3 weeks old?

many thanks
gaz

 

[Miss Wiggle]

Hi there Gaz, welcome to the forum

It sounds like there may be a couple of problems with your set up, but nothing a bit of research and a bit of action won't cure.

The first thing to consider is that your tank was not correctly cycled to begin with, the fish shop seem to have given you poor advice on this, unfortunatley it's all too common, if you have a read of the link in my sig 'whats cycling' this should explain it all to you. You'll need to get yourself a test kit, the topic explains why, what you need to test for, what the results should be and what to do if they are not as expected.

Now it may be that the tank has fully cycled without you knowing, when you get test results we can confirm this for you if it's the case.

Regarding maintenance, have a read of the link on the subject from my signature, this will give details of what to do on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.

regrding the amount of fish, it totally depends based on the species you choose, obviously 10 fish like neons which are 1" long each need a different sized tank to 10 fish like oscars which get to 16" each. Again there's a link in my sig which will help you, it's called 'guide to stocking lists', this will tell you how to work out how many fish to have and weather different species will be compatible.

You'll need to make a decision fairly soon about what to do with livebearer fry, basically if you try to raise them all the tank will be very overcrowded very very soon, they'll have a lot of babies every month. So if you want to keep all the babies you'll need to et up other tanks to grow on the fry and find someone willing to buy/take the fry off your hands when they get bigger. What a lot of people do, although this may sound a bit crul, is just leave it down to natural selection. Leave the pregnant female in the tank, when she has the babies most will get eaten, on occasion the odd one will survive but the population will be controlled.

 

[Boxa]

Careful with the frogs, they look good in the pet shop but they are like a prisoner on dirty protest! they will also start to eat any of the smaller fish that come near them when they get bigger and if you have any air holes at the back of the tank hood you will need to cover them else you will find the frogs doing a reenactment of the great escape only they will more than likely ended up dried up behind the tank.

 

[Mr. Convict]

Most of your questionis have already been answeed by Miss Wiggle.

1 - Do you have a light over your aquarium? Aquatic plants in our aquarium won't do with just the regular sunlight that your aquarium receives on a daily basis, is your val getting sort of brown? and just [sort of] looking as though its rotting in places? The moss and J fern require less light than the val, so don't be fooled into thinking your tank is getting enough light

2 - Yes, a water change has been long overdo, so you would want to do one as fast a possible as the nitrite/nitrate levels may be a bit high in your aquarium atm (depends on how long its been running), you may also want to give your substrate (gravel/sand whatever is on the bottom of your aquarium) a light clean.

3 - It really depends on your preference of fish, i can say now that you will not be able to get most cichlids (especially those from Africa).

4 - Well, it depends, how often have you been feeding the molly fry? If they big enough, the new fry may not be safe, however, if by some chance they are too big to fit into the mouth of all the fish in the tank, it may be safe to release them (i highly doubt that they will be big enough after 3 weeks) but if you really want the new fry to survive, the 3 week old ones certainly have a better chance at surviving than them.

It may also be worth mentioning that you should get 1 more female platy and molly, as when kept in a 1M:1F ratio, the male harasses the female even while she is pregnant which stresses the female out a whole lot..

And also that corys feel more secure being in groups of 6+ however, with 6+ loxozonus, you might need just a tad more filtration.. what is the turn over of your fluval? (ie. how much gallons per hour does it filter)


If you have ANY questions feel free to PM me