One Or Two Questions ?

[JohnBull]

Hi,


Tank is now fishless cycled and first ever tropical fish are now imminent.


1. How often do you feed fish such as Guppies,Tetras and Swordtails ?

2. How do you clean subtrate without stressing fish ?

3. How often do I do a water change ?

4. What percentage of water do you remove ?

5. How often do I check my filter pads in my internal filter (JEWEL TRIGON 190 ) ?


6. Finally,what API checks (if any , should I be looking for as the fish settle in during those first few days ?


Thanks in advance.



John.

 

[hanny93]

1) Once a day is usually fine, a pinch of food or however much is eaten within 2 minutes is good, with no food given one day a week, so say you feed every day other than monday.

2)Depends what substrate you have! For any substrate you need a gravel cleaner. To clean gravel, start the vaccuum up so the gravel cleaner is sucking up water into a bucket, then plunge the head of the gravel cleaner into the gravel and watch all the muck float up, after ten seconds or so, move on to another part of the substrate.
If you have sand like me and many others do, hold the gravel cleaner about an inch above the sand and swirl it round until you get sort of a hurricane looking thing going on, its easy enough once you get the hang of it, just DONT plunge the head in like you do with gravel!

3)I'd say once a week to twice a week if you really are fully cycled, are you through your qualifying week?

4) It's up to you, I do anything between 20 and 50% each week.

5) Give them a swish in tank water (ONLY tank water) that you have removed during a water change every month or so to dislodge and large pieces of muck. Despite what JUWEL say, you do not need to replace the pads, they last years, some people have the same sponges they had ten years ago the only thing I change is the filter floss, which is cheap, you dont need to buy juwel's own specially cut to fit ones, its easy enough to cut your own I get a bag of filter floss from my lfs, the size of an A4 sheet of paper and about 5" deep for £2

6) I'm not sure what you mean by this, do you mean tests? I'd say test every day for ammonia and nitrite for the first week after you add fish, because you might have some die off, especially if its been a while since you completed the cycle before you add any fish. If you think it's going to be a long time before you get fish, drop a pinch or two of flake food in, just to keep the bacteria going.

 

[fluttermoth]

I'll just pop in to back up hanny's advice; 100% right and if you follow her guidlines you won't go far wrong

 

[The Taffy Apple]

May i pop into this one for a second...?

What maybe beneficial to your fish is to try and immitate what and how your fish would eat in the wild. IE; my fish (see signature for inhabitants) get fed once a day for 3/4 days. They then wont get fed for 2 days. Then they'll get fed twice a day for 2 days, then no feeding for a day, etc etc etc..

Ensure you have a variety of food types, such as flake, tablet, frozen bloodworm, maybe some shelled peas and/or brine shrimp as a weekly treat.

Hope this helps .

Terry.