Over Crowded Fish Tank

[beefie]

basically i joined here for a bit of help,
i have a 10 gallon tank and at first i just had 1 albino rainbow shark, 2 tuxedo sword tails and 3 neon tetras
and this was already pushing the limits of what my tank could handle i think?

but then my dads schools aquarium had baby fish and about 3 pregnant female guppies and one massive pregnant guppy(its about 3inches) got dumped on me and now i have around about 15 smallish guppies as well as the other fish that were already in there.
All of the fish seem happy as larry but there are loads of them for a small tank, non of them are aggressive except the shark when other fish go near his barrel but that has died down now there are more fish.
The main question is, is there anything i can do to get rid of a few or something i dont really want to throw them away as its a waste and they are very pretty fish.

Cheers

 

[chrisbassist]

option 1, buy another tank for the extras,
option 2, upgrade the 10G to something bigger
option 3, give away or sell the extras
option 4, take extras to a LFS (some won't take anything in, others will give you store credit)

but really, it's up to you, you could do any of those or even a mixture, or whatever.

good luck sorting them allout

 

[Assaye]

You're right in saying that your original stocking was non-ideal. A rainbow shark should really be in a 40 gallon tank, not a 10 gallon, and your neon tetras should really ben in a group of 6 or more. The swordtails would also appreciate some more room - I personally wouldn't keep them in less than 17-20 gallons. In order for your fish to really thrive well into adult hood (bearing in mind that the swords will hit 3 inches and the shark could get to 8 inches), you'll need to seriously consider up-grading your tank or giving the larger fish away.

Now, onto your most pressing problem - the babies. The quickest way of sorting the problem is to get a bigger tank. You've got 19 guppies, right? And the other fish? In order to keep them all happy for now, I'd suggest a 20 gallon tank as a stop-gap measure. This is just a temporary tank, though. When all those guppies grow up (and start breeding again, which they will if you keep the males and females together), they'll need yet more room and of course, the shark needs that big tank I mentioned.

If you don't want to upgrade your tank, get a large storage tub (a Rubbermaid or something else "food safe") and a heap filter (there are resources on here for how to make a cheap sponge filter) and set that up as a temporary tank. It should be very cheap and will be somewhere for you to put the extra fish until you can rehome them. Remember to take a little bit of media out of your current filter to help establish the friendly bacteria in the new one. You can run it without a filter BUT you'll probably need to do daily water changes to keep the ammonia at zero. A good liquid test kit will tell you this.

Now, where to rehome the fish -

1) If you get your post count up on here (and I suggest you do - it's a brilliant forum and you can seriously learn a lot), then you can advertise in our classified forum.

2) Advertise on Craigslist

3) Advertise on Pre-loved

4) Advertise in local shops

5) See if your local fish store will take some

Good luck!