Your Biggest Mistakes...

[smarties]

And where do those heads blowing party things appear from in my posts its doing me head in....

 

[gadazobe]

Smarties, it sounds like we have the same lfs

 

[pebbles]

when i had my first tank ,two and a half years ago now,my cycling went smoothly, again like smarties,due to my fish store.i did always point out tho ,how long my tank had been running. i can remember going in after it had been running for 4 weeks to get what has become our favourite fish a pair of pearl gouramis, i was sent home almost empty handed tho ,because when i told them i thought it had probably cycled,they asked for the test results and suggested i wait 2 more weeks ,very nicely of course,and said that cycling normally takes 6 weeks.that was the problem, i hadnt realised just how important testing was .i cycled the tank with two platies plus the babes she had after two weeks[only 4 survived ,mum eat the rest]i didnt overfeed , everything was well,so instead of my gouramis ...we went home with testing kits.i returned of course in time with a big smile,quite confidently to ask...two pearl gouramis please...... pebbles

 

[wuvmybetta]

thanks to a great lfs who refused to sell me fish, besides the few I bought to cycle with (not that I really understood the term "cycle" yet) I didn't do the "add too many fish thing" at 1st . But as soon as my tank cycled the 1st time I added a bunch of fish at once and of course things went crazy and I had to re-cycle all over again which took forever

my biggest mistake was with the term "filter media" I clearly had no idea what that referred to and honestly thought it meant the carbon pad in my filter , and due to advice on another website I removed most of my gravel (crash) thinking that would be best for the fish, a very helpful mod from here cleared the subject up for me thankfully and I added more gravel....but yet still didn't quite get the cycling part and I constantly destroyed my bacteria colonies with very frequent thorough gravel vacs (still thinking I was helping the fish by lowering nitrites ) again crashing it, all in all it took about 9-11 weeks to do a lot of learning and to fully cycle my 29, no deaths thankfully, but still it was a stressful experience

 

[smarties]

our favourite fish a pair of pearl gouramis,

Coincidence, I have a pair of the exact same and they are by far the most active and nicest in the tank at the minute. Do yours chase each other everywhere?

 

[pebbles]

i certainly do ,they are in the process of getting very friendly, he keeps making nests ,but in the community tank it gets a bit busy. will be moving them to private quarters as soon as i can!. the last few days they seem to be ignoring each other and then the chase begins. i love the way their feelers reach out.... pebbles