Caryl

The tanks ought to be fine. The fish won't get stressed with a change in feeding routine. Hmm, just read the date and realised you have already gone. Hope all goes well for your fish and your friend's surgery.

Oh dear Chakuna, if you have all those fish in that small tank then most of them will die! A plecostomus will grow way too big for the tank as they are very big fish. Not sure what your sharkfish is but if it is black with a red tail, it too will grow too big. A goldfish should not be mixed with tropical fish and will start to eat your other fish anyway. Angelfish will not fit in a tank this size either. A pair of them might, if they were on their own, but not with all the others. The see through fish must be an x-ray tetra and these are very timid fish who do better in a group of their own kind. Please see if you can return all the fish to the shop, except for 3 female guppies and 1 male and wait until the tank has cycled before adding more. From the list of other fish, the only ones I would suggest you add to the guppies would be the platys.

It makes me angry when a shop sells someone a tank, heater, plus bags of fish :evil: Hopefully they are small fish so will survive the experience. The tank and heaterstat should have been bought on their own and set up for a week at least to check the heaterstat stayed at a stable temperature. If you do daily 20% water changes you should be able to cycle the tank without losing fish. What size tank? What sort of fish (apart from the bristlenose)? What sort of filtration? I would return the bristlenose as there will be nothing for it to browse on in a newly set up tank. It also needs wood in its diet so needs wafers with this added or, preferably, a bit of driftwood in the tank.

Sounds good chrissy. I hope you others take her up on it.

Welcome MRSkz. Sounds like we are getting more southerners in here. Time to start a club in Invercargill? :lol:

Shops will come up with all sorts of fancy names if they think it will improve sales Caper is correct, a sex ratio of at least 1 male to 3 or 4 females is recommended. Even 1 male only in the tank with any number of females.

Hi and welcome from me too. I have been away on holiday for a week and it is taking hours to catch up on the posts I have missed!

Hi deevus. Have you met anyone from the Dunedin Aquarium Society? They can put you in touch with other marine keepers. Ask Denise at the Pet Warehouse for details. BTW welcome to the fishroom. 8)

It just goes to show there can't be much else of interest to do in Wellington! :lol: Hi and welcome to the fishroom

Excellent pics phillz. Hopefully we will see fry when we get to your place next week! Don't be surprised if the parents eat the eggs though.

I find neons to be not very hardy and it may have just been the stress of being caught and transported to a new environment that killed it.

Take Raven's help Maxy and you should be able to get the tank sorted.

I suspect he was ill and so was able to be sucked up the filter. You must turn the filter back on or the good bacteria in it will die and pollute the tank. Put the neon in a container and float it in the tank. If he looks too far gone then put it out of its misery.

Whitebait is made up of 5 different species of the Galaxiids; most common being inanga (G maculatus) then koaro (G brevipinnis), banded kokopu (G fasciatus), shortjaw kokopu (G postvectis) and giant kokopu (G argentius) Inanga grow to 9cm, koaro 18cm, banded and shortjawed kokopu 20cm, and the giant kokopu (also known as maori trout) grows up to 50cm

It isn't a bother and someone else is bound to be having similar problems so will find your questions and the answers helpful. Don't give up, it will be sorted shortly and you will know not to make that mistake again.

A chiller is an expensive device to keep the water temperature down to levels the fish can cope with. In this case, I imagine 18C maximum. Inanga are whitebait and are legal if caught during the whitebaiting season. My son used to have a group of them in a 2ft tank. Very pretty fish with subtle colouring that caught the light nicely. Banded kokopu (Galaxias fasciatus), not kokapu, grow over 20cm. Juveniles are good climbers and can escape from buckets by wriggling up the sides

Check my reply under your other thread too Maxy.

That is a rather full tank for one that has only been going since February. You have an odd mix of fish there too. The bumblebee gobies are brackish and should not be in fresh water. The rams like an acidic pH but the clown loach prefers alkaline. The shark and the clown will also outgrow the tank eventually. I think I saw in another thread where you have a bigger tank coming. Is it possible to set it up straight away? If so, transfer the gravel and filter over to it, along with the water for some instant relief for the fish. If you can return some of the fish to the shop it would be good. I suspect the clown loach will be the next to suffer.

They can go off real fast even with water in the filter and the smell is dreadful!

One thing to look for when sourcing alternative cheaper gravels is sharpness. Some gravel has very sharp edges and these can damage fishy noses and feelers as they fossick through the substrate.

When I had goldfish in a tank I would go down to the local botanical garden and haul the oxygen weed out of the river there, being careful to note if any weed spraying had been done recently (easy to tell as the grass edges would be brown but easy to ask one of the garden workers). Readily replenished plant source and of help to the council in keeping the weed down as they are always having to cut it back . The water is quite fast flowing so no problems with stagnant water. The Java fern mentioned previously also does well.

Your hospital/quarantine tank must be large enough to house your biggest fish if it gets sick and needs isolating or any group of fish you buy on your shopping spree. This tank does not need to be set up all the time and a filter can be kept in the main tank as a spare until needed then whipped out and into the smaller tank when required. Of course, it is important it be thoroughly cleaned before it is put back into the main tank again!

Quite a few plants can be grown as floating plants and not rooted. Water sprite is Ceratopteris thalictroides and very similar to Hygrophila difformis which is also called water wisteria. Both do well both planted and left floating. The fine root systems are great for small fry to hide in. If you have a plant that is green with white edges, I suspect it is not a true aquatic plant and is actually a house plant. Many of these are sold as aquatic when they are really bog plants. They will last a year or so in the aquarium before rotting and dying.

All my driftwood came from the beach. Salt content is negligible after a good soak and scrub in freshwater to clean it. Just make sure shells and stuff are not wedged in nooks and crannies. All I ever did with mine was scrub it with a nail brush, give it a squirt with the hose then put it in the tank.

Fish are vegetables :lol: Goldfish nibble at the tender new roots coming up so tend to kill off the rest of the plant in the process, and uproot it. They tend to leave Java fern alone and I also had success with water sprite. I planted half and left the rest floating.