Shelley

After all that stress and worry...I go back to have another look...and now can't tell which neon was sick (should have got my daughter out of bed, she has named all 5 neons and can tell them apart). They are all swimming around fine...they still all have that strange munted up bumpy looking bodys (not as in sores or ulcers/no broken skin or anything just a weird shape...kind of like they have all been pummelled with a lil soft hammer...sort of dented) colour seems fine. (Been reading up on neon tetra disease, don't think it is that). Thanks. ...oh...and happy easter to you all.

We have had out neon tetras for about 4 months and so far they seem to have been the hardiest of our fish...however the last few weeks they have been LOOKING awful. it is so hard to describe..... sort of blothcy looking body...a really munted up shape....might be wrinkles! could be old age! they kind of look dented but I haven't worried too much as they still appeared quite happy. This morning one is bobbing half way down the tank...nose down tail straight up...and using his/her fins to stay in that spot (bob bob bob)....I have had one of them do smething similar where he would sort of constantly lunge in a downward stabbing like motion, but this one isn't nearly as energetic about it just keeps bobbing pushing its nose downwards drifting upwards pushing downwards again. it's colour i think is ok it is possibly the red may be less than before. Their fins looke a little nibbled too although these fish seem to be pretty much boss of the aquarium if anyone does the bullying it is going to be them.... my female guppy also has a chink out of her tail (i dont like to leap to conclusions about fin rot) I do have some quite aggresive wee fish, little things that I am not sure what they are orangey red in colour with a largish black spot and a black mop of an upper fin. and my black widows. (both these fish give my new fighter hell...he is a real sook as he had already had a rough time in the shop and had been moved away from some lemon tetras) If i had a separate tank i would move these fish along with the neons into it as i love the fish but not the way they treat everyone else....but...this doesn't help me know what is going on with the dodgy neon...as i say all of them look a bit munted up but all have seemed to be happy until this morning with this one fish doing the headstand bobby thing. Don't want to put it out of its misery, as i have had a neon before do soething really strange and thought he was a goner....and he has been fine ever since. 360 litre tank, PH 7.6, Temp 27, ammonia 0, nitrite .05, nitrate 10, GH 80 KH 40. Other tank mates.... gouramis(7 assorted), plattys(3),swordtails(3),guppies(2),blackwidows(3),those red things (2), corys (2), figher(1), head and tail lights (4) Thanks everyone.

LOL......someone will get the SPCA onto you! I am trying to find the time to swat up on how to breed/grow/create/do-whatever-it-is-you-do white worms or brine shrimp....I have had a look at a few postings but it has been a mad house here for...well.... I was going to say days...then weeks...then months...but hell it's been DECADES! I don't know anything about this the word "brine" suggests salt....do these need rinsing before feeding out if they are bred in salty conditions :oops: (blushing profusely....wellllll I don't know!).... or are they only for Marine fish? (blushes some more)....and why do the pet shops look at you like you have six heads when you ask about the culture for white worms etc?

Thanks Alan :oops: (I never thought of that)....that will make navigating this place so much easier :roll: and thank you for not laughing :lol: so much appreciate the shove in the right direction...so much to learn and i want to know all of it NOW Cheers

:oops: You mean....that isn't normal? ooops :oops:

Now....this really interests me...my daughter has been on at me to...errr....do something about "brine shrimp" and i have read here before people talking about "cultures" and "white worms" . Please help this old thicko out...i asked at the pet shop the other day (and came home with 5 more fish...that is IT...the tank is full new tank please) ....and they asked me what I was on about.....lol...and as I didn't actually KNOW what I was on about, I couldn't tell them. Any information about this will be gratefully recieved...or any hints about where to look on this site (as I know I have read about this before, but can't remember where) ..... I want to know....what is involved....i.e. how to/how long/the nutrients it provides/which fish (all fish?) enjoy this in their diet/is it solely used to condition fish for breeding or just as a protein supplement....or for some REAL food instead of that flakey stuff/ and where to get the 'culture' (?) from...what quantity lasts for how long etc (my daughter saw some brine shrimp stuff for sale on trademe for $100 and said they had only used a few teaspoons (????) Sorry to be so thick but it would be such cool fun to grow something nutritious and yummy for our fishies. Thanks in advance.

sorry I can't be at all helpful with this query as i am too thick to understand things like pumps/filters and lights...it is something I really have to get a grip of if I am going to be successful at this!...BUT....I am still trying to pick my jaw up off the ground....675 litre tank? wow! oh oh oh!!!!!! what are the dimensions? how absolutely stunning! *grins* please let us know what you are going to put in it.

Hi I'm new here too. Your English was perfectly easy to read...and sounds very interesting...setting up a new tank always sounds interesting! I also love the gouramis I have a couple of blue threedot gouramis 2 honey dwarf gouramis, and one kissing gourami (and don't tell my husband, but I am visiting the pet store tomorrow to look at more!) I am sure you will love it on this site, it is so good to learn information from people that love this lifestyle and who really KNOW what they are talking about. I have never been good at science (the water tests are a bit of a challenge) and also hopeless at electrics or plumbing.....heehee...you should see me trying to work out what people are on about when they are talking about filters and pumps!..... but like anything if it is important enough, I will learn.....and now I have fish in my life I can't imagine ever being without them.

I think the tank looks great! lol, I had to look twice I thought the blue gravel was actually blue light (doh)...and I quite liked the wee fish on the strings lovely looking tank (me wants more tanks, me wants more tanks!)

Thanks again everyone..... overfeeding....could be the problem..... although they appear to be STARVING at breakfast time, and it is all gone in about a minute. I worry about some of the slower ones to get moving missing out and starving to death ...though I hear it is much worse to over-feed than underfeed. my groovy wee glass sucker died this morning (R.I.P. Harold), but we still have the wee vacuum cleaner fishy with the cute wee whiskers...not sure what he is ....those fancy names leave me bamboozled. he is a paleish brown/grey colour with browny speckles...and very active quivering his wee whiskers all over the tank.(Gary) I will replace Harold and perhaps get another Gary.....I wonder if Gary is male or female, lol. The platties were still looking a bit seedy and i re-read the label on the CYCLE bottle....and added a dose...Nitrate was up to either 50 or 100....colours are almost identical but a BIG difference between 50 and 100. Also added about a half dose of the water conditioner (ran out) and the fish do seem to have perked up already....i shall try NOT to use accu clear OR the algae rid....already the front glass is green.... i intended turing off the light this morning before going out...and forgot, lol but i shall try and lower the light levels...i read somewhere that the type of light might make a difference??? (2 flourescent tubes) If my guppy isn't pregnant it sure isn't through lack of trying....I'm coming back as a guppy in the next life

21 tanks?......COOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLL! and to whoever had the hundred odd tanks...how much IS your power bill? I agree with mustcooktea......i am always clicking on tanks for sale on trademe, and finding them in AUCKLAND. (probably just as well). I think I have spent about $1000 on fishies and stuff for them (including the tank) in the last couple of months (shhhhh no-one tell my husband) Would love to hear what you are going to do with all those tanks :lol:

I am absolutely mesmerised! I don't blame you for watching them all day. Well done and good luck with the babies. I think you have done a wonderful job! Thanks for the photos too, it is great to see.

Thanks again everyone for your help. I am really happy to hear conflicting ideas, what works for some doesn't work for others etc. My mother kept fish for years when we lived in Christchurch and never cycled a tank,(when I told her about it she had never heard of it) and rarely lost a fish (maybe Christchurch had great water?) she has a small tank now in Temuka, and has had a few losses but nothing major....when I talk about nitrates she thinks I have gone mad, lol. I have done a 30% water change tonight...with NO additives...and everyone is sulking although I was very discreet about siphoning the water out, and siphoning it back in. Nitrates are still up but down to 10 now which is better than 20. I will check it in the morning and if it is still up I will do another 30% change. Ph has dropped to 7, ammonia is nil, nitrite is still .05 . Plattys and swords are the least happy of everyone in the tank...and I can't find Gary (lil vacuum cleaner fishy) but it is a good sign he isn't floating belly up....... fingers and toes crossed I will get this water episode SORTED some time soon, and my tank can settle back down to having happy inhabitants again. Thanks again everyone, your help is greatly appreciated.

Just found information here on how to post photos....hmmmmm....didn't work for me as I had to list email addresses of those I wanted to share photos with (???) but I have seen photos on here without links to click on to open them?) anyway...the picture of my sick sword wasn't that clear anyway

Thank you all so much for your helpful feedback. I am not normally a chemical kind of girl so am not fussed on using chemicals at all.However prior to using ANY chemicals i was having a lot of losses....i realise now this was due to the fact my tank had not cycled fully. The water conditioner does make the tank cloudy but the fish actually seem very happy to take it, the 'cycle' stuff too seemed to be agreeable to them however the only other time i have used the algae rid they were not happy. I am quite prepared to accept that they have far too much light it is a very light room for starters...and i do tend to keep the curtains pulled to stop the glare on the tank (and to help me admire my fishies!) but the light goes on around 7.30 am ish and off about 10pm ish...so i shall cut that down (i just like SEEING them! lol. Yes i agree i may have over-cleaned the tank. it did look like it needed it but it is quite likely i removed too much of the good bacteria that was doing it's job. Algae is a major problem i felt it was choking the plants (not to mention what it was doing to the glass :roll: ) and they look much better for having had a clean, the tank itself looks great and like i say the fish look great. I may have it overstocked for a new-ish tank.....most of the fish are little, and it is a BIG tank. The sword that died was 'new' less than a week ago and had seemed quite happy in her new home right up until; this morning. The water change was done Sunday. Our 360 litre tank now houses: 5 neon tetras, 2 blue three spot gouramis, 2 honey dwarf gouramis, 1 kissing gourami, 4 head and tail lights, 3 sword tails, 3 black widow tetras 3 platties, 2 guppies (he won't leave her ALONE!), 2 little orangey red things....(maybe some sort of tetra or barb???) the cutest funkiest little vacuum cleaner type fishy that loves cleaning up the stones....and the cutest funkiest little glass sucker fishy (whatever they are). These fish have been added gradually the latest arrivals were the platties a couple of the swords the glass sucker and the dwarf gouramis and kissing gourami...prior to that we had no 'new' fish for at least 2 weeks....and no deaths over that period of time. Nitrit has sat at .05 for a couple of weeks or more prior to which it had been 0. We have been doing weekly water changes of no less than 25%. I shall get on with a 30% water change now. We dont have chlorine in our water but i was using the water conditioner AND the 'cycle'. am i best to use just one of these items? or neither? or maybe a half dose....over that size tank it seems like one hell of a lot of chemical. They both seem like good products but I don't want them working against each other...specially when the fish seem so happy (apart from the DEAD one!) why are the fish so happy when the nitrates are such a mess?

We were just congratulating ourselves this morning and not having had a death for over 2 weeks. We should have kept our mouths shut. We did a 30% water change on Sunday. The rocks and plants were GREEN with algae so had them soaking in water doctored with algae rid while we worked on the tank. We did give the tank a pretty thorough clean with the vacuum/siphon hose thing which stirred up the stones at the bottom but cleaned a lot of debris out, we wiped the walls of the tank to remove the worst of the algae with a clean cloth (no added ingredient for cleaning) and we added 'aqua plus' water conditioner, 'cycle' according to the directions on the bottles when we replaced the water(we used both these products last time we did a water change and had no losses) we also added some accu clear and a small dosage of algae rid the only thing we suspect the fish dont like is the algae rid..... anyway....the tank was looking great and the fish looked very happy, yesterday was the best I have seen our tank looking and all fish looked very happy and well and active (not to mention amorous!) This morning one of our femal swords was looking bad. She had a white spot on her tail and almost a white graze like mark over the top of her head. I did not think this was whitespot as that had been described to me as looking like someone had sprinkled salt over the fish. She was quiet and sitting on the bottom of the tank looking very sorry for herself...she would swim about a little but other fish would bother her so i scooped her into a breeding box to give her a rest from the other fish while I did some water tests. Bloody hell!!!! the Nitrate read 20! Nitrit .05 (cannot get this back down to 0 although it has been at 0 previously)PH 7.4, ammonia 0 - 0.6, GH 80 mg/l KH 50 mg/l temp sits happily at about 27c. The rest of the population of the tank look great, very happy, but I went into a blind panic to read nitrate of 20! I took some photos of our sick sword (I hope I can work out how to post them here)...her tail looked a bit raggedy also.....and she went from happy to sick to dead in around 3 hours. So far everyone else seems fine but I am worried about the nitrate and how to correct it. Also I find the test kits quite hard to read to me the samples could be almost any one of about 5 colours! it takes me some time to work out which colour it is closest to. Does anyone else have this problem? If anyone can enlighten me about what to do i would be most grateful.I would hate to lose any more of my lovely fish. Tank has been up and running for around 2 months (? guessing) it is 360 litres. we have some plants (have just ordered more via trademe) ....bugger...how do you add a picture? was hoping to show you my sick fish in case you could diagnose what was wrong with her....clicked on img but there was no option to add the pic (???)

thanks for that

Wow! How incredibly exciting! The fighter fish has got to be one of the most beautiful fish around. I have only ever seen a female fighter in books and to be honest she didn't look a lot different to the male she was squirming with....are the differences obvious? (certainly didn't appear so in the photograph in this book but maybe it was the picture). That is so amazing to hear of the fighter gathering the babies and pushing them into the nest.....the tank has me mesmerised as it is but I wouldn't be able to tear myself away at all if all that was going on. Please let us know the progress of your fighters.

I clicked on the link and a grey screen came up (java?) but there was no connection, however, I do have mIRC, what channel is the room and what is it called and I will try and find you there :-) ...i am known as happy^ on mIRC so I will look out for you. (For the room I visit there most often I enter through sorcery net)

That sounds interesting when and where was that and how often does it happen? My mother is a keen enthusiast too she has only one small tank now but when I was a child there were tanks all over the house. She has just given my daughter her baby guppies and is starting to talk about where she could find room for more tanks! Our own albino guppy is set to burst sometime soon.....either that or she has been eating far too much breakfast! (which she hasn't). Isn't it exciting!

Hi there my daughter and I are new to the 'hobby' (is it a hobby or a lifestyle?) My daughter bought a large tank (340 litres) a couple of months back and we are stumbling our way through the usual mistakes (I suppose) that newbies make. Never realised that there was so much more to keeping fish than looking at them being pretty in the tank! Frantically we are absorbing information from every source possible. And have spent a small fortune getting together all the absolute essentials for a happy healthy tank. I think it is safe to say we are hooked even at this early stage. But we have had some losses due to the fact that we were just far to naive...certainly there will be no more purchases until such time as we have the tank in a more stable state. (The word 'cycling' was foreign to us a couple of months ago ) Anyway we are here to stay and keen to learn from others experiences. Cheers. Shelley

Interested in clubs from the areas of Timaru to Ashburton.

I have gone through a similar thing. It doesn't help knowing that at the time...you didn't know.....but I found a forum very much like this one for overseas and learned about cycling this of course does not help the ten fish I have watched die Learning the hard way will make sure we don't make the same mistakes again and I have told my daughter we will not be getting more fish until we are certain the tank is a loving safe and happy environment for our fishies to be. I have learned in a very short space of time that forums such as these, hold a whole lot more information that the average pet shop. (The pet shop we visited had only water hardness kit, nitrite kit and PH)....I have just ordered various 'essential' items from a store I stumbled upon whilst buying fishie products on trademe....and am so looking forward to getting the water conditions sorted once and for all for these beautiful creatures. Good luck with your new tank...and good luck with the remaining stock.