Hi everyone
I've been learning by trial and error (am still learning loads), and I figured it would be nice to show my early mistakes/near-misses, so you can avoid them yourselves. Other newbies and more experienced aquarists, could you also post your experiences so we don't fall in the same traps? (please do try to keep it species-generic)
Thanks guys!
Fish are high maintenance: Please don't buy fish thinking they're low maintenance. They're a very challenging pet with water changes, babies, vacuuming, bullying, disease, water testing, medicating dosage, compatibility research, etc. Not for the light-hearted.
(Armadillo)
Cycling, cycling, cycling: Do read about the nitrogen cycle (
http://www.fishlore.com/Forum/97-aqu...d-first.0.html) before getting any fish for your tank. If you don't, you could have a nasty surprise and find all your fish dead one morning, when they seemed fine the night before. Ammonia and Nitrite spikes can kill in a few hours. 2 dead angels and a balloon molly would testify for me if they were still alive.
(Armadillo)
Main tank - go big: Do not buy a tank under 15G, even if it's your first tank (especially if it's your first tank). Aside from when it comes to vacuuming, bigger is easier. This is because a larger volume of water will have your fish less tressed hence less prone to disease. It will also buffer from unwanted fluctuations in pH or temperature. It will also slow down toxic spikes.
(Armadillo)
Spare tanks:Always have at least 1 small spare tank handy (I would recommend 2) so you can:
- quickly quarantaine sick-looking fish and treat them without affecting your other fish.
- quickly re-house newly hatched fry
- quarantaine new fish (for about 4 weeks)
The tank will need to be equipped with the following:
- Heater
- Hiding places: All fish need shelter from stress, especially sick fish.
- Fake plants: That way, you can thoroughly clean them from pathogens once the treatment is finished and the fish has returned to its permanent home. Also, real plants aren't always resistant to medication. Fish do need the look of plants to relax them.
- Thermometer
- Air pump
- Filter
You will need to make sure the hospital tank stays cycled even when there are no fish in it. One way to do this is to keep dropping fish food every day, and to vaccuum excessive mess. Test your water for Nitrates before adding the fish and do a water change if necessary. Do monitor your water for Ammonia/Nitrite in the first few days after introducing the fish to the tank.
You will need to also test the water's temperature and pH to make sure these levels closely match those of the main tank before introducing a fish to your hospital tank.
(Armadillo)
Spare heater: always have a spare heater handy. They're not that costly, and they could really get you out of trouble if one of your heaters fails.
(Armadillo)
Unreadable thermometer: Spend the extra money and go digital. I bought one, recently, for my 55, and I'll never own another type of thermometer.... These things ROCK!!!! (
DarkWolf29a)
Water test strips: Consensus seems to be to buy the liquid tests immediately, and not bother with the paper test strips. I found the paper type quick and cheap, but badly inaccurate.
(Armadillo)
Overcrowding: It's worth overstating: please start with very few fish. You'll have a much more individual relationship with each of the fish, and it's so much nicer to see happy, comfortable fish, than to wonder what's wrong every 2 minutes because they suffer from the overcrowding. The rule of thumb is: 1 inch of
fully grown fish per gallon. This will make maintenance (fish can poop for England) much more manageable. Of course, do read up on your fish' individual requirements in terms of companionship. Some are schooling fish.
(Armadillo)
Pet shop advice...: Do not always trust what the pet shops are saying. Please do some independent research first. It's a petshop who told me it would be perfectly OK to house 3 common plecos in a 50L (10G) tank! I can't emphasize this enough. You could test them by saying you want a common pleco. If they don't advise you to get a huge tank, you're in the wrong place.
(Armadillo)
Don't listen to your local fish stores' peoples' advice, unless you know they know for sure what they are talking about.
A friend of our worked for one of the major lfs chains. He wasn't allowed to tell the customer not to buy a fish. Even tho he knew that the fish the customer wanted couldn't go with what they had. I once over heard someone talking about having piranha in with Oscars and other SA cichlids. They store clerk just nodded & smiled. NOT ALL SA American fish can go together lol.
So research on your own time before you go to a pet/fish store. All you have to do is Google the name of the fish you like or tropical fish...and all kinds of good info pops up
(Allie)
Male - females: Plan in advance whether you want a male-only, female-only, or mixed tank. Read up on the species to see what is recommended. If you want a mixed tank of livebearers, make sure you have 3 to 4 females to each male.
Research how to tell the difference between male/female yourself, as the pet shops actually can get that wrong! That's how I ended up with an extra male which I had purchased as a female to deal with my original male's aggression problem.
(Armadillo)
Overfeeding:? Many people say that a fish's stomach is in general as small as his eye. That should help you visualise the necessary food quantities. Many fish will just go on eating as long as there is food, and will gorge themselves sick. Fish will die from overeating sooner than from starvation, and they'lll keep begging even if they don't actually need anymore food.
I feed them small amounts several times a day (2x for the adults, 3x for the fry). During each feeding time, I feed them a small pinch of food, then wait until they've eaten it. Then I give them another pinch, etc. About 3 to 4 times.?
I also have a large piece of vegetable that they can pick from in the tank if they get peckish. Be sure to remove any uneaten food after 2 days or so, to avoid rotting.
Not feeding them at all one day a week would do them good, but am too much of a softie to do that.
(Armadillo)
Veggies:? If your fish is omnivorous or vegetarian, do experience with vegetables. Boil a piece of cucumber/zucchini for example, and cut it lengthways before putting in the tank. Might take a few attempts for them to understand its' food but after that, it's fish fiesta baby!
If they're constipated (poo stays stuck to the fish for a long time), try peas. It's hilarious when you give them unpeeled peas. They behave like seals! Again, don't overfeed them. Drop one pea in there and see what happens. Remove any uneaten remains.
(Armadillo)
Water conditions of each fish species: If you're going to mix fish of different species, please find out what their requirements are in terms of pH, temperature and salt at least, not just their compatibility in terms of aggression. You could be in for a nasty surprise and discover that they need drastically different conditions.
(Armadillo)
Water changes: Do regular (weekly at least) and small (25% at most, unless you have a disease/toxin problem) water changes. This will keep your water in reasonable conditions in terms of nitrates/nitrites. Do condition the tap water before putting it back in. Best tip I found from this forum on pouring the water back in is to use a jar to pour the beginning of a heavy bucket back in. Then, use the bucket but place your hand under the stream so as to create a small waterfall rather than a knocking hurricane. Oh, and another small one: keep your water conditionner and salt (if you use any) next to the sink rather than with the rest of your aquarium stuff. It will save you a lot of backing and fro'ing! I am also going to try a watering can.
(Armadillo)
Oxygen bubbles: Do buy an airpump. My fish love it and it's really good to oxygenate the water (so good for your bacteria) and to stir up the water (against algae/stagnation).
(armadillo)
Hiding places: Always provide lots of hiding places in the tank. They'll really be more relaxed as they'll come out when they want. Having lots of hiding places will also help with bullying. Stress causes disease, so lots of hiding places is a good preventive measure. Avoid solely decorative ornaments. as room will soon become an issue in your tank. One hiding place is often not enough as if a fish is dominant and territorial, it's submissive counterparts will need some place else to hide.
(armadillo)
New ornaments in the tank: Please boil them several times if possible (some melt if you boil them!). Do not wash the ornament with soap.
For driftwood, soak in water and rinse off any excess dye. This could take days by the way, but keep doing it (boiling, rinsing, boiling, rinsing, etc.) until no more dye comes out.
Please do not use something you've found on the beach/in the forest. May contain pathogens, and may rot in the water.
(Armadillo)
Net: Always have a several nets handy. You never know when you might need to transfer a fish to the quarantaine tank. Make sure you have nets of the right size for all your fish. I have a huuuge one, and a couple of small ones.
(Armadillo)
Maternity section: Buy a floating maternity section for your tank so that you can isolate aggressive fish for a little while or females about to give birth. Do choose the soft fine-net type rather than the hard plastic type (if you were going to use it to hold fry, gaps in the plastic type are sometimes too big and fry can escape). I also heard horror stories about the section falling in the water (thus releasing the fry in the main aquarium).
(Armadillo)
Aquarium diary: I log (with dates) things like the number of fry I've found, symptoms/behaviours that worry me,? improvements on old symptoms, changes to the aquarium (e.g. new oxygen pump, new ornament, new food, etc.), etc. I also log water parameters so I can detect trends.
(Armadillo)
Leaving algae wafers in the water too long A friend did that and the whole 29g tank died of nitrite poisoning.? The effect is amplified in a tank of distilled (rather than treated tap) water, like she was using. A few days is enough to start the deadly spike, maybe even as little as one.? That's why the package says remove uneaten portions after 12 hours.? In treated tap water, they seem to grow hair and the effect isn't as bad, but in distilled water, they swelled to mammoth size and killed everything.
(BettaCouple)
Aerate your substrate: (whether sand, gravel, etc.). I almost lost every fish I had in a 20 gal. long tank because I failed to vacuum under decorations in the tank. The gravel collected pockets of anaerobic gasses, and when one of those bubbles seeped out of the gravel, it poisoned my tank within a couple of hours. I think only about 2 or 3 of my fish survived. Now I clean all the gravel in the tank by lifting rocks and decorations, and the tank I have with sand is kept airated by MTS (malaysian trumpet snails).
(Gunnie)
Too many fish at once after cycling: When I set up my 55, it took 20 days to cycle initially.? Despite having read to only add a couple of fish at a time to avoid overwhelming the bio-filter once cycled, I immediately bought 4 angels for the tank.? That touched off a mini-cycle that took nearly another month to get through.? Besides teaching me to limit the number of fish being introduced at one time, it also taught me that the term "mini" cycle is dumb...there was nothing "mini" about it!?
(SGould)
Two heaters in the tank: I've come to the realization, one heater isn't enough...buy two smaller ones. If one goes crazy, the other will, pretty much, quit working so you won't roast fish.? Boiled fish is bad.
(DarkWolf29a)
Acclimation I lost 2 out of 5 male guppies in one batch then i bought anothr 5 and lost 4 of them. Both times they died off within a week. It must've been too fast acclimation. The first time I was quite careful, but maybe not slow enough, 2nd time I floated the bag and asked my sister to add about a cupful of water to the bag and she accidently tipped the fish into the tank! Too late then to do anything so just hoped for the best. What I learned....dont get someone else to do it for you (especially a clumsy sis ) and do it s-l-o-w-l-y. What I do is float the bag for about half an hour, then add a cupful of water every 20-30 mins until the bag is full THEN release the fish. since the guppy incidents i havent lost any more fish in the first week, but i'm always nervous for them during that first week . if not acclimated slowly the fish get stressed which inevitably leads to disease which can not always be cured despite our best efforts.
(Tan B)
I really like this link on acclimation:
http://saltaquarium.about.com/cs/acc...a/aa111102.htm. It shows various methods. Be very careful with Oto cats (drip acclimation recommended for them).
(Armadillo)
Additional filter in every tank Keep a cheap, small, foam pad filter in every tank. That way, your water is more filtered and more agitated. The main advantage is that you can take the foam pad from the spare filter to put it in a filter in a new tank to kickstart cycling.
(Armadillo)
Vacuuming the gravel When I started, I didn't even know I had to vaccuum the substrate! You can imagine what state my tank floor was in after a month. Vacuuming can be done using very cheap equipment: a hose and a bucket. You can also buy a special hose from your LFS, that has ends in a larger, hard plastic funnel.
Creating a vaccuum in your tube and ensuring your bucket is placed under the highest water level of the aquarium, you can place the vaccuum cleaner on the substrate and shake the substrate slightly so that any unwanted matter gets sucked up the tube.
Avoid vaccuuming your whole gravel area at once to leave the bacteria a chance to resettle. I would vaccuum 1/2 your tank every week if the surface is not too big.
(Armadillo)
Juveniles will grow. A LOT! A Small pleco in the petstore will grow much larger. The same with pretty much any fish that has a (SM) next to its name. This doesn't mean that this is a smaller breed of fish. It just means that it's a juvenile.
(Sabi)
Water = wet! When adding things to external filter e.g bio spira after filter has been on take the filter out of the water i just flooded my living room (luckily i got laminate flooring).
(Honeyg)
I've made some floods going into a tank to get something out when it was full - water in every direction and of course under the tank.
(BettaCouple)
Only buy aquarium gravel, not garden stuff Don't buy regular gravel for your tank, buy aquarium stuff! Garden gravel may be cheaper, but it is really dirty and may contain stones which will There is also loads of sand and little particles in it... no amount of washing will stop it from making your tank cloudy. Guaranteed inert pea gravel from your LFS is a much safer bet... I learned this the hard way!
(Bill)
Cleaning the tank with detergent Never clean your tank with bleach or any other cleaners. Clean with a scrubber/sos pad type and water. If you don't rinse it properly the chemicals could kill the fish. A friend of ours cleaned the outside her tank with Windex...but then used the same cloth to wipe the inside. All her fish died.
(Allie)
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