book reading diary

I am starting to read this very old book that my grandpa had on tropical fish from front to back cover and the guy says that there is a way to figure out how much water surface your fish need for oxygen. Some of the measurements were for small fish like guppys they need 1.5 by 1.5 inches of water surface so every guppy you had needs that much square inches of water surface and large fish like cichlids that are around 5" needs 6 by 9 square inches of water surface to be comfortable in oxygen. Remember this is calculated without extra areation and a tank at around 76dgrees Farenheit I belive. What are your opinions on this, Do you think its a good rule. I will go get the name and author of the book soon and correct anything if I did it wrong and keep writing interesting facts I find so I will keep the post as like a diary. Feel free to write anything you want on here questions or comments.

 

I don't know about that method, but a good general rule to calculate inches of fish based on surface area--and therefore amount of oxygen--is 12 square inches per inch of fish. (L times W [inches] divided by 12) I think this method is better than the gallon rule, because your tank can support a certain amount of fish based on the amount of oxygen it can hold, not the volume of water. Note this rule does not apply to marine fish, coldwater fish, very large fish, or some cichlids.

 

Yes that's what I was trying to say except that for smaller fish you need less surface area than larger fish

 

O I just read that puppy biscuits can be used as fish food if you ground it up small and do something to take the dust out, Weird huh

 

Puppy biscuits don't have the correct nutrition for your fish I have some of the really old books also and their really interesting, but some of the info is a little outdated. so I try to do research in more than one place before I use information I find on my fish.
Carol

 

Yes it said that more or less but it said that if you had no other food you could use them

 

Yeah, but why the heck wouldn't someone have food? I mean, they sell fish flakes for practically nothing at any pet or fish atore, plus a lot of regular stores too!

 

I don't know this is an old book you konw