Hello! New To The Hobby

Hello everyone. I'm new to the hobby. 4 months now. I have a 36 gallon bow front, a five gallon, and a ten gallon already. See, I have guppies. Hence all the new aquariums lol. I started with live plants right away and I'm in love. I got all but two from tissue culture and have watched them flourish. It's amazing to watch. I'll post a pic of my 36 and ten. I have to water change daily

 

Those are some pretty great plants... what's with the daily water changes?

 

Thank you for the comment on the plants.

I don't know if I'm doing wrong with the 20% daily water changes, but I started doing them because when I set up the tank I was told by my LFS to go ahead and put the fish in after only 24 hours. After about a week I had an ammonia spike to 2ppm and started to do some research. That's when I found out about the nitrogen cycle. I was terrified I was going to lose even one fish so I started changing the water daily. I actually stopped when it cycled and only changed once a week. You can't see them in that pic because they are in the hornwort on the left side of that aquarium, but I have over 80 guppy fry in there in different stages of development. I'm worried that I'm overstocked and will hurt them if I don't do the daily water changes. If there is something that I should do differently, I would love some advice.

Thanks!

 

Welcome! I love my 36 and glad you love yours too! I stay away from live breeders myself but they are fun! You’ll find lots of good info here.

I’d go with daily testing and fewer water changes myself. ;^) I have 40ish fish I’m my bow front and run with 0 ammonia/nitrates/nitrites but I have a TON of plants and do 10-20% water change once a week.

 

Welcome to Fishlore!!!

 

Thank you. I'll skip the water change tonight and check levels tomorrow night before changing the water. If it's fine I'll leave it alone. It really would be nice to only change the water every few days rather than every day. I'm getting tired lol. My LFS likes my guppies because they are large and pretty so when they hit one inch they take them off my hands. So far I've only kept one and that's because he's solid metallic purple. One of the prettiest I've seen so I couldn't ket him go.

 

Thank you for the welcome Dawn!

 

Ummm, you can’t just make a statement like that without posting a photo!

 

Lol ok. Here is a photo of two of my guppies I could get swimming at the front. That beautiful one with the round belly is a female!

 

This one is hard to see but she is also female! I'm so proud of my female guppies that are so pretty they look like males.

 

Here is a better pic of her. I'm hoping she's pregnant because I'm trying to breed for more and more color in the females till they are prettier than the males. I would love to see pics of your tanks!

 

Here is a couple of mine. Mainly a rainbow tank, but with some tetras and 1 GBR.

 

Your tank is nice! That's a great looking sword. I don't know much about the type of fish you have because mine are all livebearers but I really like your rainbows.