I Guess It's Time To End The Hobby.

Paypal allows you to link your bank account/checking account to your paypal account. There is no reason you have to use any kind of card. All you need is your routing number and account number from your bank.

riogal_11 said:

Paypal allows you to link your bank account/checking account to your paypal account. There is no reason you have to use any kind of card. All you need is your routing number and account number from your bank.

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It said something about "Free for banks in the US" but then it said something about some kind of symbol, which doesn't exist on my card. The card I have received from the bank only has pen writing and no such symbol placed on it.
This is what it says. My card doesn't look like that at all and it says in the US, but I am sure I chose country as Romania when I made the account.

EDIT: I think my bank account isn't supported or something. I use the IBAN / SWIFT code type bank account, not the kind that they show here. And I don't see any option of linking that bank account I have to my PayPal. And when I searched about this, I read that I cannot withdraw to my bank account so I'll have to use Paypal directly but the problem is that most of my payments will be done in cash, so I cannot have the money on PP account and be restricted to withdraw.

Keep the Fish mate, use containers till you can get an aquarium, i wouldnt give my fish up cuz of a little hickup, i would feel like aboslute crap after, but nkwoing that they made it through even though you were going through a hard time you would feel accomplished.
GL mate Cody

CysticCrab said:

Keep the Fish mate, use containers till you can get an aquarium, i wouldnt give my fish up cuz of a little hickup, i would feel like aboslute crap after, but nkwoing that they made it through even though you were going through a hard time you would feel accomplished.
GL mate Cody

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I'm just scared cause I haven't been doing 100% water changes like before, but 80% instead and that might cause some problems. My internet being shut down for half a day isn't helping either. -.-
Anyway, I will apply for working as a play tester at Ubisoft on Friday, though I doubt it will be that easy, there might be a lot of people applying and pretty sure there are a lot of gamers in this country. That in case the boss doesn't contact me on time, but even if he does, I'll still try my luck at Ubisoft.

My dad's at work now, but I hope tomorrow we can go to the mall and get a nice bin. The problem will be: where to put it? Lol. If it were a tank, my mother would let me place it on my old desk, but the bin might need to sit next to my turtle pool in my room. I guess it would be nice to have a bigger pond in my room for a while. Lol. Maybe I can get some plants too.

100% water changes aren't generally a good idea anyway, as you risk shocking the fish. Several smaller changes are much preferable to one big one. Having said that, if you don't have a cycled filter and ammonia is building up, you will want to be changing the water as much as you can.

Most of us have made silly beginners' mistakes in the past, but you obviously care a lot about your fish and want to do what's best for them

CezzaXV said:

100% water changes aren't generally a good idea anyway, as you risk shocking the fish. Several smaller changes are much preferable to one big one. Having said that, if you don't have a cycled filter and ammonia is building up, you will want to be changing the water as much as you can.

Most of us have made silly beginners' mistakes in the past, but you obviously care a lot about your fish and want to do what's best for them

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The thing I like about partial changes:
1 - I don't have to wait for dad to be home to carry the aquarium.
2 - I don't need to remove the fish anymore. The swordtails might not like the net anyway. Tzuppy sat on my hand when I was doing 100% changes so I could easily move him out of the aquarium when I needed.

Is it ok if I do the following: once the water is enough to just cover the fish (80% water removed), was it a good or bad idea that I added like 3L of water and then took out of that again till I had only 20% water in the tank and barely then added the final water? Shouldn't that remove as much ammonia (nitrite too if there is any) as possible?

100% changes aren't something that an aquarist normally does, but your fish seem to have survived it thus far, so I'd say your plan is okay. It really depends on how much ammonia there is in the tank water though. Any amount of ammonia or nitrite is toxic to fish, but as a guideline for fish-in cycling we usually say not to let either get to 0.25ppm or above. Say your tank water was regularly getting to 0.25ppm, an 80% change would be more than acceptable as it would get it down to 0.05. If ammonia or nitrite was buidling up to say 2ppm, an 80% change would still leave you with 0.4ppm, which would be too high. Without a test kit, it's impossible for us to say how much water you should be changing and how often.

Either way, you shouldn't be doing large enough changes that you need to remove the fish from the tank. If the water is that bad, you should do two water changes, rather than one complete one.

CezzaXV said:

100% changes aren't something that an aquarist normally does, but your fish seem to have survived it thus far, so I'd say your plan is okay. It really depends on how much ammonia there is in the tank water though. Any amount of ammonia or nitrite is toxic to fish, but as a guideline for fish-in cycling we usually say not to let either get to 0.25ppm or above. Say your tank water was regularly getting to 0.25ppm, an 80% change would be more than acceptable as it would get it down to 0.05. If ammonia or nitrite was buidling up to say 2ppm, an 80% change would still leave you with 0.4ppm, which would be too high. Without a test kit, it's impossible for us to say how much water you should be changing and how often.

Either way, you shouldn't be doing large enough changes that you need to remove the fish from the tank. If the water is that bad, you should do two water changes, rather than one complete one.

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The change I do is like a 95% if it stacks. I add the 3L to what ever is left that keeps the fish covered and then remove those 3L again and add the final 10L and complete the change.

I feed as little as possible but make sure the fish get a bite of bloodworms. Sometimes I give daphnia too (dried) but I tend to feed that even less, as I know that it will add more ammonia. When I had no filter, the daphnia would cloud the water in just 1 day while the bloodworms would do that in 3 days. Though I had just the catfish back then.

Right now the water is clear and has no smell, but a week ago it used to get some kind of a light pond smell. Is that a bad sign? Water change got rid of it instantly though.

Great... now dad can't buy the bin today cause he's out of money. -.- Why does this keep happening to me?
And my parents won't let me borrow either.

Boss didn't contact me through e-mail or msn, though it seems hard to believe he'd be using me, as he's firstly a friend of mine too and I know he's been sick (has gastric ulcer and has to take some pills that usually make his problems go worse, to the point that he gets nausea and dizziness) long before I even started working for him. Also, he'd not be gaining anything out of this since the work is not finished, the website has no products listed and there were more plans on what work to do. At most he'd be getting the payment for one laptop that I have set up for him to sell for cheap. But that wasn't even part of my job to begin with, though he said it would be from now on.

I guess I'll have a go at getting hired at Ubisoft. Going there this Friday.

Why dont you sign up to freecycle or look on gumtree for a tank? There have been three of four going on freecycle in my area lately.

Torred1771 said:

Why dont you sign up to freecycle or look on gumtree for a tank? There have been three of four going on freecycle in my area lately.

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We don't even have that here (Romania) except freecycle according to what it says on the internet, but I wonder if that works.

Anyway, I'll make a better gravel vac so that I don't have to net out everything so frequent. The old one I have is a small tube and I don't want to use that one as it's not covering enough surface area / requires sucking on one end to get water out.
I will also clean the filter a bit in a bowl of tank water, just to make sure it filters well enough. I usually clean it every week and a half. Is that too frequent or does it need to be done more frequent?

My dad said that he'll buy me a new tank on my birthday, but that's at the beginning of March so I don't think I can wait that long.

The beginning of March is only a week away.

Torred1771 said:

The beginning of March is only a week away.

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Pff mom won't let me sign up for freecycle either. -.- She also uses that "fish keeping is for kids" phrase again. She also thinks I went crazy when I suggested a bin for the fish.

Yeah I know it is close but what if I screw up till then? I'll just keep up what I'm doing now, clean the aquarium, keep up the water changes... and hope that I can find a solution faster than that. 7th of march is really further than it looks to me. So not exactly 1 week away but 2 weeks.

See parents just don't understand. You want to do something and they say you don't need to but it's your tank and you've paid all the money and they won't let you do what you want.

Man of fish said:

See parents just don't understand. You want to do something and they say you don't need to but it's your tank and you've paid all the money and they won't let you do what you want.

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The point is that I've paid the money so far for fish and fish food, but have yet to get the money for a new tank. She said if I can pay for it she will let me keep a larger tank. But since I can't, I'll have to rely on my dad to buy me either a bin or when it will be my birthday, a real tank that will be way better for my catfish and swordies.

Dad still owes me my money from my previous work on repairing computers, as every time he has kept part of it. He also owes me pretty much my whole allowance (though I haven't told him this as he'll probably never take it serious anyway or I probably don't even have the right to), as I have received it only about 3 times in my whole life. By allowance, I mean that monthly payment you get from when you go to school. Oddly, that wasn't even invested in school, as the school offered pretty much everything free (and the fee was very low anyway), and I have never been on a trip with my class either.

Anyway, finished my CV, now I'll have to wait till Friday to give it.