Looking for some sage advice after falling into the Pets At Home trap

I'm now 3 months into the hobby and it's been quite a learning journey with splatterings of sadness.

It all started with a trip to our local pet superstore "Pets at Home" to start a new chapter as a family of pet owners. We were recommended a 24l starter tank with two male Variatus Platy's with the advice that we could come back in a months time for a few more fish. At the time the staff seemed knowledgable asking us to come back in 3 days after setting up the tank for the fish and to make sure that we did 10% water changes every two weeks.

A month went by and went back to the shop and again under recommendation picked up another 2 additional Male Platys , 2 Amano shrimp and a Snail. A few weeks later I noticed one of the Platy's sitting on the bottom gasping. After reading a lot of posts here i ordered a test kit and as I'm sure you will have guessed the poor fish were being slowly poisoned by high Nitrates / Nitrites. Despite daily water changes for nearly a week two of the platy's sadly passed and the shrimp / two remaining platies were lethargic and sad looking.

Just finished setting up a new Fluval Flex 57 today with loads of plants and running the old / new pump in parallel. Added a heater running at 22 as the room they're in does dip quite a lot below 18 in the winter. The change was instant, the platy's are busy chasing each other (unfortunately a bit too much male dominance) and the shrimp are super active

Definitely considering raising a formal complaint to Pets At Home, the advice was shocking!

Question time:

I'm going to wait for a month or so before adding any additional fish, does anyone have any advice on friends for the 2 Variatus Platy , 2 Shrimp and 1 Snail (assuming they survive the trauma of the last two months!)?

Hi welcome to the forum unfortunately Pets At Home, do try their best but... it is lacking and has been for a long time. I think part of the issue is they are a general pet store so the people that work there do a bit of everything and often while they enjoy the animals and pet side of their job its sort of just a job at the same time. If you can have a search around your local area and see what stores are around, if you have a Maidenhead Aquatics near you they are usually a pretty good standard - some stores are absolutely excellent but even their 'average' ones are pretty good usually.

In a 57 litre tank your plans so far are potentially good - my first question is do you know how hard your water is? In the UK a lot of us have hard water, you can get test kits but you can also check on your water companies website. Hopefully you'll get a Gh or ppm reading that will help you work out if its hard or soft water

Ideally your Platies will need harder water and if you have that we can build a community around them with fish like Galaxy Rasboras, Emerald Rasboras, Rummynose Rasboras, Rosy Loaches - other live bearers like Endlers. More shrimp with your Amanos, you could look at getting some Cherries or any of the other common colours like Yellows, Blues etc.

Wills

Fuplie Pets at Home worst shop ever! You're not alone matey, many of us get caught out by them! I love how they dare to interrogate you but they'll happily sell you 2 platys to put in a 24l unheated tank I've been boycotting them since the day they told me I was going to kill my fish by doing water changes larger than 25%.

I agree with Wills, Maidenhead Aquatics is definitely one of the better ones so take your business elsewhere we can help you with stocking ideas when we know your water hardness

They're trying to make that sale. They're afraid that if they tell people to take the 6-8 weeks to do a cycle then they won't come back.

Thanks so much both for welcoming me into the forum, I can tell that a few fish for our girls is rapidly turning into an obsession!

To be fair on Pets At Home the platys are Variatus Platys which are happy down to 18c but 4 of them in a tiny tank is madness!

Our water here in Bedfordshire is super hard, KH was off the scale on the tetra test strips I had and affinity water state 325 mg/l total hardness.

@Wills I really like the idea of more shrimp, they are super interesting to watch and am definitely leaning towards a community of smaller fish rather a few larger centrepieces.

Sounds like both of your votes are with Maidenhead, we have a couple of stores nearby in MK / Aylesbury.. will check them out!

Photo of the new tank below. Castle and pink gravel were my daughters doing with the old tank

Thats good to know on the hardness I'm the same - different part of the UK though. I've always fought it and tried to muddle through but being led by it is a smart move and I've started to get into Mbuna and Peacocks from Lake Malawi (if you were ever tempted by a bigger tank hint hint)...

Definitely stick to the smaller rasboras I mentioned above though. The ideal would be to pick one species to keep with your Platies and then have shrimp on the bottom layer as a mix of Amano and Cherrys.

Your plants are looking good - a few hard to grow species in there like the red one at the front is an alternanthera species which is hard to grow without Co2 and a high tech set up. The light green plant with round leaves I think is bacopa caroliniana which is quite easy. I'm not sure what the plant with the biggest leaves is, possibly a Hygrophilla which would again be an easy plant but the one I think will really take off is the feathery one to the left of the caste which is Limnophilla Sessiflora, grows really easily and quite fast. Over time as the plants grow you can pinch or cut them as they take over and replant the cuttings which will root in the gravel again.

Aquariums are super addictive, especially with all the cool channels on YouTube to inspire you these days. If you want to while away a few hours check out George Farmer and MD Fishtanks on YouTube - great start to get into a full blown addiction

Oof, liquid rock coming out your taps then! We're the same here in Lincs, if you had a nice big tank I would have suggested Rainbow fish. Livebearers will do well, Endlers are lovely as they're small so you could get a few in 57l, the emerald rasbora mentioned earlier will do fine as they stay fairly small too. Love the plants you've got going on

Thanks so much both, the shrimps are a definite and will look into the Rasboras and Endlers. Going to give it some time to make sure the new tank is cycled and stable, and will probably need some more advice on numbers / sexes

Super happy with the plants, the moss balls / Limnophilla were from the old tank and the rest came from a starter package I got from aquaessentials. Hopefully they will still look lush in a few weeks time!

Day 3 in the tank and all seem to be happy with their new home. Even the snail has woken up and started exploring. It’s only the small platy that I’m bit worried about, between feeding he spends most of his time hiding in the plants to keep away from the larger more dominant male. Hopefully adding more fish will distract the big platy.

Wills said:

fish like Galaxy Rasboras, Emerald Rasboras, Rummynose Rasboras,

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Make sure it's these three you look at as other species of rasboras are soft water fish

Essjay said:

Make sure it's these three you look at as other species of rasboras are soft water fish

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Our aquatic friends are really quite particular, aren’t they! ;-)

Unfortunately I lost the small platy overnight, he did perk up for a bit after moving to the new tank but over the last few days has been hiding away. I assume its due to to long term exposure to Ammonium / Nitrite / Nitrate in the old tank and bullying from the dominant male.

I've been logging the parameters of the new tank since I introduced the fish last week. As mentioned above I transferred the substrate / ornament and a few plants from the old tank and am running the old filter in parallel. Switched from API Stress + to Seachem prime after an ammonia spike a few days ago. It seeems strange that I've got no Nitrites, read a few posts mentioning that the ammonia eating bacteria can take a bit longer to develop? Shout if you notice i'm doing anything wrong!

Nitrate levels in the below are a bit of guess work, the colours on the API Master test kit are a bit tricky to distinguish!

Welcome to TFF

First rule of fishkeeping: Never trust advice from pet store employees...no matter how sincere they may seem, they are there first and foremost to make $$$...the majority of the time, they are clueless about proper fishkeeping

Looks like you are on track, be sure to stay on those daily water changes until ammonia is 0...and be sure to have a look at this, if you haven't already: https://www.fishforums.net/threads/cycling-your-new-fresh-water-tank-read-this-first.421488/

Slaphppy7 said:

Welcome to TFF

First rule of fishkeeping: Never trust advice from pet store employees...no matter how sincere they may seem, they are there first and foremost to make $$$...the majority of the time, they are clueless about proper fishkeeping

Looks like you are on track, be sure to stay on those daily water changes until ammonia is 0...and be sure to have a look at this, if you haven't already: https://www.fishforums.net/threads/cycling-your-new-fresh-water-tank-read-this-first.421488/

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Thanks so much mate! Indeed many lessons have been learned on the competance of pet shops!

Will keep up with the daily changes is 50% about right do you think?

Almac said:

Thanks so much mate! Indeed many lessons have been learned on the competance of pet shops!

Will keep up with the daily changes is 50% about right do you think?

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50% daily until that ammonia is gone will be just fine...are you using buckets or siphon hose to perform the WCs?

Slaphppy7 said:

50% daily until that ammonia is gone will be just fine...are you using buckets or siphon hose to perform the WCs?

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Great! I’m using a siphon and a couple of 25 litre Jerry cans. I’m not vacing the gravel as assume this will suck up what bacteria is sitting on the substrate?