Advice required

[sam.stoneley]

Hello all
I'm new to fish keeping. Daughter wanted a small tank (5G) in her room for replacement pets for lost guinea pigs. One or two teething problem i.e not cycling, over feeding, general ignorance lost first batch of fish.
Read a little and found a good small LFS that gave good advice and now things seem stable with better filter, better husbandry and regular water testing / management. Now I'm hooked!
I've just found this site, wished I'd seen it before and saved some problems.
Now for the questions.
I have 4 zebra + 1 leopard danios (gender unknown), 2 platties(both female) and one sucking loach. Is this too many for the size of my tank? Nitrites seem low enough.
At last water change I found 2 * 4mm fry, could these be danio or legacy fry from platties, as these were recent purchases? Left them in tank, but seemed to have disappeared - have they been lunch for others?
Have read the other post on sexing danios, but cannot tell any difference with mine, any further pointers?
One larger danio seems to be monopolising the top two inches of the tank, if any of the other fish comes to the surface, other than when feeding, then it chases them off. Is this normal?
Looking to get a 36" tank for the living room, anything I should be aware of?
I'll shut up now Hope you can help.
thanks
Sam

 

[Aquascaper]

Your tank sounds a little overcrowded but if the water paramenters are kept in check you should be ok. Lots of poeple have different views on how many fish to keep so search this forum and decide for yourself. The most important thing IMO is quality - quality of water & quality of life for the fish.

As for your dominating danio, i have 5 leopards and 4 pearls and there is a definite hierachy between them resulting in one of the bigger leopards being 'head honcho' and getting to the food first, etc. It doesn't sound like anything to worry about if they are all getting food but hopefully someone with a little more experience could confirm that.

*looks around for danio2004*

HTH

 

[FishDan]

to the forum! I wasn't sure about what the "sucking loach" was so I googled. I found that they can grow to 10", which makes it far to large for a 5 gallon tank. Other than that, I think your tank should be fine, as long as you keep up with the water changes and such, as was mentioned.

Again !!

\Dan

 

[Aquascaper]

forgot the


)

 

[sam.stoneley]

Thanks for the welcome and the advice.
Maybe my fish isn't a sucking loach, it is only 2.5" long.
I will post a picture to help confirm if possible.

thanks
Sam

 

[Phantom Thief]

It might be small now, but they may still grow to be 10 inches.

P.T.

 

[sam.stoneley]

I've added a pic of the "sucking loach" to the gallery.
Have I wrongly identified it or is this going to outgrow my tank?
If it is, how long will it take?