Are My Adf's Getting Enough Food

[gazb5590]

I was just wondering if I should be worried or not about my African Dwarf Frogs getting enough food. I've currently got 5 in the tank and I'm feeding my fish with bloodworm granules/sinking pellets, sinking brine shrimp pellets, tetra pro colour flakes, frozen bloodworm and frozen turtle food. One problem is that I've got 6 yo-yo loaches that will eat anything that they can swallow so as soon as I put any sinking pellets in they seem to be eating them all before the frogs get a look in. I sometimes feed the frogs directly using a pipette but it's hard to do this all the time and usually ends up 1 or 2 frogs surrounded by 6 hungry loaches. Is this a scenario I should be worried about in the case that the ADF's aren't getting enough food or will they be ok to carry on living off whatever the loaches manage not to find?


Tank size: 145 litres (mid cycle)
pH: 7.4
ammonia: 2ppm (lowering) (using amquel+ and nutrafin cycle to keep it ammonium rather than ammonia)
nitrite: 1ppm (rising)
nitrate: 5ppm
tank temp: 25.5c

Tank inhabitants:4 glowlight tetras, 4 neon tetras, 6 yo-yo loaches, 1 male betta, 1 female betta, 1 female crowntail betta, 5 african dwarf frogs, 1 rainbow shark and 1 L162 clown plec

Treatments: Amquel+ (every 24 hours), API Stress Coat (once a week), Seachem flourish & seachem iron once a week, Nutrafin Cycle

 

[thereverendturtle]

First, your tank is way over stocked to with delicate fish, for a fish in cycle.

As for your question, the frogs will never get enough food with the loaches in there. They are doomed to starve and are best re-homed or returned to the pet store.

Watch your Bettas also. Males will kill females not ready to spawn and females will kill each other just being territorial.

 

[Mowbz]

Ouch.

I would get all of the frogs and that plec out straight away. Thats far too much stock for a fish in cycle.

Tetra should be in groups of 8+ per species, so once cycled, you can replace the bioload from the frogs and plec with them.

As harsh as this sounds, dont be suprised if you come home one day and one or both of your female Betta's are dead. Theyre kept in seperate tanks in the LFS for a reason. If your LFS stocks them all together, this would indicate to me how you ended up like this! The male will harrass the female to mate, and if she isnt ready, he'll just carry on regardless, and stress them to death. The fact you have two makes it a little better as it will spread out the harassment, but if one goes, he'll start on the other.

The YoYo's, how big are they? Im glad you have them in a suitable size group, but these should have been introduced post-cycle, or used FOR the fish in cycle, on their own.

By rainbow shark i assume you mean a RTBS? (Red tailed black shark?) He needs to come out, he's going to outgrow that tank, and will likely start taking neons for lunch.

A lot of the bottled stuff your using is a waste of money. All you need to do, is shift most of that stock back to the LFS, and do daily water changes. Once the tank is showing 0ppm for Ammonia AND Nitrite for a week, you can start to stock back up at the rate of one group every other week, ei, add back in the groups of tetra, etc.

As blunt as it is, the above will save the longterm health of your filter bacteria, and more importantly, your fish.

Hope this helps.

EDIT: My lack of mention of the Frogs should say it all here. Get the poor things out.

 

[gazb5590]

Ouch.

I would get all of the frogs and that plec out straight away. Thats far too much stock for a fish in cycle.

Tetra should be in groups of 8+ per species, so once cycled, you can replace the bioload from the frogs and plec with them.

As harsh as this sounds, dont be suprised if you come home one day and one or both of your female Betta's are dead. Theyre kept in seperate tanks in the LFS for a reason. If your LFS stocks them all together, this would indicate to me how you ended up like this! The male will harrass the female to mate, and if she isnt ready, he'll just carry on regardless, and stress them to death. The fact you have two makes it a little better as it will spread out the harassment, but if one goes, he'll start on the other.

The YoYo's, how big are they? Im glad you have them in a suitable size group, but these should have been introduced post-cycle, or used FOR the fish in cycle, on their own.

By rainbow shark i assume you mean a RTBS? (Red tailed black shark?) He needs to come out, he's going to outgrow that tank, and will likely start taking neons for lunch.

A lot of the bottled stuff your using is a waste of money. All you need to do, is shift most of that stock back to the LFS, and do daily water changes. Once the tank is showing 0ppm for Ammonia AND Nitrite for a week, you can start to stock back up at the rate of one group every other week, ei, add back in the groups of tetra, etc.

As blunt as it is, the above will save the longterm health of your filter bacteria, and more importantly, your fish.

Hope this helps.

EDIT: My lack of mention of the Frogs should say it all here. Get the poor things out.

I've had the loaches for a while now and they're all around 2/3 inches max but there was a mix up with the cycle and it started all over again after someone helping me 1 day washed 1 of the filter sponges in tap water. My cycle was completely messed up until about a week ago when I started using the nutrafin cycle and since then it's actually been going really well and making sense rather than being all over the place.
Regarding the bettas I got some really bad advice from the fish store I got them from. I got the male which I was really happy with but then was told 2 females would be fine with him to which I doubted and questioned but was told it would be ok. Soon as I put them in they was fighting all the time and a lot of severe fin nipping but that was months back now and it all seems to be a lot calmer now but if there's another scenario where fins start to get nipped I'll be taking him straight out (which is something I'm looking at doing anyways).
Also the rainbow shark is very similar to the RTBS. I only ended up getting him once again down to bad advice but he was fine and very timid for the 1st couple of months but recently I've seen him chase the betta a couple of times. Funny enough he seems to completely ignore the tetras altogether but how long this will last I don't know. Also I'm going to add around 10 more tetras as soon as the cycle has finished.
Looks like I'll have to carry on hand feeding the ADF's until I can come up with an alternative

 

[snake007]

Your nitrite is very high and I would start with heavy water changes right now.

 

[Mowbz]

Even without the cycling issues, you still have an overstocked tank. The frogs should have that kind of space to themselves, let alone sharing it with multiple other fish.

For the future, i wouldnt buy any fish until you;ve had a chance to research them yourself, as the adivce your getting in the shop is obviously looking wrong by the time your home and have the fish in the tank.

 

[gazb5590]

Even without the cycling issues, you still have an overstocked tank. The frogs should have that kind of space to themselves, let alone sharing it with multiple other fish.

For the future, i wouldnt buy any fish until you;ve had a chance to research them yourself, as the adivce your getting in the shop is obviously looking wrong by the time your home and have the fish in the tank.

overstocked because of the bottom dwellers or overstocked in general? I was told that my tank is nowhere near full and that I can get a good few more fish in there once it's finished cycling but not sure if this is true or not.

 

[soybean]

Definitely not true. Very overstocked already.

 

[gazb5590]

Definitely not true. Very overstocked already.

so how much can I fit in a 145 litre tank?

 

[gazb5590]

Definitely not true. Very overstocked already.

so how much can I fit in a 145 litre tank?

Just taken the tank measurements and the fish and used a stocking calculator and it says my stocking level is 104% full or at least it will be once the fish in there are fully grown so going to try and get the male betta and rainbow shark out as soon as I find a way to. Also going to look at getting the yo-yo loaches out eventually

 

[snake007]

If you used **advisor its a bunch of sugar.