Bully Fish

[repunzlie]

I have a 10 gallon tank.

One mollie, and one new platy. My mollie wont stop chasing the new platy! They are both female. How could I solve this?

By any chance can i give a pet store my mollie? Does anyone know if pet stores do that?

 

[JenCliBee]

Your LFS will probably take it back yes but.... are u sure u have 2 females


jen

 

[repunzlie]

Well the new platy is now dead, and the mollie is still alive and kicking. This is so frustrating! I went to the store to get new testing strips, the local fish store doesnt carry them. So I guess Im just going to have to one fish, cause she just wants to kill anything.

 

[madjoker14]

sorry to hear that,i had a similar problem,i tryd separating them and that didnt work, what someone told me was to rearranging the tank,it seemed to work as there not fighting anymore, hope this helps

btw they where 2 female mollies

 

[repunzlie]

I tried rearanging the tank, didnt work.

 

[orange shark]

I wouldn't buy testing strips...very unreliable!

Try and buy liquid tests, you can get master test kits made by API and other companies that most people on here use!

 

[repunzlie]

Yea the guy at the fish store said they dont like the strips either. I guess I can try that.. i just dont like the price I guess.

 

[waterdrop]

You could check on the price of getting just two individual tests, the liquid ammonia and liquid nitrite tests. Those would be the most critical for you and then later if you got some more of the inexpensive strips, you could use the pH from that as pH is not so hard to do in a strip test.

You've been here at TFF longer than me, so I don't want to presume anything but looking back at your threads it seems like quite a number of problems with fish health might have been attributable to elevated ammonia and/or nitrite levels - they really are the most serious and universal problem for fish in tanks.

It -is- ashame the master kits cost 18-25 pounds (assuming you're in uk, forgot to look) as probably the 10g tank or the filter for the tank might cost less, making the kit the most expensive thing you'd need, but its so core to doing this stuff right now...

~~waterdrop~~

 

[repunzlie]

Yea I have been here for awhile.. all my fish died besides the mollie, shes a warrior. Im a bad fish keeper! I wish I could just hire someone to do this all for me! So sad.

My problem is, i test the water, if somethings bad, all I know to do is just do a water change.

 

[waterdrop]

Well, you're here and asking questions, which is a good thing. There's nothing wrong with not wanting to be hyper about it as of course a web forum like this will self-select out for! An aquarium should ideally be a relaxing thing and not too complicated if one doesn't want it to be.

Its none of our business of course but perhaps you just don't feel motivated? Or motivated just enough to get fish but not all the rest of this stuff, I could see that, especially at the end of a working day! Anyway, if that's not it and its just putting together the information into actions, its the kind of thing that will come eventually - there's not really that many things to know to do. You just have to break it down into smaller steps each time something gets stuck. Right now, it would seem like figuring out a plan for testing would be a reasonable first step, but that's just me.

Good luck and let us know what you're thinking about it,
~~waterdrop~~

 

[tenohfive]

And water changes are the best cure for elevated ammonia levels anyway, so you've got the biggest part sussed

 

[repunzlie]

waterdrop,
I think I am motivated. Just not really grasping it all. I love my fish, and everything that goes along with it. It just get so frustrating when things go wrong, and then I have to buy more things. I have a huge storage box full of fish things. haha. I just need to keep reading about cycling, and bite the bulliet and buy all the things nessesary for my fish.

 

[waterdrop]

waterdrop,
I think I am motivated. Just not really grasping it all. I love my fish, and everything that goes along with it. It just get so frustrating when things go wrong, and then I have to buy more things. I have a huge storage box full of fish things. haha. I just need to keep reading about cycling, and bite the bulliet and buy all the things nessesary for my fish.

Oh good, that's a better situation than not being motivated! One suggestion is to think of it this way: learning the info only carries the cost of time and thinking, not money. If you carve out some time and work on the cycling reading, asking questions when you get stuck, it should eventually result in fewer but more directed purchases. I hear ya' though, we've all got a box or two of stuff going unused (some of the experienced ones will be chuckling that they've got a whole garage.)

I have to say that one of my own thoughts after a few months of participating in the "New to the Hobby" forum was that some good tap water, a python and a test kit and a bunch of knowledge was, in hindsight, all that most beginners really needed and it seemed a lot less than all the garbage they were stuffing in their empty new tank as it got put in the back of their station wagon at the pet shop.

(of course, maybe I'm just typing a lot because of one mean little ole' mollie!)

~~waterdrop~~