Can I Add A Baby Dolphin Soooooo Cute!?

[Creature Seeker]

Also how do the elephant nose & knife fish get on?

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[connorsbala]

Whoa!Ypur female guppy must be bricking herself in that tank! Like Breeze7050 said,she must be malested all the time. But anyway...lol erm i love your stocking list,way to go! But like everyones sayin,its a lil bit over stocked I dont know how big elephant noses get,or that weird catfish that looks like a shark??? With the clown loaches,see how big they grow then decide what your gonna do,whether get a bigger tank or give them to the LFS or someone else
The ratio of female to male (gupppies) is 3:1,or it can be 2:1...so you need to get like 11 more females! cories,neons,platies are fine with those numbers
By frogs,do you mean african dwarf frogs or clawed frog? If your in doubt i think theres some info on the fish species index in the aquatic reptiles section about telling the difference between them;if you have a clawed one get them out asap! I love ADFS! Ive had 3 now,all died cause they got into my stupid 10 litre filter and...
Anyway good luck with your fishies,get some pics for us,your tank sounds amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[severum boy]

That chocolate gouramie is also very out of place, they are very sensitive and really need live foods, are you shure thats what you have? Im very suprised its alive lol!

 

[oddball_lover]

I think, before anybody else replies....perhaps we should wait on a picture of the tank

 

[navy]

Poor fishywishy23! Even if your tank hasn't cycled it is best to return some fish, like everyone said it is a big crowed in there! If your tank hasn't cycled, you are going to experience some major spikes with ammonia (esp. considering the amount of feeding and pooping going on lol), you should really return some fish in either case, and do it quickly if your tank hasn't cycled as u will wake up to find the more sensitive ones will probably die.

Perhaps the easiest thing to do right now is buy a book with stats on tropical fish etc that tell you what goes with what, how big they grow, how much room they need etc etc. This is very helpful if you are a beginner.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by a baby dolphin like richchappy said...I am just thinking about Flipper, no one sells baby dolphins! I mean Flipper dolphins, I'm sure you are talking about some other fish.........right?

 

[shaz3271]

she could be talking about the Dolphin Cichlid Haplochromis moorii

 

[Miss Wiggle]

she could be talking about the Dolphin Cichlid Haplochromis moorii

i've heard elephant noses referred to as 'baby dolphin's' before but as she's already one of those i don't think that's what it is..... at any rate there's a lot of problems to sort with this tank before adding any new fish!

 

[fishywishy23]

hi guys thankyou for all of this, i have managed to take back my elephant nose pangasius and clown loaches today will this help me?? wat are parameters? why cycle??? what is this?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

hi guys thankyou for all of this, i have managed to take back my elephant nose pangasius and clown loaches today will this help me?? wat are parameters? why cycle??? what is this?

no problem, glad you've taken the fish back, that's a good start. I suspected you hadn't been told any of this, i wrote up this beginners guide to cycling and water quality a little while ago. let me know if you've any more questions afterwards!

Water Chemistry - The Basics

We are not fish keepers, we are water keepers, keep your water happy and your fish will be happy.

When your researching and asking questions you'll quite often see people asking for your water stats and asking how you've cycled your tank, this brief guide explains why they need to know this information, and therefore why you need to know it.

The absolute first thing you should buy when your keeping fish is a water test kit. I recommend the API Fresh Water Master Test Kit, they're readily available (in the UK), fairly cheap, easy to use and quite accurate (lots of test kits are awful!)

The main things you'll need to test for are ph, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. This gives you an indication of the health of your tank it's mostly related to the nitrogen cycle often refereed to as cycling.

Your fish create ammonia in their waste, this is toxic so it must be removed from the water, this is what your filter is for, there is nitrifying bacteria living in there who convert the ammonia into nitrite (also toxic) then to nitrate which is much safer, you keep this at a manageable level through doing water changes every week.

The main problem with new fishtanks is that the filter's don't come with the bacteria you need. they can't live out of water in the sponge on the shelf in the fish store, however they are all around us, and will relish the opportunity to grow and develop when they find a nice safe home (your filter) and a source of food (fishy waste). The problem starts becuase when you add fish to your tank you will have a very very small amount of bacteria, they take a while to grow and multiply to the point where they can eat all the waste from your fish, so for the first few weeks of putting fish in the tank the bacteria are growing and will struggle to keep up, so you get toxic levels of ammonia and nitrite in your tank, this can lead to death or disease.

In the past this was always countered by putting in some very hardy fish at first and hoping that they would survive the toxic levels, then when the bacteria had built up after a few weeks you could add more sensitive fish. However this really wasn't very fair on the poor fish who had to start the tank off, I dread to think how many will have died.

so in the last 3/4 years a new technique called fishless cycling has developed, this is where you add pure ammonia to the tank to grow the bacteria on until they are at a point they can handle the fishes waste, and then you add your fish when it's safe for them. this is detailed in a pinned topic here, have a read.

so that should tell you why the first thing you need is a test kit. if you don't know what level of ammonia, nitrite, or nitrate you have in your tank, you don't know if you have enough bacteria to keep the tank going or if you need to do anything else.

Now I know that's a fair bit to take in but it should be your starting point. so digest all that and let us know what your water test readings are, then we'll tell you what the next step is and what fish could be suitable for your tank.

 

[fishywishy23]

will i have to take back the guppy this seems like a bad choice? and also will the knifefish eat my small ones???
im such a bad fish keeper!

 

[Darkstar]

I think they mean the following which is sometimes referred to as a dolphin:

http/www.fishbase.org/Summary/SpeciesSummary.php?id=5073

 

[Miss Wiggle]

will i have to take back the guppy this seems like a bad choice? and also will the knifefish eat my small ones???
im such a bad fish keeper!

when the knifefish gets bigger (and he could get up to 24" depending what sort of knife fish it is) he will definately eat little fish like guppies.

don't worry and panic just yet, your finding out now and taking advice and doing the best you can, so that makes you a good fishkeeper in my book

 

[nmonks]

Indeed, among other fishes, this species is the baby dolpin (also, the baby whale). The name comes from the way they swim, which is bobbing up and down like a dolphin. Regardless of precisely which species, baby dolphins are all mormyrids (the family to which the elephantnose, Gnathonemus petersi, belongs). Most (but not all) are territorial and cannot easily be kept as anything but singletons. All are extremely sensitive to poor water quality, and all can be killed by copper-based medications, such as whitespot remedy. Most mormyrids are fairly big for aquarium fish, on the average around 15 cm but some species can be much larger. All are notoriously difficult to feed, needing at the very least frozen bloodworms every night, and in some cases live foods until they settle in. Few, if any, will compete with things like catfish and loaches, so they are best kept as the only bottom dwellers. All must be kept in a tank with a sandy substrate -- NOT GRAVEL -- because they like to dig. If they dig in gravel they scratch themselves, and scratches lead to infections, and because they cannot be treated with standard remedies, infections lead to death.

Beyond that, these are lovely fish for the advanced aquarist with plenty of experience able to provide consistently perfect water quality.

Cheers, Neale

I think they mean the following which is sometimes referred to as a dolphin:

http/www.fishbase.org/Summary/SpeciesSummary.php?id=5073

 

[big mick]

Is this the dolphin you mean?

not that it really matters now mind but...

 

[fishywishy23]

no its like a elephant nose but looks like a dolphine that is small. about 7cm long! very cute £5
i think i may take my knife fish back he is a brown one.

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