Guess My Fish?

[rdd1952]

What are you readiings for ammonia and nitrite? If you haven't been adding ammonia then you aren't cycling. See the link to the cycling thread in my signature for how to do it. I see in your first post on this thread that you have been having problems with fish dying. I think that is the reason. Fish waste creates ammonia which is toxic and if not kept down with water changes, will eventually kill fish.

 

[Jodielee54]

We thought there might have been somthing wrong the water as all our fish dies at the same time last week, so we've started the cycling all over agin (about a week ago). We just tested the water in the tank (about 1 hour ago) and this is what we had:

GH: 6
KH: 3
PH: 7.2
N02 Nitrite: 0
N03 Nitrate: 10

Does this sound ok?

 

[rdd1952]

You left off the most important number: ammonia. In a cycling tank, it's quite likely that you don't have any nitrite yet as the bacteria that process ammonia and changes it to nitrite haven't developed yet. Ammonia is also the most toxic and deadly. That would explain why all the fish died at the same time: the ammonia built to a level that poisoned them all. If you don't have a kit to test ammonia, get one quick. And stay away from the strips as they are too inaccurate.

When you say you started the cycling all over again, I'm a little confused. If you have fish in the tank, your cycling all the time until the bacteria has developed to handle all their waste. Did you change the filter or something? Don't ever change the filter until it is worn to the point that it is coming apart. The bacteria colony lives in the filter so when you change it, you throw most of your bacteria in the trash.

 

[Rhiannon]

Make sure you feed your plec regular cucumber. He will love you for it. Weigh it down with a weight, a fork (upside down, spikes not pointing up) or a vegie clip from you LFS.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

it sounds like the problems you've had are because your tank was cycling with fish in it. have a read of this topic which should explain to you the whole cycling process.

plecs are relativley peaceful and there's loads of fish you can keep with yours, in terms of compatibility he'd be fine with a betta, there's very little chance of them fighting, however there are other factors to take into consideration. firstly fitration, plecs like yours are very very messy, he's gonna need a big powerful filter, betta's are bad swimmers because of they're long fins, they need a tank with a very gentle flow. with enough filtration to clean up after the plec you'd end up blasting the poor betta round the tank and it would eventually stress him out so much he'd die. Also you're gonna need a big tank for the plec, around 4'x2'x2', betta's do not do well in community tanks, they will fight with a lot of the smaller community fish. so you'd have the possibility of just having the plec and betta in a great big tank, not ideal i'm sure you'd agree!

betta's really do best in small tanks of they're own. the bi-orb you have now would be perfect for a betta so maybe get one to live in there by himself when you get the bigger tank.