Hello All

[bluemermaid]

HI I thought as I have accidently ended up in a house where the fish out number the people 20:1 I had best find somewhere to seek advice and possibly find people who know the ' oh she's talking about fish again look '

It started with some gold fish and a dojo loach and has spiraled to a 4 tank household the largest is 95 american gallons just tropical no marine, but might consider in the future.

I have a lot of waifs and strays and even though the main tank is a bit heinz 57 ish they thrive as a family.

I have lots of stupid newbie questions but I was always told the onlu stupid question is one you dont ask so .........


I love external pumps I do but I am finding the plants in the big tank get rotten and hate lifting them out....... am I missing something simple here???

oh and my bog wood ( about 6 years old) has gotten black fur on it since tank moved to kitchen, more light ... is this okay for the fish? Is it normal???

what can i put in my tank to break down fish poo( my barbs ate the last lot of shrimps I bought) needs to be big enough to survive the 3" golden barbs !!!

 

[Ace Of Spades]

HI I thought as I have accidently ended up in a house where the fish out number the people 20:1 I had best find somewhere to seek advice and possibly find people who know the ' oh she's talking about fish again look '

It started with some gold fish and a dojo loach and has spiraled to a 4 tank household the largest is 95 american gallons just tropical no marine, but might consider in the future.

I have a lot of waifs and strays and even though the main tank is a bit heinz 57 ish they thrive as a family.

I have lots of stupid newbie questions but I was always told the onlu stupid question is one you dont ask so .........


I love external pumps I do but I am finding the plants in the big tank get rotten and hate lifting them out....... am I missing something simple here???

oh and my bog wood ( about 6 years old) has gotten black fur on it since tank moved to kitchen, more light ... is this okay for the fish? Is it normal???

what can i put in my tank to break down fish poo( my barbs ate the last lot of shrimps I bought) needs to be big enough to survive the 3" golden barbs !!!

First welcome to the forum, most of us are nice and welcoming ....

1) What do you mean? Lifting them out of the external filter?....

2) It may be black algae, If it is I dont think it will hurt them, can you not remove it manually?

3) There is something you can use here, Gravel Vacuum . I know of no fish that eats///breaks down poo apart from bactiera in your filter. TBH if they did eat poo then they would just poo it out again, so it wouldnt really help .

 

[bluemermaid]

HI Ace

LOL i ment lifting the plants out ( giving them a clean and poping back in)

I use a gravel cleaner but i have couple of plecs that poop for England Shrimps do a great job in other tanks but my barbs eat them everytime I put them in.

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome BlueMermaid. I'm afraid Ace is right. The best method to control fish waste is a gravel vac and weekly water changes. If you are constantly removing your plants, I'm not sure how they survive it. I have found that my otocinclus seem to do a decent job of cleaning up algae from my glass and my plants. Of course they are another source of fish waste, they don't just take in without putting back out. Compared to the typical pleco, these guys are algae eating machines. It will become necessary to feed them algae wafers once they eat all the algae in your tank but everything has its drawbacks.
Some of the best advice that I see from experienced fishkeepers is that it is your job to take care of the fish. It is fruitless to hope some other fish or shrimp will do it for you.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

Welcome BlueMermaid. I'm afraid Ace is right. The best method to control fish waste is a gravel vac and weekly water changes. If you are constantly removing your plants, I'm not sure how they survive it. I have found that my otocinclus seem to do a decent job of cleaning up algae from my glass and my plants. Of course they are another source of fish waste, they don't just take in without putting back out. Compared to the typical pleco, these guys are algae eating machines. It will become necessary to feed them algae wafers once they eat all the algae in your tank but everything has its drawbacks.
Some of the best advice that I see from experienced fishkeepers is that it is your job to take care of the fish. It is fruitless to hope some other fish or shrimp will do it for you.

yup, you end up with people who've one fish for controlling waste, one for algae, one for snails and then you've half your tank stocked with fish you actually don't want!

also people fall into the trap of thinking 'oh shrimp eat algae so they don't contribute to my bio load' (anyone who'se studied an amano shrimp's habits will tell you categorically that they poop a hell of a lot for such small creatures) and don't count half the fish in their tank towards their stocking, end up well overstocked and with all the problems that go with it.

all you need to keep your tank free from waste and algae is a good filtration system, a gravel vac and a washing up sponge!

a little tip if you've messy fish though is to get a small but fairly powerful powerhead (look at one of the hydor koralia range for an idea of what I mean) and put this near to your substrate on the other side of the tank to your filter inlet and pointing towards it. this will just give waste a bit of a shove across from one side of the tank to closer to the filter inlet, once it's near to that (assuming the filter is decent) it'll be sucked up. Hey presto, lot less waste to vac up.