Hello and a couple of Qs….

Here are the 4 plants we have so far…
Any ideas what they are or if we’ve gone wrong? No advice was offered on this when we bought them so I didn’t realise we might have potentially purchased things that aren’t suitable 😕

Flippin’eck, this fish keeping lark is stressful!!!
Welcome, a newbie here too. I kept fish for a few months I was a kid, but that's long ago so I don't count it for too much. Beautiful plants! The 4th picture, I believe, shows a ludwigia.
 
Welcome, a newbie here too. I kept fish for a few months I was a kid, but that's long ago so I don't count it for too much. Beautiful plants! The 4th picture, I believe, shows a ludwigia.
Thank you. Hopefully the plants are suitable for our tank!
 
I am not well up on plants, but although I don't know what they are, I do know they are not terrestrial plants. Other members will be able to ID them for you.

But in my opinion there are not enough, or at least not established enough yet, to deal with all the ammonia made by the fish so there is likely to some ammonia in the water all the time. The plants will help to keep the amount down below what it would be without plants. As the plants grow they'll be able to deal with more ammonia.
Thanks for this - no idea what growth rate will be for what we’ve got.. do you think I should get more plants? Should I be looking at doubling what’s in there already? Or are there any plants that you’d recommend?
 
Update: I’m very happy report that after a big water change and tidy up, everyone seems happy and the guppy I was worried about yesterday has stopped hiding. I have some spin-off questions from this, but I’ll have a look around the boards here to post them in the most suitable place. Thanks again everyone 🙂
 
I have been once in Cornwall, at the 24 december or so , for a week or so, coming from London and getting item back, I was for two weeks till january in 1991 or so, I don't remember exactly, that was my last voyage out of Berlin till now (for me it's horrible to travel, unfortunatelly, because of having crunched hip joints), but it was an hallucinating experience to me, anyway! I love the sea! And to be abroad.
 
I have been once in Cornwall, at the 24 december or so , for a week or so, coming from London and getting item back, I was for two weeks till january in 1991 or so, I don't remember exactly, that was my last voyage out of Berlin till now (for me it's horrible to travel, unfortunatelly, because of having crunched hip joints), but it was an hallucinating experience to me, anyway! I love the sea! And to be abroad.
Firstly, I must state how impressed I am with the multiple languages you write in (much to my shame, being English, I only know English).

Your last sentence has made me smile and conjured up all sorts of images 🙂.

I wonder if you mean illuminating rather than hallucinating..? But hallucinating sounds much more “trippy” and fun 😀

(not sure if it’s needed but a trip is an noun for a journey or excursion and might make my attempt at humour more understandable).
 
A trip is also LSD, and I'm a continental potato, both French and Spanish languages use the world "hallucinate" in a very common way, probably Italian, too, but it's my only mistake you don't know where it does come from, i'm a real bad learner of languages and in the end I was forced to learn them, what is a different story. Anyway, I found always fascinating to learn the way other peoples, cultures and ways of speaking are, Chinese would be too difficult for me but English is right way yet a possibility! What I did in 1991 was a trip (for two weeks), and yes, your are really martians here! (only and exclusivelly to me) Sorry so much..
 
I have been once in Cornwall, at the 24 december or so , for a week or so, coming from London and getting item back, I was for two weeks till january in 1991 or so, I don't remember exactly, that was my last voyage out of Berlin till now (for me it's horrible to travel, unfortunatelly, because of having crunched hip joints), but it was an hallucinating experience to me, anyway! I love the sea! And to be abroad.
I’m glad you enjoyed your visit to Cornwall. I feel fortunate to live in such a beautiful part of the world. Being near water has always been important to me (….perhaps that’s why I seem to end up sitting in my son’s room, watching his fish tank!) 😄
 
Firstly, I must state how impressed I am with the multiple languages you write in (much to my shame, being English, I only know English).

Your last sentence has made me smile and conjured up all sorts of images 🙂.

I wonder if you mean illuminating rather than hallucinating..? But hallucinating sounds much more “trippy” and fun 😀

(not sure if it’s needed but a trip is an noun for a journey or excursion and might make my attempt at humour more understandable
No such thing as a daft question, especially when it concerns fish's lives :)
I'll answer your questions in the order they're posted .

1. Nitrite needs to be zero. Your test strips don't include ammonia and that is important as well. Did you cycle the tank with ammonia before getting the fish, and how many plants/what type?
The reason I'm asking questions back is that if you have a nitrite reading now you may also have an ammonia reading, but you can't test for it. Both ammonia and nitrite are poisonous to fish.
Fish excrete ammonia and things like uneaten food decompose to make ammonia. In an established tank (ie several months) there are bacteria which eat this ammonia and turn it into nitrite. Another type of ammonia eats this nitrite and turns it into nitrate, which is less toxic. These bacteria take weeks to grow enough of them to eat all the ammonia and nitrite. The fact that your nitrate is zero does suggest there aren't any bacteria yet to make it.
However, you have live plants, and using plants is another way to to remove ammonia. Plants take it up as fertiliser and they don't turn it into nitrite. But it does depend on the number and type of plant - some are slow growing so they don't remove as much ammonia as fast growing plants - which is why I asked how many plants and what kind.

2. The yellow things. I don't know. Shrimps carry eggs under their abdomens until they hatch, but in some circumstances they can drop the eggs. Egg colour does vary, some are yellow, some are a greenish colour but the 'things' in your photo look a bit bright for shrimp eggs :huh:

3. Yes, get a thermometer, either an electronic one or one that goes inside the water. Those that stick on the outside are influenced by the air temperature. If you go for one of those with a liquid inside and you get it from a real shop, compare the temp reading on every thermometer and choose from the group that all read the same.
The thermostat on most heater brands is usually badly calibrated - the water temperature is not necessarily the same as the setting on the dial. It's better to set the heater to whatever dial setting gives the temp you need.

4. The worst thing about 5 in 1 strips is that they don't include ammonia which you need with a new tank. Most of us use the API liquid master test kit
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00E8B10D8/?tag=
There are other brands, but get a liquid one rather than strips.
Nitrate liquid testers come in 2 or sometimes 3 bottles. One of those bottles contains a reagent which settles on the bottom and the instructions will say to shake that bottle before use, and also the test tube. This shaking is important to get the reagent back into the liquid so follow the instructions with the tester.

5. Fish need less food than you'd think. We need a lot of food to generate heat but fish get their heat from the water.
If there is any food reaching the bottom of the tank, try feeding less, but if the fish eat everything before it reaches the tank floor, that amount should be OK.

6. I would remove as much poop as possible. It looks messy lying there on sand. How is your hoovering technique? I just hover the tube about 1 cm above the sand to clear the poop at every water change.



A couple of other points.
The guppy may be suffering from ammonia poisoning. Until you have an ammonia tester, I suggest daily water changes of around half the tank volume, then once you have a tester you can be guided by that. Whenever ammonia and/or nitrite read more than zero, do a water change.

Your test strips suggest soft water. This is good for neons but not guppies. It won't be causing the one guppy's behaviour, but long term it won't be good for them. Once they have eventually passed away, I would replace them with soft water fish.
You can check the accuracy of the strips by looking on your water company's website for hardness, though in Cornwall I'd expect it to be soft. Assuming you are with South West Water, enter your postcode here
and look for the German degrees number.
Morning, just wanted to post an update on my water parameters using the liquid test kit:

Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 5ppm
pH: 6.8

Then using test strips…

KH: 40
GH: 30
Maybe there’s something I can add to the substrate to add minerals to the water to increase the water hardness?
 

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