Hello and a couple of Qs….

[guppiesandtetras]

Hi,

First of all, congratulations on such a helpful forum! There have been a few times I’ve looked at various threads over the past couple of weeks and was struck by what a supportive community this is

So - I am a complete newbie, both to the forum and to fish keeping - and am already feeling as though I’ve had dogs and horses needing less attention!

Our tank, which is a new set up for my youngest son (so I’ll be the primary carer!), is 54 litres and over the past month we’ve introduced 6 neon tetras, 3 cherry shrimp and the latest addition 4 days ago were 6 male guppies. We also have live plants, some wood and a cave rock thing to give them plenty of hiding places.

I’ve been religiously checking the water parameters and the last water change was about 25%. I’ve scheduled another water change today but have some questions that I hope you can help me with please. Apologies if they’re daft, I just want to make sure I’m getting things right. The welfare of any loving creature in my care is really important to me.

1. I’ve been spending time watching the fish and their behaviour to get to know their usual patterns of activity etc. As I say, I’m totally new to this so understanding them better seems a good place to start. Today I have noticed that one of our guppies is keeping out of the way in the back corner of the tank near the bottom - in a similar way to when they rest at night. They were only introduced on Saturday (so this is his 4th day here) but up til now, all 6 have been swimming peacefully around the tank during the day. Worried there’s something wrong.

Water:
nitrates: 0
Nitrites: 0/0.5? I find the colour strips so hard to read!
pH: 6.5
KH: 40/80
GH: 30/60

2. Are these yellow things in the 1st photo cherry shrimp eggs? The neon tetras have been dragging them around and trying to eat them. What’s the best thing to do? Try and tuck them into a plant to give some of them a chance to hatch? Or not worry about it…?

3. I’m not convinced that the heater is warming the tank consistently. I’ll try and find a thermometer in the house to double check but the water didn’t feel as warm as it has done. Might this be affecting the guppy that’s put of sorts?

4. I’m finding the API 5 in 1 water test strips really tricky to read accurately. Any recommendations?

5. Feeding..I’m conscious not to overfeed so we give a pinch of flakes once a day - does that sound about right? The guppies poop for England though!! They’re often very long (but NOT white which I think would be a parasite indicator?)

6. How thourough do I need to be when cleaning the sand substrate to get rid of all the guppy waste? As much as possible I guess…

Any advice gratefully received!

Thanks for reading. I’m sure there’ll be plenty more beginner questions from me over the coming weeks and months…you have been warned

 

[Essjay]

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

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

Water quality postcode search

Our region is divided into a number of supply zones. A Water Supply zone is defined in order to enable the mandatory sampling programme to be undertaken at the correct frequency per populous. Each zone is a geographical area containing no more than 100,000 permanent residents. The results will...

www.southwestwater.co.uk

and look for the German degrees number.

 

[Slaphppy7]

Welcome to TFF, excellent advice from @Essjay above...I would just add to be sure and use a good quality water conditioner, Seachem Prime or API Tap Water Conditioner are 2 of the better ones

 

[guppiesandtetras]

Thanks so much for the detailed reply. I’m finding it incredibly difficult to read the nitrate and nitrite levels with any confidence using the strips, so I’ve ordered the liquid kit you’ve recommended - thanks for posting the link.

Plant wise, I have no idea what we’ve got I’ll post some photos to see if clever folk here can identify them!!

I hope we can manage to keep the guppies healthy and happy in this soft water area, they’re such lovely fish - I’m a big fan already!

Hoovering - I’ve got one of the syphon tubes with a squeezy thing so I’ll see how well I do with that cleaning up after the guppies..

 

[guppiesandtetras]

Also…re the tank cycling, we started it off with tank stability treatment about 10 days before we got the neons and added some more with the last water change just to be on the safe side.

 

[Slaphppy7]

Until you have 0 ammonia, 0 nitrItes, and "some" nitrAtes, the tank isn't cycled, regardless of any "stability" treatments that have been added

We won't know until you get that liquid test kit suggested above...make getting that kit a priority

 

[guppiesandtetras]

Until you have 0 ammonia, 0 nitrItes, and "some" nitrAtes, the tank isn't cycled, regardless of any "stability" treatments that have been added

We won't know until you get that liquid test kit suggested above...make getting that kit a priority

Ok, thank you, I didn’t realise. We just went on the advice from our local aquatic centre. They tested our water twice before we got our first fish - once after a week when there were still nitrites present, and then again however many days it was later, when all the levels were deemed good (according to their liquid test kit) and we were able to bring the neons home. I’ve ordered the recommended kit ordered on prime, hopefully here tomorrow

 

[Essjay]

Most fish shops will sell you a "miracle product to make your tank instantly safe for fish". Unfortunately this is not true. The best ones will speed things up, the rest will do nothing. And fish store workers are notorious for testing water and saying the levels are good when they are not. Always ask for numbers if you have water tested at a shop. The only good levels when there are fish in a tank are
ammonia - zero
nitrite - zero
nitrate - under 20 ppm


Post those plant photos and we'll see what you have. Yet again you have to be careful - many shops sell house plants as aquarium plants


It's a steep learning curve when you first start keeping fish, you'll find it easier as you go forwards

 

[NannaLou]

And everyone here gives endless good advice that’s easy to follow

 

[guppiesandtetras]

And everyone here gives endless good advice that’s easy to follow

It’s so helpful. Very grateful to people taking the time to reply with so much detail. Plus it’s lovely not to feel like a complete muppet as a beginner

 

[guppiesandtetras]

Most fish shops will sell you a "miracle product to make your tank instantly safe for fish". Unfortunately this is not true. The best ones will speed things up, the rest will do nothing. And fish store workers are notorious for testing water and saying the levels are good when they are not. Always ask for numbers if you have water tested at a shop. The only good levels when there are fish in a tank are
ammonia - zero
nitrite - zero
nitrate - under 20 ppm


Post those plant photos and we'll see what you have. Yet again you have to be careful - many shops sell house plants as aquarium plants


It's a steep learning curve when you first start keeping fish, you'll find it easier as you go forwards

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!!!

 

[MonsieurLaGrenuoille]

Beautiful plants the large one number 3 seems to be a Vallisneria, the others are unknown to me, but it looks fine don't worry toomuch about, try, wait and see

 

[MonsieurLaGrenuoille]

And welcome too

 

[NannaLou]

It’s so helpful. Very grateful to people taking the time to reply with so much detail. Plus it’s lovely not to feel like a complete muppet as a beginner

Some of us have killed beautiful fish going on the advice of the LFS. And it’s difficult trying to research things that you don’t know about. I had no knowledge at all about cycling or water hardness even after numerous conversations with the fish shop. @Essjay sorted all the science stuff down to below GCSE level for me

 

[Essjay]

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.