Hello ! and Gravel cleaner ??

[smand]

Hi all,

Had my first tank for two weeks now and im addicted. Stocked up with my first fish recently (3 dwarf gouramis (S). I have a couple of questions.

1, I have seen that cleaning gravel in the tank is very important, get rid of old food etc. A, Do i still need to do this when I have a box type filter ? If so my problem is that I have Sand as a subsrate, do the commercial gravel cleaners work with sand ?

2, As mentioned above I have three dwarf Gouramis. They are, silvery blue, Orange and one that is striped blue and orange. The silvery one spends most of its time dive bombing up and down at the front of the tank whilst the other two hide behind rocks. Is this normal ??

Thanks very much.

 

[Fishsmurf]

smand,

Hi & welcome......

To answer the first of your questions, yes, a commercial gravel vac will work with sand but you just use it is a slightly different way. As opposed to gravel where you plunge the gravel vac in with sand you need to hover the vac just above the sand so that it picks up the detritus on the sand without disturbin the sand itself too much.

The second question I am gonna duck out on as I have never kept or read that much about dwarf gourami's. One of the mods or other guys should be a long soon. They should be able to help you out.......In the meantime i'll have a hunt around and see if I can find any info for you.

 

[smand]

many thanks for the info, appreciate it.

 

[Dragonslair]

Welcome smand,
What I would suggest, is try posting your question about your Gouramis in one of the other forums.ie Tropical Chit chat.
However in my experience no fish should be up and down in the manner you describe. This is a definite sign of stress. Theexception to this rule are eelsand some corys. They sometimes swim up and gulp air and go back down. I would check the parameters of your water in the first instance.
Meanwhile WELCOME.

 

[steve-0]

how new are they to the tank. mine took a couple of days ot come out of hiding and get familiar with there new surroundings

 

[smudge]

Hi, welcome. I have two dwarfs... They were the last 2 added to my 40 gallon tank. They hid and were real skittish for the first couple weeks. Now they soar around everywhere. I'd check your amonia levels though especially in your tank being so new.
I have a small tiger oscar that swims up and down the front of my 55 gallon tank, though, I'm not sure, but I think he's begging for food because as soon as I lift the lid he stops and hovers in wait. I do have a few other fish that do what you describe but they do so at the rear of the tanks in the bubble wall. One is an adolecent cichlid and the other is a male betta, but neither did that when I first put them in the tanks and they only do it on occasion. Hope that helped.