New to tropical fish, help?

[Kermit17]

Hi all,

I'm new to the hobby of keeping tropical fish, at the moment I have a Aquael Leddy 75 LED (105L) tank, in this tank I have 20 tetras, 2 platies and a golden african dwarf frog,

All seem healthy but I'm struggling with keeping the tank clean, I clean the tank, but very next day the glass is covered in green algae and water looks dirty plus lots of waste on sand, I feed flakes to the fish once a day and bloodworms to the frog also, is this too much? I also have the light on for maybe 12hours not sure if that's too long

Any advice greatly appreciated

Thanks

 

[Essjay]

Are there any live plants in the tank? If not, the light is on for too long. I would cut it down to 6 hours, when you are home to see the fish. The light should be on at the same time of day for the same length of time every day. If the light is a programmable LED each channel can be set to a particular time; if the light options are just on and off a plug in timer is the usual option.

If the tank does have live plants, I would cut down to 8 hours and see how the plants are.



Is the waste on the sand uneaten food & fish poop or does it look like a layer of algae on the sand which peels off in strips? If it's uneaten food, feed less. If it's poop, it just needs to be hoovered up with a siphon. Unlike gravel, with sand any waste just sits on top till it's cleaned up.
A layer of algae on the sand is likely blue green algae which is actually a bacterium. It's caused by too many nutrients in the water, slow moving water etc. How often do you do water changes?






Side issue - the frog. Unless they've bred gold dwarf frogs in recent years it could be a clawed frog. Does it have webbed toes on its front feet? If it does it is a dwarf. if it doesn't it's a clawed.

 

[DoubleDutch]

Could you please place a pic?
Possible blue green algae (which in fact are Cyano bacteria)

 

[GaryE]

Algae problems have light at their source. Is your tank really close to a window?
As well, you may be overfeeding.

Too clean kills fish - your system runs on beneficial bacteria. If you do more than scrape the glass you are probably overdoing it. But accumulated waste says you are seriously overfeeding. There shouldn't be much to fall. Give the fish what they can eat in a minute, and when I say eat, I mean all of it. They don't need much food, and more often than not people kill their fish with kindness. Uneaten food feeds algae, and also feeds bacterial blooms that cloud the water.

 

[Kermit17]

Are there any live plants in the tank? If not, the light is on for too long. I would cut it down to 6 hours, when you are home to see the fish. The light should be on at the same time of day for the same length of time every day. If the light is a programmable LED each channel can be set to a particular time; if the light options are just on and off a plug in timer is the usual option.

If the tank does have live plants, I would cut down to 8 hours and see how the plants are.



Is the waste on the sand uneaten food & fish poop or does it look like a layer of algae on the sand which peels off in strips? If it's uneaten food, feed less. If it's poop, it just needs to be hoovered up with a siphon. Unlike gravel, with sand any waste just sits on top till it's cleaned up.
A layer of algae on the sand is likely blue green algae which is actually a bacterium. It's caused by too many nutrients in the water, slow moving water etc. How often do you do water changes?






Side issue - the frog. Unless they've bred gold dwarf frogs in recent years it could be a clawed frog. Does it have webbed toes on its front feet? If it does it is a dwarf. if it doesn't it's a clawed.

Hi

Thanks for your reply, unfortunately I don't have live plants at the moment but looking to get some soon, the waste on the bottom is fish poop as I remove uneaten food daily, I have been doing a part water change once a week,

I have attached a pic of frog as not sure if I've been told the wrong bread

Thanks

 

[Kermit17]

Could you please place a pic?
Possible blue green algae (which in fact are Cyano bacteria)

Thanks, I've attached a pic

 

[Kermit17]

Algae problems have light at their source. Is your tank really close to a window?
As well, you may be overfeeding.

Too clean kills fish - your system runs on beneficial bacteria. If you do more than scrape the glass you are probably overdoing it. But accumulated waste says you are seriously overfeeding. There shouldn't be much to fall. Give the fish what they can eat in a minute, and when I say eat, I mean all of it. They don't need much food, and more often than not people kill their fish with kindness. Uneaten food feeds algae, and also feeds bacterial blooms that cloud the water.

I think I may have the light on in the tank too long also it is quite close to the window, never even gave that a thought tbh,

How often would you recommend feeding? I thought once a day would be ok but maybe I should change to once every two days maybe

 

[Essjay]

The frog is a dwarf, it has webbed toes on the front feet. There were problems a few years ago with shops mis-labelling frogs and people were sold the large, fish-eating African clawed frogs as dwarfs. There didn't used to be gold dwarfs back then, they were all brown, which is why I checked
A diet of just bloodworm isn't really enough for the frog - there is special frog food available. This is the one I used when I had frogs. it was recommended to me by the frog expert on here a few years ago
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002DZI1K6/?tag=
The main problem is stopping the fish eating it all before the frog can find it.



The algae photo looks like proper algae rather than cyanobacter. It is probably due to too much light. I would cut down the duration to 6 hours.



Good that you do water changes every week - how much? Most of us do at least 50% a week.
Feeding once a day is fine, though you can miss one day a week. It's the amount of food we need to look at. As GaryE said, it's too easy to overfeed fish. Most of what we eat goes to keep our body warm. Cold blooded creatures like fish and frogs get their heat from the water so they need a lot less food than you'd think.

 

[Kermit17]

The frog is a dwarf, it has webbed toes on the front feet. There were problems a few years ago with shops mis-labelling frogs and people were sold the large, fish-eating African clawed frogs as dwarfs. There didn't used to be gold dwarfs back then, they were all brown, which is why I checked
A diet of just bloodworm isn't really enough for the frog - there is special frog food available. This is the one I used when I had frogs. it was recommended to me by the frog expert on here a few years ago
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002DZI1K6/?tag=
The main problem is stopping the fish eating it all before the frog can find it.



The algae photo looks like proper algae rather than cyanobacter. It is probably due to too much light. I would cut down the duration to 6 hours.



Good that you do water changes every week - how much? Most of us do at least 50% a week.
Feeding once a day is fine, though you can miss one day a week. It's the amount of food we need to look at. As GaryE said, it's too easy to overfeed fish. Most of what we eat goes to keep our body warm. Cold blooded creatures like fish and frogs get their heat from the water so they need a lot less food than you'd think.

Thats great, thanks I'll order the frog food, I did think he would need something else, he is trained so when I tap the glass he appears for feeding, he takes the worms directly from a turkey baster so will try the same technique with frog food, I'll also cut down the time that the light is on in the tank, yeah it 50% I've been doing too so that's good, it's a pinch of flakes I give the fish but maybe I'll try a little less

Thanks for all the advice