Newbie Needs Help

[waterdrop]

Hang in there Stingray.

 

[StingRay999]

I need advice again. Yesterday evening I noticed these tiny white speckles in my tank. They swim in the water and cling to the side of the glass. They are very tiny, almost like a grain of salt. I googled it and it seems that overfeeding might be the cause, but I cant see how that is possible as I only give the fish food every 2 to 3 days and I do water changes with the gravel vac every day. Should I be concerned about this?

I did find that the bottom of one of my plants had died, so I removed the whole plant. The other 2 plants get some dead leaves from time to time but I remove them everytime I changes the water.

 

[waterdrop]

The small, almost microscopic things you are observing are almost sure to be Planaria. They are harmless and will go away on their own, no need to worry about them. Any time you have plant parts that die and begin to break down its better to make a decision earlier rather than later to remove them so their breakdown won't add to the ammonia problem. The one thing that must be weighed sometimes is whether the plant, as some Crypts do for instance, has a root system that will come back from a total leaf die-off.. but there are probably more plants that indeed are dead when you see the whole plant breaking down.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[StingRay999]

Things are starting to look good now. I only needed to do 2 water changes during the weekend.

 

[StingRay999]

So after a lot, and a lot of consideration, I have decided that I am going to buy a 16.5 gallon tank. Obviously I wont make the same mistakes as with the 7 gallon. I am going to purchase a new filter during the week and start running it together with the old filter in the 7 gallon tank. then after a month I will purchase the new tank and start moving everything over to the new tank. I am going to buy a new filter because I dont think that the current one I have is such a great one. The flow on it is never the same and it is always falling off or moving all over the place. The filter that I have in mind has a submersable pum and according to the specifications it can pump between 50 and a hundred gallons per hour depending on what you set it to. I cant remember the specific brand but I will go and look at it again then I will post it.

Now for the most important part, what are my stocking options on the 16.5 gallon tank? I would realy like to keep my rio tetra's in there, but I am afraid that they might get too big and then I am going to have problems. I have also thought about neons or glowlights. The cories have also cought my attension. So I though of stocking it with six neons or glowlights and then perhaps 4 cories (the small ones, cant remember there exact name). What do you guys think?

 

[waterdrop]

One great thing about all the fish you are mentioning (neons, glowlights(I think?), pygmys) is that they are sort of "below the median" when thinking about the "inch guideline" stocking approach. In other words, you can often add a few more of these fish to help a shoal of them further "relax" because their bioload is smaller than average for their length. Does that make sense? In the 15G range you are thinking about though, that would only mean maybe one or two extra beyond what you'd calculate from their strict inch numbers, you wouldn't want to over-do my suggestion.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[StingRay999]

Thank you WD. I will continue to do research, and as I get closer to the purchase day I will have a definite stocking list. My main concern now is just getting that new filter. The current one I have had almost no flow when I got home yesterday afternoon. I blew into its air tube and that seemed to help it to flow better I cleaned it a bit over the weekned in some of the fish tank water so I dont think that it could be badly blocked. Lucky for me when I tested the water I got trace amounts of amonia which were to small to make an accurate reading, and a reading of about 0.025 for NO2. Obviously did a nice water change after taking the readings.

 

[waterdrop]

 

[StingRay999]

The filter again had no flow when I got home yesterday afternoon, so I removed the sponges and gave them a couple of good squeezes inside the fishtank and then put them back.The flow was back to normal after that. Tetsed the water and got a 0.03 ppm for Amonia and 0.5 for NOS. Immediately did a 90 % water change. I did not have time to test this morning but I did do a 70% water change. Will check the readings when get home this afternoon.

 

[StingRay999]

So a new LFS opened up in town over the weekend and I went and had a look. Firstly, WOW, they have one huge collection of fish, some that I could not even have imagined existed.They have 102 tank in storeof which 30 is marine, 10 coldwater and 62 tropical. They have a pleco, in a comunity tank, that is almost 60cm long. That thing is huge. The comunity tank belongs to the owner and it is a 1500 liter tank (396 gallons)

So after some browsing I cornered one of the people working there and started asking some questions. He immediatly told me that he does not know a lot about fishkeeping but he will quickly go and find one of the other people who is an expert in the field. This obviously impressed me because usualy they just start telling you sweet little lies just so that you can waste your money in their store. So eventually the expert, who is in fact the store owner, came to me and we started talking about what tank I have and what a big mess I had when I started out. At the end of the conversation he volentured to take my 4 rio tetras and give me a betta male to put in my tank. I was almost shocked.

So after some thought I went home and caught all my fishies and took them in. The guy gave me a beautiful light blue and red crown tail betta and he gave me a new filter, for free! I must admit, I almost fell over. In any case the betta is doing fine in my tank and I have been getting double zero readings from Saterday afternoon. I connected the new filter and it is running together with my old filter at the moment.

 

[Timmy_Bee]

you lucky little ....

 

[waterdrop]

Well, the new LFS owner sounds like a decent guy and a good business man. He knows he is establishing a relationship. Every store needs core customers who will do repeat business and so the relationship is important.

I still strongly recommend to beginners the dual approach that I myself take with any LFS. I try to always keep in mind that I do not want to get myself into the position where the LFS personnel become a significan source of info. I resist getting into information conversations but if it happens I treat them with the same respect that I would any single post here on the forum, something to be listened to and considered but something which must be ultimately weighed over time. The other part of the dual approach is that I value my relationship with my LFS because they are my quick source of supplies and of course my source for fish and plants that I can see before I bring home - very valuable! So I don't want to alienate them!

WD

 

[StingRay999]

I am down in the gutters again. I went on leave since my last post and did not have any internet access so I could not post. Since last week tuesday I have been getting amonia and nitrate spikes again. In 12 hours the amonia grows to 0.25ppm and Nitrate spikes up to 1ppm. I am back to doing 3 water changes a day. I dont understand what could have gone wrong, as I assumed that with only 1 male betta in the 7 gallon tank the toxic levels would take longer to grow. The only major change to the tank was adding the secoond flter, however I adjusted the flow so that it would not have 2 much of an affect on the original filter. I am very cautious when it comes to feeding. I literally add one pellet or flake and whatch him eat the whole thing before adding another one, and I only feed him twice a day. My tank has been cycling for 2 months now. I just dont know what to do anymore.

 

[waterdrop]

Hi again Sting, you may just be going through a temporary thing with the new filter disturbing things a bit. Luckily you know the drill and its only a 7G, so good water changes are always the thing to get you through. I'm sure some of the other members (or me when I get a chance) might analyze your filter situation again and look for things we may have missed. WD

 

[StingRay999]

Got a double zero last night and this morning. Hope it stays that way.