Reluctant Fishkeeper update

[justinhill]

I gratefully received lots of good advice from my first thread, and I haven't ignored it but I decided to 'let things ride' while I try to stabilise everything and be sure the tank is fully cycled. My routine is now that every morning, after checking pH, Nitrite, Ammonia and Phosphate (I don't have a tester for Nitrate), I drag some of the blanket weed out and then change 10 litres (out of 83 litres total). I have left the filter undisturbed since Sunday and will rinse it out at the weekend. I've stopped dosing the tank with anything (apart from Prime in the water I replace, and I'm switching over to Stress Coat from today).

I know (now) that the number and combination of fish is basically wrong for this tank. I inherited most of them and then mistakenly replaced those that had died with the original keeper. I also (wrongly) put some siamese algae eaters in. The good news is that the chemical tests are all good, the water is clear - if a little green-tinged, the blanket weed isn't getting any worse and all inhabitants seem happy... with one massive exception...

The gourami that came with the tank is a rogue. I naively and wrongly thought that its menacing behaviour towards the cardinals would improve if there was another gourami in the tank as well. What happened as I'm sure you can all guess is that it simply started bullying the new gourami. At first the new one seemed to be holding its own but this morning I noticed it has lost part of its tail fin and appears to have an injury just below the tail. So the big gourami has to go. There's no point trying to take it back to the shop; it's twice the size it was, and in any case clearly a bad seed.

So as I see it the only route forward is basically to execute it. Being a soft-hearted animal lover by nature the idea makes me feel sick and I'm putting it off. But I have nowhere else to put the little sod where it will survive, and if it stays where it is things will only get worse for the rest of the community. And its my fault. The only thing I'm doing while I psych myself up is that I've turned the lights off - this seems to calm things down a bit. If only there was a way to avoid the inevitable.

pH=6.5, NO2=0, NH3=0-0.2, PO4=0, Regret-ometer=70%

 

[Essjay]

Before doing anything permanent with the gourami, you could try advertising in on here https://www.aquarist-classifieds.co.uk/ Ads with the word 'free' in the title attract more attention. Or phone your local Maidenhead Aquatics branches - they sometimes take in unwanted fish.

That's the trouble with 'inherited' tanks, the fish are not necessarily the ones you would choose but you are stuck with them unless you can find someone else who wants them. Considering the state of the tank when you took it on, you've done a brilliant job. It's not your fault that you took on one of the more aggressive gouramis and you were told it was a different species (one of the less aggressive ones).



Nitrate is not one of the more important tests. Ammonia and nitrite are the must-haves as they kill quickly. Nitrate does affect fish but slower, and we should try to keep the level under 20 ppm. This is usually achieved by water changes. Phosphate doesn't really matter to the fish if yuor levels is low, but I'll leave it to the plant experts as to whether it's suitable for the plants.

 

[justinhill]

Before doing anything permanent with the gourami, you could try advertising in on here https://www.aquarist-classifieds.co.uk/ Ads with the word 'free' in the title attract more attention. Or phone your local Maidenhead Aquatics branches - they sometimes take in unwanted fish.

Give it away? Worth a try...