Hi all,
First time poster and all, but I have a question that Google won't tell me the answer to!
First, I'll prefix it with a story... It's a long and unpleasant one, so feel free to skip to the question in bold at the bottom!
I work in an office where our former boss decided one day that we needed a fish tank for our team of three people. He went and got a 13 gallon tank and promptly filled it with 2 Rose Barbs, 2 Tiger Barbs, 2 Albino Tiger Barbs, 1 gold barb, 1 baby plecostomus, 1 adult keyhole cichlid 3 Yoyo loach and 2 Bolivian Ram cichlids. They went straight into untreated tap water the day we got the tank with blue gravel substrate which hadn't been cleaned properly (immediately turning into fog.)
The team of 3 had never kept tropical fish before, knew nothing about it and until that day had no interest - but as soon as we got them we started taking an interest. Our boss insisted that he'd taken care of fish before so we simply followed as he said.
So unsurprisingly, within a few days we had deaths. First to go were the two Rose barbs, who just kicked it in the middle of the day. One tiger barb managed to jump from the tank to his death and was discovered dried on the carpet the next day. One of the albinos went, the gold barb went and the keyhole went. All the while we were learning about this thing called the Nitrogen cycle, and that you actually had to _change_ the water every few days (!) and that feeding them too much was bad, and that certain fish weren't compatible with each other...
So anyway, our boss in between these events went and got a further 2 Red Severums (who were absolutely beautiful, still so gutted knowing what I know now that they went into this mess...), 2 red tail loach and a Synodontis Eupterus. Yes, at one point we had 17 fish in a 13 gallon tank, which wasn't properly cycled and not regularly cleaned.
This horror story doesn't end there though, so one of the red severums almost immediately became ill and spent his days laying sideways on the floor looking distressed and in pain - eventually we put him out of his misery. Two of the Yoyos and one of the Bolivian Rams also went, and by that point we'd figured out that water quality mattered. Our boss then left, and the other Red Severum soon became everybody's favourite, and for a while we didn't have any deaths - so we decided to replace (lord knows why) the Barbs who'd died and the Bolivian Ram that died. We did that, and for a while we had no deaths (with 30-50% water changes every two days.) But then one day one of the new Barbs simply went missing. We were confused for a few days, until one day I noticed the Red Severum was nomming something in his mouth. He dragged it round to the side of the tank, and from there I could see it was a tiny little fish skeleton!
We lost another Barb to choking (he tried to down a pellet which was too big for him, that we also hadn't soaked properly.) and another to fungus. Finally, we lost the Red Severum to what appeared to be constipation, we assume caused by overfeeding him the large, unsoaked pellets
All of that happened over a period of 5 months, and now over a year later with no further deaths we're left with both the original fish which somehow survived - the (much much larger) common pleco, one albino tiger barb, one tiger barb and one bolivian ram, and the newer entries - the synodontis eupterus, the other bolivian ram and a green barb. Without the plec and synodontis, I'd say we have a sensible set of fish for a 13 gallon (three barbs and two rams,) which brings us to today.
The rest of the team are leaving. The other people in the office have never been fans of the fish (resenting the amount of time we've spent with them over the years!) so them staying on here is not an option, and even if they wanted to, they would have as little knowledge as we did. In all this, the team have all individually become decent fish keepers - the other two run their own successful tanks at home now. One guy has decided to take the common plec, as she's been his favourite all along and he recently bought a huge tank at home which will comfortably house her for the foreseeable future.
But that leaves the others. My question then: Are fish generally safe to go back to a fish store? It's been a massively painful decision for me to give them up, as I've grown attached to them - having spent 8 hours a day right next to them with them for the last year and a half and doing my best to keep them alive and happy. At this point I just want what's best. I absolutely do not want them to go back only to die immediately in the display tanks, or be taken off by someone who doesn't know what they're doing (again.)
The reason I'm not taking them is because I don't feel like my apartment would be a better life for them - I can't afford a huge tank, I'm barely there, I have a housemate who likes oil burner air fresheners and I don't have a car to get to and from the LFS (which isn't so L for me) should there be an emergency. However if in people's opinions they are likely to not last very long back at the store for one reason or another, then I'll absolutely lump it and try and do my best for them myself.
Sorry for the ramble, hope someone can give some insight (I know there's no hard and fast answer) if you've managed to make it this far through the post!
Cheers,
Dan
First time poster and all, but I have a question that Google won't tell me the answer to!
First, I'll prefix it with a story... It's a long and unpleasant one, so feel free to skip to the question in bold at the bottom!
I work in an office where our former boss decided one day that we needed a fish tank for our team of three people. He went and got a 13 gallon tank and promptly filled it with 2 Rose Barbs, 2 Tiger Barbs, 2 Albino Tiger Barbs, 1 gold barb, 1 baby plecostomus, 1 adult keyhole cichlid 3 Yoyo loach and 2 Bolivian Ram cichlids. They went straight into untreated tap water the day we got the tank with blue gravel substrate which hadn't been cleaned properly (immediately turning into fog.)
The team of 3 had never kept tropical fish before, knew nothing about it and until that day had no interest - but as soon as we got them we started taking an interest. Our boss insisted that he'd taken care of fish before so we simply followed as he said.
So unsurprisingly, within a few days we had deaths. First to go were the two Rose barbs, who just kicked it in the middle of the day. One tiger barb managed to jump from the tank to his death and was discovered dried on the carpet the next day. One of the albinos went, the gold barb went and the keyhole went. All the while we were learning about this thing called the Nitrogen cycle, and that you actually had to _change_ the water every few days (!) and that feeding them too much was bad, and that certain fish weren't compatible with each other...
So anyway, our boss in between these events went and got a further 2 Red Severums (who were absolutely beautiful, still so gutted knowing what I know now that they went into this mess...), 2 red tail loach and a Synodontis Eupterus. Yes, at one point we had 17 fish in a 13 gallon tank, which wasn't properly cycled and not regularly cleaned.
This horror story doesn't end there though, so one of the red severums almost immediately became ill and spent his days laying sideways on the floor looking distressed and in pain - eventually we put him out of his misery. Two of the Yoyos and one of the Bolivian Rams also went, and by that point we'd figured out that water quality mattered. Our boss then left, and the other Red Severum soon became everybody's favourite, and for a while we didn't have any deaths - so we decided to replace (lord knows why) the Barbs who'd died and the Bolivian Ram that died. We did that, and for a while we had no deaths (with 30-50% water changes every two days.) But then one day one of the new Barbs simply went missing. We were confused for a few days, until one day I noticed the Red Severum was nomming something in his mouth. He dragged it round to the side of the tank, and from there I could see it was a tiny little fish skeleton!
We lost another Barb to choking (he tried to down a pellet which was too big for him, that we also hadn't soaked properly.) and another to fungus. Finally, we lost the Red Severum to what appeared to be constipation, we assume caused by overfeeding him the large, unsoaked pellets
All of that happened over a period of 5 months, and now over a year later with no further deaths we're left with both the original fish which somehow survived - the (much much larger) common pleco, one albino tiger barb, one tiger barb and one bolivian ram, and the newer entries - the synodontis eupterus, the other bolivian ram and a green barb. Without the plec and synodontis, I'd say we have a sensible set of fish for a 13 gallon (three barbs and two rams,) which brings us to today.
The rest of the team are leaving. The other people in the office have never been fans of the fish (resenting the amount of time we've spent with them over the years!) so them staying on here is not an option, and even if they wanted to, they would have as little knowledge as we did. In all this, the team have all individually become decent fish keepers - the other two run their own successful tanks at home now. One guy has decided to take the common plec, as she's been his favourite all along and he recently bought a huge tank at home which will comfortably house her for the foreseeable future.
But that leaves the others. My question then: Are fish generally safe to go back to a fish store? It's been a massively painful decision for me to give them up, as I've grown attached to them - having spent 8 hours a day right next to them with them for the last year and a half and doing my best to keep them alive and happy. At this point I just want what's best. I absolutely do not want them to go back only to die immediately in the display tanks, or be taken off by someone who doesn't know what they're doing (again.)
The reason I'm not taking them is because I don't feel like my apartment would be a better life for them - I can't afford a huge tank, I'm barely there, I have a housemate who likes oil burner air fresheners and I don't have a car to get to and from the LFS (which isn't so L for me) should there be an emergency. However if in people's opinions they are likely to not last very long back at the store for one reason or another, then I'll absolutely lump it and try and do my best for them myself.
Sorry for the ramble, hope someone can give some insight (I know there's no hard and fast answer) if you've managed to make it this far through the post!
Cheers,
Dan
