Ok i didnt wait for advice i immediately did a 1/3 change so atleast i was semi right. I will do another 1/2 change tomorrow. Poor fishes have been chilling in 1.0 ammonium for a day
I suggest that you do a larger water change than 50% this time, maybe around 75%. Luckily, your tank is quite small, but if you have trouble lugging water around, it is worth investing in some long hose for water changes.
Ive managed to get the ammonium down to between .50 and .25 (these liquid tests arent exactly like my ph ppm ec meters accuracy lol)
. Its been too long for me to take the fish back unless i flip on them for the bad bad info i was givin on fish for my tank.. We will see!!
the dude at the petstore said 1" of fish per gallon is correct . Is this inaccurate? I guess its alot more complicated then that?
It is a lot more complicated that that
I actually do not use any stocking guidelines, other than my own experience, but I will try to demonstrate how the inch/gallon guide works.
So your tank is 30*12*16 inches, which is 24.5 US gallons. After expected "beginner" decoration, that's around 21 gallons, which would give you 24 inches of fish based on the total tank volume, which is what most people use. Now, internet claims that tiger barbs grow to 3" (since I have never seen ones that large, that's probably the TL (length including tail), which is fine for the calculation), which means you have 15" of fish there. Kissing gouramis grow up to 12", so that gives you another 24" of fish (that's 39" in total so far, already overstocked according to the inch per gallon guideline). Rainbow sharks grow to around 6", so now we have 45" in total. Yes, it is important to use only *adult* fish sizes for stocking.
Tiger barbs are aggressive schoolers and will pick on other fish if there are not enough of their own kind, so now you need 10 tiger barbs to start with, which gives you 30" and the tank would now be overstocked according to that guideline.
Next, how do you expect a 12" fish to be happy in an aquarium which is 12" front to back? Imagine living in a room which is say… 3 steps long and 1 wide? No space to move, so apart from getting bored out of your mind, you'd have no space to exercise, etc, so these have to go out of the tank. As a very basic guideline, large fish should have at least 5* their adult length for the tank length, so 5*12 means that kissing gouramis should have at least a 5 ft tank, which should be wider than they are as well.
Finally onto the rainbow shark. Apart from this being one evil, territorial fish, if we class this as a "large" fish, then in theory it should fit into a 30" tank… unfortunately, there are other things to consider with this one. Researching about where this fish comes from leads me to finding out that it originates in fast flowing streams. This means that it is a relatively strong swimmer, which means that it needs more space per length than a passive swimmer, so lets say it needs 8* its length in tank size, so it should have a 4 ft tank as a minimum. Of course, there is always the matter of it being a nasty species, so it wouldn't work in a small tank anyway.
Unfortunately, for smaller tanks like yours, the requirements of fish are quite different still. For example, a 1" fish cannot live in a 5" tank, but might be able to go into a 12" or 24" tank depending on how much swimming space it needs, how much territory, how many companions etc. In real life, an example of this would be a 2"
Danio rerio (it is important that you start picking up scientific names, as some common names are used for multiple and very different fish!) being able to cross a 5-6 ft tank in under 1 second, while a 2"
Betta splendens would take closer to 10-60 seconds to cross the same space (if it was determined and did not get distracted in the mean time). The fact that your tank is only 30" (76 cm) long does limit you quite a bit with potential stock. If I was given a tank like that and had to stock it with neutral water in mind (by the way, it's worth checking your pH and water hardness), then I would be looking at something like 10-20* 1" mid-water schooling fish, 10* 1-1.5" Corys or a couple of 2" plecos and a couple of peaceful (i.e. uncommon) up to 3" or so gouramis. That is, unless I decided to go more specialised and have some rare livebearers or something like that.
(I know this is probably quite confusing, but stocking is complicated if done with the fish in mind)
I found out it is only the one barb that is tormenting everyone in the tank. Im currently trying to think of a solution to this
No easy solution here… if you remove it, another will take its place, and things will be worse with fewer fish for the aggression to spread over. The only two realistic solutions are either to take all of them back, or get their numbers up to 10+ (which would be dangerous for the fish in an uncycled tank).
If doing 90% water changes will this not slow or totally stop the nitrogen cycle from completeing?
The amounts of ammonia that are needed for the filter to cycle are so small that your test kit will not detect them. My experience is that having lower concentrations of ammonia does slow down the cycle, but not proportionately so. I suspect that having a constant and steady source of ammonia is actually better than having it seesaw on a daily basis (like in a fish-less cycle), which compensates for the lower concentrations. In my experience, a fish-less cycle usually takes 4-8+ weeks (+ 1 qualifying week), while a fish-in cycle takes 6-12+ weeks.
Oh and my water conditioner . Start right from jungle only does chlorine chloronamine and adds slime coat . Im really low on cash how important is it to get a conditioner that does the ammonia ,if im doing daily water changes??
If your ammonia always reads 0 ppm or just above 0 ppm (by the way, you may end up doing water changes a few times per day), then you can get away without it, but it is safer to have one which will do ammonia. It will help keep ammonia down if you feed only a tiny amount once per day or even skip some days. If the fish are in good condition, it is relatively safe to feed small amounts once every three days for the duration of the cycle.
