My new tropical aquarium setup.

[sunnybob]

The bubbles might just be the result of a quick camera setting, or even local water quality.
You have pretty soft water down in cornwall Phil, not sure where coley is. London for example has water fed from 5 seperate areas, all with their own chemical make up. Bath has the scummiest water I have ever seen. kettles go pure chalk white after a single use. In Taunton my kettle still looked brand new after several years.

Coley, I think you can afford to raise the water a bit. You dont need niagara falls, just to keep the surface moving around. If when you get the water level where you want it, and you still have that very annoying bright white line at the top, its no big deal to add a strip of 1" wide black pvc tape to make a sun visor.you dont need to see the surface.
As far as hardness goes, Heres todays reading for you

http://www.tropical-fish-success.com/aq ... dness.html

 

[ColeyS1]

I would think there's something adrift with your water quality if bubbles are holding on the surface like that.

As soon as they form they immediately burst Phil. Perhaps it's the few drops of bubble bath I add to make the water smell nice lol. I'll be honest and say I did open the window this morning to let in some new fresh oxygen [WHITE SMILING FACE]

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[ColeyS1]

Ok Bob. Going by that link you posted the water is slightly hard so not as bad as I first thought. I think for my own sanity I'll put it down to not acclimatising them properly to the tank water. All seems well this morning so hopefully that's it for them dying.

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[ColeyS1]

FFS !!!!

This was one of yesterday's. Less than 24 hrs. Could it be one of the other fish is harassing it ? It had a lovely wispy tail, but when I just saw it struggling (before sinking lifeless to the bottom) it was all ragged and looked hacked into. Fin rot would be much slower....surely ?
The body also looks like it has tiny red spots on it where a fish may have been pecking at it ?

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[sunnybob]

Every body loves a guppy.
When i turned my hobby into a business and opened a high street shop, I swore I would not sell guppies because they were such a pain.
After the third person left my shop and went down the road to buy the guppies he wanted, I learnt a serious business lesson. The customer is always right, no matter how wrong he is.
I stocked and sold thousands of them from then on.
Never liked them, never kept them at home.

They are best kept on their own, in very slightly brackish water, and they will go forth and multiply in prodigious quantities. In a "community" tank, those flappy fins are just too hard to resist for most fish.

We come back to "the real world" scenario. In the real world, guppies are so brightly coloured because they live in drainage ditches that are pea soup thick. Even with all those colours they happen upon each other almost by accident.
In a clear water aquarium, its like having a "come eat me" sign on their tails.

 

[ColeyS1]

Every body loves a guppy.
When i turned my hobby into a business and opened a high street shop, I swore I would not sell guppies because they were such a pain.
After the third person left my shop and went down the road to buy the guppies he wanted, I learnt a serious business lesson. The customer is always right, no matter how wrong he is.
I stocked and sold thousands of them from then on.
Never liked them, never kept them at home.

They are best kept on their own, in very slightly brackish water, and they will go forth and multiply in prodigious quantities. In a "community" tank, those flappy fins are just too hard to resist for most fish.

We come back to "the real world" scenario. In the real world, guppies are so brightly coloured because they live in drainage ditches that are pea soup thick. Even with all those colours they happen upon each other almost by accident.
In a clear water aquarium, its like having a "come eat me" sign on their tails.

Yeah it might look appetising if you were hungry. Another guppy from yesterday is staying fairly still at the surface, I don't give it much hope tbh. It Doesn't look like it's gasping though. I've just watched the clown loach tailing one of the bigger tetras. It was literally on its fin for a couple minutes following it around the tank. Could that one possibly be the culprit ? I'm feeding them once a day now so they shouldn't be as hungry.

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[sunnybob]

ok, so the clown is eating from the other fish. Thats unusual, but theres a reason.

We now move onto where in the tank different fish feed.
You have top, middle, and bottom feeders. you can tell where any fish feeds just by looking at its mouth.
Top feeders have sticky out bottom lips. middle have straight ahead, and bottom have downward facing mouths.

you need to place food in the tank according to what fish you have. If you put in floating flake, and its all gone in a couple of minutes, the middle feeders wont get much and the bottom feeders wont get any. Loaches and catfish are bottom feeders. you can buy floating flake and pellets, and sinking pellets.

Get some food down to the loach and he will stop eating the guppies. Even pleco's, which are sold as algae eaters, will eat other food laying on the bottom. Especially if you have an ultra clean glass tank. But you still dont want uneaten food laying on the bottom for very long.

If I had a lot of bottom feeders in a tank (I was very into catfish) i would feed just before i put the lights out at night, so the catfish could forage while the top and middle feeders were dozing. If food was still there in the morning, next day was famine day.

 

[ColeyS1]

Ok Bob. I'm using sinking granules. Which I was thinking cater for most as some float, linger halfway and other sink quickly to the bottom.
I'm getting pretty good at spotting poorly ones now lol.

That's two replacements from the same tank dead within 2 days. They linger near the top of the water staying fairly still, before popping their clogs the following day. Could that suggest an oxygen problem ? It's the only thing i can think of that i haven't tested.
That's 10 fish since Saturday with only 4 surviving.... so far. I guess this is part of fish keeping,trying to problem solve tank issues. I'm gonna go start a sharpening thread ! Ha ha

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[sunnybob]

Sharpening has NOTHING on fishkeeping for complexity, trust me. :roll:

Those guppies were a bad batch. end of story. You know the shopkeeper lost them. It happens. But he should have fish in quarantine for at least a couple days before selling them on.

When you put a dozen different species in the same tank as "community" fish, you dont realise that those fish may have come from three different continents originally with completely different water chemical composition,
A good community tank is a recommendation for the owner, its hard, not easy to keep all those diverse things survivable for every one of them.

PH, DH, KH, and all the other aitches all need to be aligned.
Maybe you could try a single species tank?
I would start you off with a dozen neon tetras, a few cardinal tetras, and some small rasboras. then you could grow wonderful plants.
Or maybe a breeding pair of firemouth cichlids, and watch them destroy every piece of plant you have, dig the pits all over the tank, and then watch the eggs develop into young and grow up.
8) 8)

 

[ColeyS1]

Apologies for dragging this back up but I thought I should update. I received a heck of a lot of advice via pm and tried to take it all in. A few things that stand out were get a small tank and learn to deal with the deaths or get a big tank and watch everything flourish (that's how I interpreted it anyway lol ) my big tank has been so so much easier than the 2 previous ones ! I've added some plants and it kind of sorts itself out. A big thing I took from one of the messages was look at the tanks you're buying from and go from there. I went to potentially add a few more to my collection and saw this in the tanks

I'd been their before and put 2 and 2 together and started to think I had better success buying elsewhere. This place had a fish dead in the tank for 2.5 weeks before it got taken out. I just dont think their tanks are healthy and looked after.
I've been putting off sorting out the external filter pipes for months and finally got around to doing it today. The tank is no way an award winner but for the time being I'm happy with how its going.

Thanks guys!

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[sunnybob]

A big step forwards on the learning curve. =D>
Any shop that leaves dead fish in the tanks should be avoided. But fish do die, even on the best of us :roll: . I used to check every tank before opening the doors (all 150 of them) and also all through the day.
Now you should start looking at ALL the fish in the tank before you buy. Are there any swimming badly? are the whole tank of fish at the top of the water gasping? do they have fins clamped to their bodies, or covered in white spots?

Theyre all in the the same water, so anything one of them is showing symptoms of, they all have.

Small tanks can work, but they are much, much harder than large tanks to look after.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

You do know that the slate is likely to make your water alkaline?

 

[ColeyS1]

You do know that the slate is likely to make your water alkaline?

Didn't cross my mind tbh Phil. I saw loads of slate aquarium structures for sale on ebay and thought I could make something to suit the size of the tank. I'll have to look into it......immediately!- I just managed to find my 5in1 test strips and ph at the moment is 6. The fish seem to be doing really well and it's been in there possibly 4 months. I've only had 1 fish kick the bucket since then.

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[ColeyS1]

Balls, I just googled the ideal ph.....

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[ColeyS1]

So if I tested the other goldfish tank, that'd show how much lower it is ?

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[sunnybob]

with a ph of 6, add more slate :shock: =D>

But again, different fish require different PH numbers.
Small tetras, barbs etc, are happy when the number is above 6.5 right up to 7.5.
African cichlids are happy with 8 .5 and maybe even slightly higher.
You MUST do regular pH checks, and another worthwhile one is DH (hardness) although not as important as PH.

 

[ColeyS1]

with a ph of 6, add more slate :shock: =D>

But again, different fish require different PH numbers.
Small tetras, barbs etc, are happy when the number is above 6.5 right up to 7.5.
African cichlids are happy with 8 .5 and maybe even slightly higher.
You MUST do regular pH checks, and another worthwhile one is DH (hardness) although not as important as PH.

I'll look into adding some chemicals so the ph is nearer to what's needed. Because I had only one death I assumed the tank must be doing ok- the fish look and seem healthy enough. It's mainly the nitrate levels I've kept an eye on in the past. I know for certain that I've got hard water so would this also be something that needs tweaking?

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[sunnybob]

Whatever you do, do it slowly. Sudden water quality changes are fastest way to kill a fish.

Hard water is good, Ph will always go to acid because of the plant growth and the fishes urine (yup, fish pee too :shock: :shock: :roll: ) Thats why you do regular partial water changes.

south american fish especially are happy in low ph, Discus fish wont survive without it.
Research the fish you want to keep, and adjust the water accordingly. You youngsters have it so easy; before the internet it took me years to learn all this stuff (hammer) (hammer)

 

[ColeyS1]

I picked this up yesterday

And have ordered

I had no idea that such a small difference in numbers from 6-7 had that much effect on the acidity of the water- my fish must be swimming in a acid bath ! I think the liquid test kit should be more accurate than the current 5 in 1 test strips I use.
Hopefully delivery will be fairly quick.
Bob I'll take note of adjusting the ph slowly.
Thanks

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[Phil Pascoe]

Yes. The PH scale is logarithmic. As Bob said, they all drift to acid over a time, so if you keep acid water loving fish it gets easier, but if you keep alkaline loving ones it needs keeping in check. If you want your water more alkaline research keeping Malawis (not that you necessarily want it that alkaline) and you'll find natural additives (sands, rocks, shells etc.) that are probably slower acting and safer than changing everything too quickly. Once settled large tanks need next to no dosing with anything.