Got a new (to me) aquarium, and need some infos

[Tikker]

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[brinstar]

puppies

[Maeya]

I believe small community fish (guppies, mollies, platys, etc) will work with the male beta. Definitely no other male betas, though. When you're fish shopping, some aquariums will put bets in their tanks. Just look at what sorts of fish they have in with their betas. I don't know how new you are to fish tanks, so forgive me if some of this is already known to you.

Rule of thumb is that you don't want to go over about 1" of fish per gallon. Do NOT get a gold fish to put in there. They are dirty, dirty fish and will scuz up your aquarium like nobody's business. When looking at community fish, mollies and swordtails are good, sturdy fish, and live bearers so you might get some babies occasionally. Mollies also come in a wide variety of colors and styles. You can get a "mickey mouse" one with a little mickey mouse head in it's tail, to please your kiddo. Guppies are pretty, but I've never had great luck with them. As pretty as the tetras are (cardinal and neon), they are a real bitch to keep alive. Most are captured from the wild rather than breeder raised, so they don't adjust well to the tank and die easily. Every time we've tried them, we've essentially just been throwing away money. Hatchets can be a good choice, and they tend to stay near the very top of the tank. Most people will look for fish that hang out in all different areas. Algae eaters tend to hang out at the bottoms, community fish in the middle, and hatchets at the top. The hatchets are also sort of a canary for the tank; if shit goes south, your hatchets will die first, usually. As far as the little frogs go - be careful. We got an African Clawed Frog (which I think are the usual aquatic frogs) and it did live for a long time (several years), but it got big enough that no fish were safe to put in with him. We put a beta in at one point trying to liberate it from it's tiny bowl, and it was eaten.

I don't know that I'd put any other semi-aggressive fish in with a beta, like a rainbow shark or gourami. You'll get territorial fights going on. I wouldn't recommend angelfish, either. You can get lucky if you put them in early with the rest of your fish, but they can also be very aggressive. Especially don't get an angelfish if you get a plecostomus (pleco) as your algae eater. The angelfish put out a protective slime coating that the plecos LOVE, and they'll chew up your angelfish. If you can find them, I recommend getting either a clown loach or a dojo loach (also called weather loaches) as your "unique" fish in the tank if you're tired of the community fish. Loaches, odd as it sounds, are actually personable fish. They actually have personalities, and tend to be very friendly. Ugzug's dojo loach would actually swim up to his hand at feeding time and he was able to pet it. They're pretty cool fish. We currently have a yoyo loach, which looks really cool, but he's sort of a bully towards the other fish in that he's TOO friendly. He swims right along side of them and tries to play. They tend to get annoyed with him.

I don't know about your filter, but if even Google isn't turning up anything, you'll want to consider replacing it so you'll be able to change the stuff out more easily. I really only started learning more about aquariums after we got a 75 gallon and a canister style filter, so I am not really up-to-date on the other style in terms of how often to change the components. You'll want to do a partial water change every couple weeks depending on how many fish you have in there. Partial as in 25-40%. You never want to do a complete water change because you want to keep a healthy community of good bacteria in the tank. Make sure you buy some chemicals to treat the new water you put in the tank. Chlorine remover and that sort of thing. Stress coat for the fish may help as well. Also buy a thermometer and a heater if you don't already own them. Especially up in Canada in the winter, you'll want to keep your tank in the mid 70s.

With the water changes, also keep in mind that the more often you change your water, the faster the fish will grow. They produce a hormone/chemical/something that they excrete into the water. The higher concentrations prevent them from growing much. If you're changing their water frequently, this reduces the concentrations and allows them to grow. Not really much of a concern for small community fish. They may get an inch or two long, and definitely bigger than when you bought them, depending on the fish. This will come more into play if you get a pleco, loach, or one of the semi-aggressive fish. Common Plecos (the standard cheap ones you'll find in fish stores. Specialty plecos can cost upwards of $70 and don't tend to grow that big) can grow over a foot long. We had currently have a clown loach in our tank about 6" long and 2" high, and have had a dojo loach around 9" long. If your fish start getting that big, you'll run the risk of over crowding your aquarium.

When adding your fish, make sure you float the bags for about 15 min to let the water temperature equalize. Open them up and a cup of water from your tank to allow them to adjust to your tank's specific chemical composition. Wait another 15 min and repeat. After another 15, you can release them into the tank and enjoy. Make sure you feed them when you release them to help ease the transition and occupy their little fish minds.


This is our aquarium currently. We've got 3 discus (recently lost one ) which are the pride and joy of the tank. The whole tank (temperature, filtration, water chemistry) is geared specifically towards keeping those buggers alive. We also have a clown loach, yoyo loach, some hatchets, boesemani rainbow (who is not nearly that sexy), a few praecox rainbows, a couple balloon rams, a rope fish, 2 adonis pleco (or at least that's what the fish store claimed they were. They don't look much like that photo), an albino bushy nose pleco, an orange seam pleco, and, one of my favorites, a zebra pleco.

So after all my fish nerding, I probably didn't even really answer your question, but I hope at least some of the information was useful

[brinstar]

^ that is some serious fish nerding

fuckin' props

[Maeya]

Yeah, whenever any unwary visitors comment on our tank, we unleash the fish nerdery on them until their eyes glaze over.


Ok so more fish nerding after running the post by Langston/Ugzug, who is the true fish guru in our house. The tank is really more of his hobby, and I learned all that stuff by proxy. He says your filter is pretty common. It will take "EZ change replacement filter cartridge size 3", and can be found at Walmart for $4.50, apparently. He says you can probably just rinse out the components when you do a water change. If you can get most of the crap out by rinsing, then maybe replace it every other or every 3rd water change. Since your filter doesn't have any sort of biomedia, you'll really need to do a partial water change semi monthly to keep all your chemicals in line. He says 25% is adequate. You'll probably want to put an aeration system in the water. Some sort of bubble stone. You buy cheap air pumps and either a stone, or one of those bubble ornaments (deep sea divers, or treasure chest thing). Stick with the silk plants for now. Live plants will die on you without the right lighting system. Langston also says silk plants are "an algae nightmare", so you might want to consider replacing them with plastic, which is more easily cleaned, or plan on replacing them every 4-6 months. If you add decorative rocks, stay away from limestone or granite as they leech chemicals into the water. Stick with river stone or drift wood for decorative aspects, and make sure you boil them thoroughly before adding them to the tank. Additionally, if you DO add a piece of drift wood, it will leech tannins into the water and turn your water brown for a while. You can help lessen this effect by soaking it in a pot of fresh water for a few days. The water color will come back after some water changes. Driftwood is nice if you put any sort of pleco in the tank. They love the drift wood.

He also says to avoid any sort of African cichlid fish. The water chemistry they require will be totally different, and they'll just die on you. Additionally they tend to be more aggressive. Angelfish fall into this category. For the recommended fish list, Langston also adds rummy nose tetras, any kind of rasboras, serpaes, glow-light tetras. Fish to stay away from: Anything over $20. If it's expensive, it will require increased care, and your tank is probably not large enough for that variety of fish. Keep to the cheap fish. Also avoid "Chinese algae eaters" aka "flying foxes". They tend to be aggressive. They are sometimes mislabeled as "Siamese algae eaters" in pet stores because the two breeds look almost identical, but unless you're positive the employees know the difference, avoid them. Stay away from tiger barbs,and knife fish(which is a bummer, because they're pretty cool looking).

You will need to have some form of algae eater or bottom-feeder. For algae eaters, avoid any catfish. They get too big, and they'll eat your small fish. A catfish can and will eat something half it's size. Stick with plecos or cory cats (which are not catfish). Also, despite common perception, snails are ok too. You can get a "mystery snail", which are a pale yellow, and they'll be ok. Just get one at a time, otherwise you'll end up with several thousand "mystery snails". :P Snails will last about a year, maybe a touch longer depending on your temperature. They're cheap and a neat addition to the tank. Shrimp, like the ghost shrimp are cheap and neat to have... but their life expectancy is very short. They're more of a novelty as opposed to any sort of true addition to the tank. An interesting algae eater, which may be hard to find, but definitely unique is the farlowella or "twig catfish", which are safe despite being called a catfish.

A note on "aggressive fish". Most of them are territorial. They'll carve out a section of the tank for themselves and that will be THEIRS. It's typically around some form of ornamentation or large plant. If you DO decide to get one of the semi-aggressive fish, just make sure they have a specific area to hide in and call their own (your castle will probably be fine). You also need to add them AFTER the community fish are established. Make them the new-comers to the tank. Buy them as small as you can. If you do decide to buy a gourami (they are very pretty fish, afterall) try to find a dwarf or kissing gourami.

Some fish stores will have little fiddler crabs or blue lobsters for sale. Crabs are air breathers and will need some way to get up and out of the water to breath, so in a full fish tank, they aren't ideal. Blue lobsters will eat your small fish and are pretty adept at catching them. You do not want to put a blue lobster or crayfish in the tank with any kind of bottom-dweller (algae eaters, plecos, and cory cats). Guppies are safe as long as the blue lobster doesn't have any way to crawl up to get them. Guppies tend to live in the upper 1/3 of the tank. In general though, it's probably better to stay away from the crustaceans unless that's ALL you have in the tank and your tank is specifically geared towards them.

If you're looking for fun fish, something interesting or eye catching, Langston recommends the loaches that I talked about earlier, or some of the fancier breeds of mollies, like lyre-tail mollies.

As far as water chemistry goes, for this set up you'll only need to really worry about pH. You'll want to pick a pH test kit and try to keep it between 6.5 and 7.6. Optimally, it should be at 7.0. You'll want to avoid wide, quick swings in pH. If your pH needs adjusting, you'll want to do it gradually. Number one thing that kills fish is pH swings. Test the water when you do water changes. (On a side note, this is all Langston adding this. When I kept little cheapy fish tanks, I never bothered with any sort of water tests... but if you start losing a ton of fish for no real apparent reason, then consider looking at your pH. Could be out of whack and contributing to the loss.)

A quick note on food, then I think I'm done with the fish nerding. For your fish tank if you're just doing mollies or tetras, you're fine to use the standard Tetramin fish flakes, found at Walmart or any pet store. If you add a pleco as your algae eater, you need to put a piece of driftwood in (can be a small piece) and probably add an algae wafer every other day. Other algae eaters (cory cats and the like) will supplement off of the flakes. Don't feed your fish more than you'll eat in about 2 minutes. Overfeeding will make your water disgusting quickly. If you DO end up doing a crustacean or amphibian of any kind, you'll need to do shrimp pellets. You won't need to bother with any sort of live or frozen food for this set up. It tends to be heavy in fat. Your fish will LOVE live/frozen food, and it may help enhance their colors (especially blood worms), but it needs to be a treat, not their staple. You also run the risk of the rare parasite that fish can pick up from bloodworms, so use them sparingly, if at all.

Total overkill for what you are looking for, I'm sure, but once the topic is opened, we kept thinking of other things to add to it.

[Narrock]

Holy shit Maeya! LOL

[Tossica]

I've been working up to getting another reef tank going now that I'm in a house with enough space to display it.

Nice tank Maeya. Good infos too!

Thanks

[Tikker]

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[Lyion]

Flush the Beta down the toilet and get some Angel Fish......

All drains lead to the ocean you know, so it'll be fine. *see Nemo*

[Tikker]

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[Narrock]

My wife overfed our goldfish and turned him into a bloated floater. Lexi was sad when I had to flush it. I got one of those all-in-one aquariums for kids. It was like 30 bucks at PetSmart. So I got another fancy goldfish. I told my wife to let ME feed the fish from now on. She went ahead and fed him anyway while I was at work because she said "he looked hungry" and turned it into a floater too. I said fuck it and put all the shit in the garage for now.

[Griever]

How can a fish "look hungry"? lol

[leah]

LOL awww. that's both really sad and really funny. poor fishy.

[Narrock]

Lol I know, right? "he looked hungry"...

[Maeya]

Goldfish have no stomach, so they actually benefit from several smaller feedings per day rather than one giant feeding.