FishRKool28
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Posts posted by FishRKool28
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On 7/21/2023 at 10:25 AM, Odd Duck said:
I’m not sure why you’re feeding twice but every other day? That’s MORE likely to cause an ammonia spike than feeding once a day. I would feed every other day until you get all filters up to speed, but not two feedings on the day you feed. I don’t even feed my fish every day. I skip at least one day a week and my tanks are nearly all over a year old and well seasoned. I only feed twice a day if I have certain types of fry in a fairly young, or recently reset tank.
I would probably only feed the shrimp twice a week, tops. They’re going to find leftover, missed flake or other food easily. That’s part of the benefit of having them. I suspect you’re overfeeding by quite a bit just from how many foods you have on your list with only one small tank running. Those foods will definitely go stale before you can use them up even if you got the smallest containers of each. The Hikari algae wafers are great but I would feed only 1/4 of one to 20 shrimp no more than every other week so you can use your shrimp specific pellets most of the time. The shrimp only need about those 3 pellets in @AllFishNoBrakes’s pic every other to every third day at most. Nearly everybody overfeeds shrimp, especially early on. And nearly everybody overfeeds fish early on.
The chilis aren’t really going to go for the algae wafers. They feed top to middle water and really don’t go to the bottom much at all. I’m not sure they can even eat bloodworms. They have very tiny mouths. They can’t eat whiteworms and they’re about the same size as most bloodworms. They will eat Grindal worms but adults are about half the diameter of adult whiteworms or average bloodworms. Bloodworms will be a variable sizes since they are the larvae of a midge (non-biting fly). They might be able to eat the smallest bloodworms but likely won’t be able to eat medium to larger ones.
You will be doing yourself and your fish a huge favor by only feeding once every other day until you get your biofiltration up to speed. Make sure you’re feeding fine/small enough food that your fish can actually eat it - I crumble my flakes to near powder when feeding my chilis. You have to feed what the smallest mouth in the tank can handle. Bigger fish can always eat smaller food. My Jack Dempseys only like food that’s about 4 mm. Anything bigger they don’t eat as well. I’m sure some Jacks are less picky. But my Jacks are about 10” and don’t like big food. Look at how small small your chili’s mouth are feed appropriate size food.
I have all those foods on my list as a variety to see what they like and don’t like. I’m not feeding all those foods at once. I’m not feeding twice a day yet and the reason I went with that is because that’s how we feed my sons betta and we’ve had him since last November. Once the Rasboras are settled in and they have their color back I will prob just feed once a day, and I have been crumbling up their flakes to almost powder.
Right now I’m just feeding fish once every other day and to your point I’ll prob only feed the shrimp twice a week.
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Update***
All fish alive and well, although I did see one swimming up top?
0- Ammonia
0- Nitrite
25- Nitrate
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On 7/20/2023 at 6:31 PM, AllFishNoBrakes said:
I only use the Python for tanks 20 gallon tall and bigger. All my 10 gallons, and the 20 long (due to in being the same height as a 10 gallon) I use the tubing with the sponge in the end, or the smaller pvc contraption to take water out, and then the small pump and the tubing to put water back in. Considering it’s just a couple gallons, and the Python is rather big, it just doesn’t make sense on the small tanks. For me anyways.
Food lists look pretty great! Per usual, I do have some thoughts though, lol.
Shrimp: Remember that they will eat the flakes and pellets that the fish miss. Personally, I wouldn’t feed “extra pellets and flake” for them. Feed them the algae wafers or bottom wafers every other day, and if you feed the fish flake/pellets on the days you don’t feed the wafers they’ll still get some flake. Instead of green beans I would do zucchini. It gets “mushier” faster and the shrimp can actually eat that. With shrimp, just remember that a little goes a long way! I hate having to siphon/pick out leftover food. I really dig the Xtreme shrimpee pellets. Hikari crab cuisine is another good one. Here’s a picture of the shrimpee pellets next to a standard Hikari algae wafer:
Fish: Again, a pretty great list! My only thought is that if you go frozen bloodworms, make sure they’re not the “Jumbo” variety. I really like this specific one from Hikari, and I can only get it from one LFS in my area:
They’re small, so most of my fish can enjoy them. From my Pea Puffers all the way up to my adult angels. Chili’s are tiny with tiny mouths! I do frozen baby brine shrimp (that I hatch myself) instead of bloodworms for them. Freeze dried bloodworms might be your better option.
Also, try not to go “food crazy”. When I was new I was trying anything and everything, and then ended up with a bunch of barely used foods that went stale. Find the few things you like and your fish like and stick to those to cut down on just throwing things away or feeding spoiled/stale foods that could get your fish sick.
I also buy things in bulk (like Xtreme Krill) and then the small Xtreme Spirulina, and mix my own Community Crave (so I have more Krill than their actual mix). I take from the big containers, and mix into a smaller container. That way, I’m not exposing the big containers to oxygen multiple times per day in an attempt to keep the bulk as fresh as possible, and daily open the little container instead.Very sound advice, yea I wasn’t going to open up everything I’m going to try 1 or 2 types of foods for the shrimp and fish and stick with that for a while. Really curious to try out the repashy community, I see YouTube videos of shrimp devouring it
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On 7/20/2023 at 5:46 PM, AllFishNoBrakes said:
When I first got into the hobby, making things to make water changes easier was one of my favorite things! Some simple 3/8” vinyl tubing with some sponge shoved in the end, and a plastic clamp for siphoning water out into a 5 gallon bucket can work wonders. This allows extraction of water to be hands free, and the sponge in the end of the tubing ensures my fish (from fry to adult Angels) don’t get sucked up.
A small pump and some tubing, with a clamp, can also make water going back into the tank a breeze and mostly hands-free.
Here’s some of the things I’ve built specifically for making water changes more efficient:
3/8” tubing with sponge to siphon water out without sucking up fish.
PVC with sponge shoved in the end for siphoning other tanks.
Bigger PVC set up (with ball valve) for the bigger tanks.
Water going back in tanks with a small pump and a 5 gallon bucket. I also use this pump to take water out as these tanks are just a few inches off the ground and gravity can’t really assist with water coming out.
Before I had my Python I built this. Connected a pond pump to the end of the tubing, and that pump sat in the bottom of a 5 gallon bucket. Fill up the bucket, start pumping, and have another 5 gallon bucket to fill additional water. Keep filling the bucket with the pump in it until water is filled back in the tank. This hooked over the rim of the tank and the holes in the pvc end caps ensured gentle flow back in the tank to not disturb the substrate and uproot plants. I eventually sold this to another fish keeping friend once I got my Python.
As you can tell, I like building things to make water changes more efficient, hands-free, and this allows me to drain and refill tanks at the same time. I have 14 tanks, and it takes me 4-5 hours weekly to do all my maintenance thanks to these tools.
Yup! This hobby taught me the same thing. And that mistakes happen, but they’re just a learning opportunity.
I assume you’re rotating through all of this, and not doing all of it every time you feed?
I would stay away from the green beans for the shrimp. The shrimp could pick at that for a week and not finish it. Green beans are great for Pleco’s, but not so much shrimp.
I was feeding my Pleco’s daily with zucchini and green beans at one point and that’s the only bacteria bloom I’ve ever experienced. After working through that I cut way back on the veggies.
Very cool diy builds there! Yea I work in a power plant so we have all that stuff, I was thinking of making a make shift python out of some tubing here.
As far as the feeding note I posted, No definitely not feeding all at once lol, I’m going to rotate different things and see what they really like and don’t. The only thing I’ve fed the shrimp was one Hikari Algae wafer yesterday and they ate about half of it so I cleaned the leftover out best I could before work
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This is what I’m feeding the Chili Rasboras and the Cherry Shrimp
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On 7/20/2023 at 5:11 PM, Odd Duck said:
Yep, all of this. There are so many variables. That’s why that 1” of fish per gallon isn’t really anything but a bare starting point to get an idea of how much you can stock a tank. I don’t like to push stocking until a tank has been set up and stable for many months to a year or more, and even then I don’t push much because I don’t want to do water changes every week. I’m lazy. I have pothos growing from nearly every tank and lots of plants. My heaviest load tank has tons of emergent plants which eat up ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates.
The more you push the more likely you’ll have a crash. Neons, remember?
Yea I took that into account before ordering, but I was really concerned with them having small numbers and adding more stress.
I don’t mind putting in the work to keep them all happy, I do need to upgrade the way I do water changes. All I have is a crappy plastic bin and a cheap siphon from petco to extract the water, then I use my sons old Nano betta tank to fill with new water and treat with Prime. I’d prefer one big bucket for the old water and a better way to siphon 🤷🏻♂️.
I would have only ordered like 5 Rasboras if I could have but Petco doesn’t have any and AquaHuna is a 10 count minimum
On 7/20/2023 at 5:11 PM, Odd Duck said:Yep, all of this. There are so many variables. That’s why that 1” of fish per gallon isn’t really anything but a bare starting point to get an idea of how much you can stock a tank. I don’t like to push stocking until a tank has been set up and stable for many months to a year or more, and even then I don’t push much because I don’t want to do water changes every week. I’m lazy. I have pothos growing from nearly every tank and lots of plants. My heaviest load tank has tons of emergent plants which eat up ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates.
The more you push the more likely you’ll have a crash. Neons, remember?
Also the Neons were all my fault, i got impatient with the nitrogen cycle and had super high nitrite levels but figured I could add fish and combat with Prime and Stability… we see how well that worked 😔.
Im learning this hobby requires patience and more patience
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On 7/20/2023 at 4:14 PM, AllFishNoBrakes said:
Completely agree with this. Considering you’ve already ordered them, you’ll have to do your best to not overload your newly cycled tank, and/or the new QT tub when you get it up and running. Whether you choose to put the new batch into the display tank or the QT tub will be up to you.
The only other thing I have to add is that, just because they’re coming from the same place and the same species does not mean they are from the same “batch”. Aqua Huna, I’m sure, goes through thousand and thousands of those Chili’s throughout the year. They get em in, they ship em out. They get another batch in, they ship those out. Rinse and repeat over and over and over again.
Overall, do LOTS of testing on both tanks (I would be testing daily on both) and be prepared to do daily water changes on both the tanks as ammonia and nitrite show up.
Yea I was kind of just freaking out last night since I was down to 9, my thought process was I didn’t wanna add more stress to them by having small numbers so I ordered more, and more shrimp. I will monitor the water daily like I have been and test twice a day like I have been. Would y’all combat any type of spike (ammonia, nitrite) with water changes? I did a 25% water change the night before the fish and shrimp got here because my nitrates were at 50 ppm.
As of this morning
Ammonia- 0 ppm
Nitrite- 0 ppm
Nitrate- 25ppm
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On 7/20/2023 at 4:03 PM, Odd Duck said:
Don’t get too carried away adding too many fish too fast. Even a cycled tank can get overloaded when you double the number of fish. Are you planning to only have rasboras and nothing else? 18 is a lot, even for micro-rasboras. You should be OK with adding them but you’ll be restarting quarantine timing when you add them. You’ll need to test frequently until you’re certain there aren’t any ammonia/nitrite/nitrate spikes that need to be dealt with from more than doubling the bioload.
Oh, and don’t worry about asking too many questions. It’s far better to ask questions if the answers can help keep your fish healthier!
Yea the Rasboras and Shrimp will be the only aquatic life in this tank, I am slightly concerned about over stocking but I think since they’re nano fish I should ok 🤞🏻. This is my only tank other than my sons 5 gal Betta so I don’t mind doing the work to keep all my fish happy, I test the water every morning and when I get home from work.
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On 7/20/2023 at 3:57 PM, AllFishNoBrakes said:
You can absolutely do that! The advantage to the plastic bag is that it can help trap all the mulm and good stuff you want instead of it just falling off into the existing tank. If you just pull the sponge out of the tank, as it comes above the water line all the mulm and bacteria and detritus just starts to run back into the tank with the water coming off the sponge.
In my experience, the bag can be a little tricky to get around the sponge without fluffing stuff off of it, but just go slow and use a ziploc that has an opening that’s decently bigger than the sponge. Regardless of how slow and careful you are, you will inevitably fluff some stuff into the water column but it’s all good! It will make its way back to the filter again over time. I’ve been cleaning sponge filters for 3 years and it’s still a pain to get it in the bag sometimes, lol.
Also, no need to apologize for asking questions! We’re all here to help each other and want to see each other success with our fish adventures. We all just want you to have successful tanks that are healthy ecosystems for your fish so you can enjoy the tank for many years to come.
Well I will definitely do the bag method to the best of my ability lol. Appreciate your insight though!
Yea I just feel like a dumb newb with every question I post but again I appreciate everyone being helpful and offering advice.
Forgot to mention, I did grind up some freeze dried shrimp brine and fed the rasboras this morning just to see they’re reaction, they feasted! Going forward I’m going to feed once every other day until they are settled in the tank then maybe increase to twice every other day.
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On 7/20/2023 at 3:38 PM, Odd Duck said:
I think you’re OK with putting the rasboras in since they’re the only fish in the tank right now. I would keep them as the only fish in the tank for a full month, ideally. Then when you’re ready to add more, quarantine them. If you can set up a quarantine tote now, you could order more to go into the tote. Then when everybody is done with quarantine and everybody has been healthy the whole time, they can go right into the tank. I essentially wait until everybody is healthy, nobody has died, etc, for at least 4 weeks before I combine groups of fish.
Yea I got worried that the Rasboras are already down to 8 so I ordered 10 more from AquaHuna, since they’re from same place and same species I should be able to just add them in upon arrival? I think my biggest problem is thinking too much and too much question surfing, I was worried since they only have 8 they’ll be even more stressed
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On 7/20/2023 at 3:35 PM, AllFishNoBrakes said:
I would encourage you to simply squeeze the existing sponge filter in the quarantine tank to seed the new sponge. The existing sponge squeezing will contain bacteria, detritus, etc. I would heavily encourage you to just squeeze the filter into the quarantine tank and leave the cycled sponge filter in the tank with the fish and shrimp. Your current tank is just barely cycled and surely isn’t seasoned. Moving the entire sponge into the new quarantine tank is just asking for additional instability, problems, and additional deceased fish. The tank that currently has fish and shrimp needs as much stability as possible.
I would also encourage you to get a 10 gallon quarantine tank if possible. It’s super easy to dose meds, if and when needed, as most are “1 packet per 10 gallons” or “X ml per 10 gallons”. Takes all the guess work out of it.
I was just thinking that, should I do like Cory does and take a plastic bag around the cycles sponge filter and squeeze it and let all that bacteria get trapped into the bag, then put cycled sponge filter back in gravel and add the plastic bag of water and bacteria to the quarantine tank w the new sponge filter? Bear with me my apologies, I’m a newb and wanna get this right!
Just ordered a 60 QT tote from Home Depot for the “new” and improved quarantine tank
On 7/20/2023 at 3:37 PM, JChristophersAdventures said:@Odd Duck Agreed... @FishRKool28 The only thing I would add is that depending on your 3.5 setup, you might be able to adapt it to a 10 gallon, which Pet-Co still has on sale for $12.49 during their tank sale. If the components like heater, filter, etc are not "built-in" and can be transfered, then the only thing left would be to cut a piece of plastic or wood to fit as the lid for the 10 gallon but with a hole cut out in it to fit the 3.5 light and you would be good-to-go pretty cheap and quick.
Yea I just ordered a 60 QT plastic tote with lid from Home Depot, I already have heater, just need my damn order from Aquarium to get here lol. I need to get some maracyn (prob Mis-spelled) and Paracleanse
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On 7/20/2023 at 3:24 PM, Odd Duck said:
3.5 gallons is a very small tank for quarantining anything more than a few small fish. I mostly use one of my 10 gallons that are used either for quarantine or growout depending on what I need at any given time. Sometimes I’ll use a 20 or a 29 gallon depending on how many and what type of fish I need to quarantine. But I have the luxury of having multiple tanks to choose between.
With enough water changes, you can make a very small tank work, but it’s nearly always going to be more stress on the fish. That could be good or bad, making them more likely to get sick but also more likely to reveal if they’re going to get sick before they go into the main tank. Personally, I would rather have them more comfortable and watch them longer - I’ve quarantined for over 3 months before if I didn’t think the whole group looked right, a 2 month quarantine isn’t uncommon at my house.
The very old rule of an inch of fish per gallon is a very mediocre and arbitrary way to get an idea of whether a tank is overstocked. It only applies to small fish at best. For instance, anybody with a functioning brain and a shred of common sense would never put an 8” Oscar into an 8 gallon tank. Long finned, deep bodied, or thick bodied fish don’t begin to fit the rule. Highly territorial fish bust the rule to shreds, etc, etc. There are a million reasons why the rule doesn’t work. BUT, for small tetras, rasboras, danios, or maybe even cories, for instance - non-territorial, shoaling or schooling species, you can kind of use the rule for quarantine with plenty of filtration, aeration, and hiding places. So a 3.5 gallon tank would only hold about 3-4 fish at a time for quarantine depending on the species, size, etc. Bigger is nearly always better and easier to maintain when it comes to fish tanks. Within certain limits on “easier” because I’m not likely to scuba dive or even snorkel to clean a tank anytime soon. 😝
Yea I guess I’ll just use the 3.5 gallon for a hospital type tank and buy a bigger tote. I would have kept them in the quarantine tank for a couple weeks but because I screwed that up I took advice from ppl on here and just put the Rasboras in my cycled 10 gallon last night.
Even though i had a casualty this morning the rest seem fine, although they were all glass surfing which I’m reading up on now. Is this a normal behavior for new fish that were just added to a new tank?
What I’m trying to avoid is killing off my entire tank again, RIP to the 18 Neon Tetras
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Update**
This morning I had one dead Rasbora, the others are swimming around fine in a school and looks like their red color is starting to come back. I have 8 rasboras left which I feel is not enough. Cherry Shrimp are thriving and doing what they do, cleaning. I ordered more rasboras and cherry shrimp last night.
Water parameter check this morning was good, 0 Ammonia, 0 nitrites, 25 ppm Nitrate, GH about 120, KH about 40
Reading everyone’s advice, when my new sponge filter shows up I’ll take my seeded sponge filter and put in my quarantine tank to get it cycled, and maybe add some snails. My quarantine tank is only 3.5 gallons, is that serviceable?
Thanks everyone for the help, hoping I come home today to no dead fish 🙏🏻, I will keep posting updates until I feel they’ve all settled in and call it home.-
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On 7/19/2023 at 11:59 PM, Mmiller2001 said:
Turn the lights off for a decent amount of time and monitor ammonia and nitrite. Twice a day.
I have it on a timer already so they’re off, I really appreciate yours and everyone’s input, hopefully they get settled in with the Cherry shrimp and have no issues
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Just put them in, poor guys just swimming around all over the place
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Yea I put the shrimp immediately in the 10 gallon, I already have a slight ammonia spike in the quarantine tank and that was an hour ago when I checked. I added an airstone to help with agitation and I’ve been using Prime. I assume the spike is because I fed them before re-watching GTF video again.
I just did a 25% water change in the quarantine tank to dilute the ammonia, should I just put them in the 10 gal?
On 7/19/2023 at 9:09 PM, Mmiller2001 said:A non cycled quarantine tank sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. Especially for the shrimp. I would put them in the cycled tank and have meds ready if you need them. A 10 gallon is easy to dose anyways.
Yea I didn’t expect the sponge filter not to come, I was going to take the seeded one in my cycled 10 gal and put it in quarantine tank. Really considering just putting them in my 10 gallon, I already had 1 DOA
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I have a 10 gallon planted tank that finally finished cycling last week. I ordered 10 Chili Rasboras and 10 Cherry Shrimp from AquaHuna and they just arrived today. I had setup a quarantine tank the night before based off of GirlTalksFish videos because I already had all my neon tetras die but that was my fault for being impatient with cycling process. I added the rasboras to the quarantine tank and added Fritz AQ salt and Fritz Ich-X and then fed them before going to work… only to rewatch Irene’s video and realized she doesn’t feed week 1 of quarantine.
Sorry for rambling, my question is 2 parts.
Do I even need to be quarantining the rasboras since there’s no other fish in my 10 gal? Most of the rasboras are still young, should I feed them or stick to Irene’s (GirlTalksFish) plan?Also I’m kind of worried because I had ordered another sponge filter and airstone for my quarantine tank and it was supposed to be delivered yesterday but wasn’t 😭, so right now it’s just a quarantine tank w one fake plant, heater of course, and 2 catava leaves, Will they be ok without sponge filter until tomorrow??
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That’s why I posed the question because I wasn’t sure if I need to sanitize it or just change the water out which I what I ended up doing
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I did a 40% water change to dilute the ammonia, so far 2 neons left but I fear they’ll start nipping at each other because of stress of just being 2 fish
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My first mistake was being impatient and not waiting til my water parameters were good before adding fish, my second mistake was adding fish when I knew I was going out of town… home just now and I have 2 fish left swimming around together, I’m going to get the dead fish out and do water change. I feel bad for the fish 😔, I feel like they died because of my impatience
On 7/9/2023 at 5:49 PM, FishRKool28 said:My first mistake was being impatient and not waiting til my water parameters were good before adding fish, my second mistake was adding fish when I knew I was going out of town… home just now and I have 2 fish left swimming around together, I’m going to get the dead fish out and do water change. I feel bad for the fish 😔, I feel like they died because of my impatience
Started with 18 neon tetras Thursday and now Sunday at 5:50pm I have 2 left 😔
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If you read my other post about can stress from petco to car to tank kill fish… well all my neon tetras died 😢. How do I sanitize my tank and start over? 10 gallon tank
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Yea I’ve been checking water quality twice a day for past week to monitor the cycle process
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This one just died, what is the white thing that’s breaking his stripe? Is that ICH?
next photo is the 2 my wife pulled out
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On 7/7/2023 at 3:17 PM, Lennie said:
Okay, that will be kind of a silly question but,
Are you sure they were dead?
Fish like neons, embers, and black tetras etc. commonly play dead when caught from tank under stress. When I was at my lfs and wanted to buy embers, they were amazingly healthy and active in their tank, when they were caught & moved to the bag, they started playing dead as a stress response. If I wasn't the one observing them at the store, or catching them, I would %100 say there is something wrong. They were not swimming, turning upside down in the bag, and so on.
And yes, I thought they were dying and I said I wanna wait more to see if they will face losses in the following days and didn't buy them at the time. So when we poured them back to tank, they were again perfectly fine. They said for a couple species, they always have the same sort of behavior when put into the bag.
So again, are we %100 sure they were dead, but not playing dead?
I’d say if they were laying motionless under gravel they’re dead 😔
Quarantine New Fish for a newly cycled empty tank?
in General Discussion
Posted
Well bad news, I’m down to 2 Rasboras left. They are just steadily dying. I check my water regularly and I have
0 ammonia
0 Nitrite,
10 ppm nitrate
my GH is 75 and KH 40
I don’t get it?? the cherry shrimp are doing just fine and thriving.
The Neon Tetras was completely my fault because I had a high nitrite level, and now with a cycled tank and good water parameters I still have all my fish die. Very disheartening, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.