Jump to content
Watch our video on the rules of this forum.

BeginnerFishKeeper

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    46

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Feedback

    0%

 Content Type 

Everything posted by BeginnerFishKeeper

  1. BeginnerFishKeeper
    Thanks for your response. I was looking at albino corys to begin with but someone said if you don’t have a tank larger than 20 gallons then to stick with panda corys since they’re smaller. Are there any plants that corys would like? I want to make my tank more heavily planted and figured I should get the plants that future tank mates would like
  2. BeginnerFishKeeper
    Right now I have a 20 gallon long tank with a single betta. I plan on making it into a community tank, but am still not too sure what tank mates I should get for my betta. Tank details : I have relatively low kh, high gh (150 - 300 ppm, usually about 200), ph of around 6.8 - 7.0, and the tanks at 78° with a sponge filter and fluval stratum. I was researching panda corys but am worried about my high gh and my non - sand substrate. Which tank mates should I try that will work with my water parameters and betta fish? Also which plants should I have for said tank mates?
  3. BeginnerFishKeeper
    The plants I currently have in the tank are cryptocoryne lucens, anubias barteri, anubias nana, Java fern, Amazon sword, dwarf Sagittaria, pogostemon stellatus octopus, tiger lotus bulb, and Java moss. The lucens and anubias aren’t really growing, the sagittaria and tiger lotus are growing ok, the Java fern and Amazon sword aren’t doing the best, and the java moss and pogostemon are browning. I’ve tried using the suction hammock, but he didn’t interact with it and after the first week it wouldn’t stick to the walls.
  4. BeginnerFishKeeper
    Are there any unique ways I can give my betta sources of enrichment? He doesn’t really interact with his environment other than swimming along the glass walls and I can’t help but feel like I’m doing something wrong. He has a coconut hide and a terra cotta tunnel but in the 2 months I’ve had him I haven’t seen him use either. My initial plan was to have 2-3 hides and an abundance of plants but I’m struggling to get my plants to grow and stay healthy. Also how much and how often do I feed my betta fish certain foods? I got him frozen bloodworms, freeze dried bloodworms, fluval bug bites, and ocean nutrition pellets. I give him 10 pellets every day but he still seems hungry as he swims to the front of the tank when I walk by, and is constantly looking for snails thinking they’re food. Once a week I give him the frozen and freeze dried bloodworms and some fluval bug bites, I’d say about 5 or so “pieces” of each. How much should I be feeding those foods and how often? Thanks
  5. BeginnerFishKeeper
    Yeah I have a decent amount of plants and also have a betta hammock (although it keeps falling off the wall and I don’t know why). I’m trying to get my plants to grow more so my betta has even more cover but that’s a whole other can of worms 😂 Thank you for the help!
  6. BeginnerFishKeeper
    He’s been in the tank for 2 weeks now and has done it since he first got in there
  7. BeginnerFishKeeper
    That’s what I thought too, but even when the aquarium lights were off he’d still do it so I wasn’t 100% sure. I will try to use a non reflective background and see how that works, thanks!
  8. BeginnerFishKeeper
    My betta fish is swimming along the side of the glass 80% of the time. The glass he usually swims along is near the heater and filter but I don’t think that’s related. He will swim along it, swim towards it as if he were “digging” at it, and he’ll turn around and go back and forth along that side of the aquarium glass. Is there a reason for this? Is there something I need to do to limit this behavior? I’ll include some water parameters. Ph 6.8 ammonia : 0 ppm Nitrite : 0 ppm Nitrate : 20 ppm Kh : 0-1 dkh Gh : 12 dgh
  9. BeginnerFishKeeper
    Ok, how long would I have to wait for a water change after adding the salt? Is it possible for it to heal on its own? The aquarium salt won’t ship to me for close to a week so I’m worried about whether or not the damage will get better or worse by then. Also is there any other alternative to aquarium salt? I have snails in my tank that I’m worried about
  10. BeginnerFishKeeper
    Here’s a better photo. So I should use ich X just to be safe?
  11. BeginnerFishKeeper
    Is this ich on my betta fish? It just got out of quarantine and I premedicated with ich X so if it is I’m not sure what to do
  12. BeginnerFishKeeper
    I suppose I have a misunderstanding of what calibration means then. The tank is 10 gallons, the room temperature is 71°, there is a lid on it, and the heater is 100 watts. I believe the instruction manual said turning the blue dial would make a clicking a sound which wasn’t the case for me, that’s the only variable I can think of that could possibly be affecting the heater. Not sure if that’s abnormal, but that’s the only step that happened differently when I set up the heater.
  13. BeginnerFishKeeper
    I was under the impression the red pointer was purely cosmetic and since I’m only using it for quarantine I didn’t care for it show the correct temperature since I know what the temperature really is. Is the red pointer just cosmetic or does it play a role in proper calibration?
  14. BeginnerFishKeeper
    I recently set up my eheim heater for my quarantine tank and followed the directions carefully (when I say I annotated the instruction manual I’m not kidding). I set the temp to about 78 using the blue dial then waited around 2 hours. I came back to check the temp using a digital thermometer and a glass thermometer and they both measured around 83°. I unplugged the heater and turned the blue dial to about 73 hoping it would heat to around 78 since there’s a 5 degree difference then plugged the heater back in. Checked back 2 hours later and both thermometers still read 83°. At that point I already had the betta fish and figured it’d be better to acclimate the fish already then take my chances spending more hours recalibrating the heater. That was last night, as of this morning the thermometers still read 83° and my betta fish is doing good. Am I doing something wrong with calibrating the heater? Is it urgent that I get the temperature down or is my betta ok with 83°? Ideally I would’ve liked to lower the temp to 78 so acclimating my betta to the display tank would be easier, but at this point I’m a little afraid to mess with the thermometer seeing how finicky it’s been with me. Thanks in advance!
  15. BeginnerFishKeeper
    So you think my waters high gh will be a problem?
  16. BeginnerFishKeeper
    Thank you @Katyaand @Schwack . So high gh shouldn’t be a problem? Are there any symptoms to look out for if it is affecting the fish? Also is 8.0 ph too high for a betta? I’m going to set up a quarantine tank for my betta and I’m worried about my tap water that has high gh and 8.0 ph
  17. BeginnerFishKeeper
    I plan on getting a betta fish in a few days but the gh of my water is extremely high. It measures 18 dgh from the tap but in my cycled tank it’s usually 13 dgh. I’ve seen some say 3-4 dgh is needed for bettas and anything higher can harm them. Some say under 20 dgh is fine. Thoughts? What should I do? Thanks 😊
  18. BeginnerFishKeeper
    Thank you both @Guppysnailand @Jennifer V !!! I’m most likely going to just let nature take its course and only interfere by removing algae if it starts becoming excessive, hopefully all goes well. Thanks again!
  19. BeginnerFishKeeper
    Thank you! How many snails would it take to majorly impact ammonia production? My planted tank isn’t balanced yet so unfortunately that means algae growth and melting plant leaves. I’m 100% ok with snails being in the tank I just would not want them to produce more ammonia than the tank could process. And I’ll be sure to look at their faces when they eat haha.
  20. BeginnerFishKeeper
    Ok so I have seen 1 snail in my tank (I believe it’s a bladder snail) and I’m conflicted about what to do. On one hand I don’t really want to kill it, but on the other I don’t want a tank with hundreds of them. I plan on putting a betta fish in the tank, will it eat the snails? Im also worried about if the snails overpopulate, will that increase the bio load significantly? Is it possible to keep them in the tank without having them overpopulate? What affect would they have on the tank? Thanks 🙂
  21. BeginnerFishKeeper
    Ok sweet, do you happen to have any ideas of what could have caused my ammonia & nitrite spike? I’m nervous to get a fish now because I don’t know what’s happening
  22. BeginnerFishKeeper
    Alright sounds good! I always question whether I’m dosing prime correctly because according to the bottle it ends up being like a couple drops per gallon. I don’t want to dose too much prime but I also don’t want to dose too little
  23. BeginnerFishKeeper
    I use seachem prime to dechlorinate, won’t that detoxify the ammonia from my tap water? I don’t think this ammonia and nitrite spike is from my tap water though because I haven’t run into any sudden ammonia spikes with any of my prior water changes
  24. BeginnerFishKeeper
    Yes, my sink water ph is 8.0 and ammonia is 0.5, but I’ve been doing water changes for 2 ish months now and everything’s been fairly consistent until yesterday when I tested my ph and it was higher than what it usually is and my ammonia and nitrites suddenly were up.
  25. BeginnerFishKeeper
    I just finished cycling a little over a week ago (at least I thought I did) as I was able to dose my tank with 2ppms of ammonia and 24 hours later ammonia and nitrites were 0. Since then I’ve been dosing 2ppms of ammonia daily and ammonia and nitrites are always at 0 the next day. Suddenly today I test the water and both ammonia and nitrites are at 0.5 ppms? I can’t think of anything that could have caused that? I don’t see any snails in the tanks, I haven’t dosed any anti bacterial medications or anything like that all I’ve been doing is dosing 2ppms of ammonia daily. Is there anything I might be missing? I do weekly water changes every Friday, and during my last water change which was 5 days ago I trimmed and removed some dying plant leaves. Thats the only change I could possibly think of but every day since then the tank was able to process 2ppms of ammonia until now so I don’t think that affected it. Does this mean my tank isn’t cycled? Did beneficial bacteria just die off? Also I’m not sure if this is relevant but my ph was also 7.6 today, which I thought was strange because when I test ph before my weekly water change it’s usually 6.4 - 6.6, I was going to add crushed coral to raise my kh and hopefully my ph too but now my ph is 7.6 and I’m just confused. Any possible explanations or advice would be appreciated 🙂
×
×
  • Create New...