keeping tropical and cold water fish.

Gingham_Ribbon

One of my filters has just broken.

:mad:

I had 2 in my fry tank, so it'll be okay till tomorrow but I'm not impressed. I'd only had it a year. Both the heaters from that batch broke recently too. I won't be buying aqua-el again.

They were just cheap ones for small tanks, but that's all a little, understocked tank needs. Not impressed.

Covlass, it sounds like you're overfeeding by quite a bit.

I can't remember - did you use the fishfood method of cycling? If so, was the gravel in the tank at the time? There may be quite a lot of decomposing matter in there. You may need to do another, bigger water change tomorrow.

covlass

Did try to get a photo will try again in morning. I will test water also tomorrow and do another change
Thankyou for your help & hoping the remaining fish are still at 6 once the night is over

Gingham_Ribbon

You're welcome. Don't worry. You've done what you can for today. You can relax now!

I'm on tank 3 now. That one is a so-and-so to do water changes on - it has some delicate fish in it so it needs large water changes, has 170litres in it and is up a flight of stairs from the tap!

Sigh...

It's good exercise.

PurpleMunchkin

Hello, Great Thread this - loads of great info.

Was hoping to get a bit of advice.

I have had a tank for about 5 years now, about 80 litres, only have a few fish and this size tank suits us fine. We have 2 Platys, 2 gold barbs, 1 catfish & 2 shrimp.

Introduced a new male Platy about a month ago to join the female currently in the tank. Well over the last week i have noticed that the female was looking rather porky around the tummy. This afternoon i noticed with delight that we have 2 tiny platy babies :j They are very sweet and we would like to try to keep them - rather than them becoming fish food for the other fish.

So what is the next step ? Im going to my local pet shop tomorrow but i want to be armed with some information before they try to sell me everything under the sun. Do i need some sort of floating nursery - if so what size ? Should i get some special food or can i just crush the flake food i currently feed the others with.

Any info about breeding and rearing will be greatly received.

Im also thinking about introducing a 2nd female platy just so the first one doesnt get too much attention. Is this a good idea ?

TIA

Froglet

Have you plenty of plants in the tank for the fry to hide in? You can get fry food,but crushed flake is ok,plattys are quite strong fish.

Questions here about raising young,great forum,always recommending it.Am a member and have found it very useful.

http://forum.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/

PurpleMunchkin

Nope, no live plants - with the shrimp they get completly decimated in about a day so i dont bother with them. Got a few 'ornaments' and plastic plants though. At the moment the babies are either hiding at the very top or the very bottom of the tank. They seem to be getting chased a bit - but they can certainly move fast !

Whats the chances of them surviving ? Is it worth buying some sort of floating hatchery ??

Froglet

In that case yes it might well be worth it.Shame about the plants,have you tried finding out if there are any really tough plants tht the shrimps wouldn't touch? You can also get finer silk plants that would be softer than plastic for the fish to find refuge in.

If they are getting chased a lot they might get stressed and that won't help them survive.See what the shop suggests anyway.

covlass

Panic over, water change did the trick and has remained fine the last few days.

I found out the problem !!! My darling husband :mad: he decided that I was not feeding the fish enough so decided to give them a little extra as a treat each night when he switched the lights off !!!!!!!! He has now been told he is under no circumstances to touch the fish food again !!!!!! or I will make him eat it !!!!

Popped to pets at home to get some frozen fish food and they had a male guppy blue and silver he also has the same yellow/green patches near his head so I feel a plonker now as this seems to be normal.

Could I just ask how ofter should I give the frozen food i was told twice a week

atrixblue.-MFR-.

covlass wrote: »

Panic over, water change did the trick and has remained fine the last few days.

I found out the problem !!! My darling husband :mad: he decided that I was not feeding the fish enough so decided to give them a little extra as a treat each night when he switched the lights off !!!!!!!! He has now been told he is under no circumstances to touch the fish food again !!!!!! or I will make him eat it !!!!

Popped to pets at home to get some frozen fish food and they had a male guppy blue and silver he also has the same yellow/green patches near his head so I feel a plonker now as this seems to be normal.

Could I just ask how ofter should I give the frozen food i was told twice a week

blue dimond guppy is the fellow you describe covlass.

naturally blue/green to yellow tinges around head and body.

with the frozen foods i defrost it in a small cup of warm water and then strain the water out, (mainly because i dont know what it was frozen with) then i equally distrbute it allong the surface so all can get some. one will be fine for six of them, and hoover the rest up off substrate when theyre finished.

another cheap food is to buy shelled prawns from local supermarket. defrost and cut to size that they can eat food for a treat once in a while.

i have green spotted puffers now so have altered my water to brackish, arent the cute! but aggressive!! have three of them in my large tank and the rest of my tropical have been moved to another tank.

my swordtail gave birth yesterday to about 40-60 fry yesterday and looked like the female was about to die so i put her in my brackish (for a salt bath) tank for a few hours, she perked right up and is now at full health.

atrixblue.-MFR-.

PurpleMunchkin wrote: »

Nope, no live plants - with the shrimp they get completly decimated in about a day so i dont bother with them. Got a few 'ornaments' and plastic plants though. At the moment the babies are either hiding at the very top or the very bottom of the tank. They seem to be getting chased a bit - but they can certainly move fast !

Whats the chances of them surviving ? Is it worth buying some sort of floating hatchery ??

floating hatchery, or partition off the tank for a while with acrylic cut to the inside size of your tank.

your platy would have had more fry than this i should of thought.

with platies they tend to give birth every 30-40 days, hold sperm for a long period so if you separated male from female she would give birth again and again till she used up her store of sperm. so chances are once she gave birth by the next day she is pregnant again.

if you do not want to be overrun and over stacked with fry just let her do her job in tank and let fry be eaten. the survivors you could pass on to friends or take them to a LFS for credit.