Our little 5.5 gallon tank is a total house of cards waiting to come crashing down.
We don’t quarantine livestock or plants. We used to buy from everywhere, even disease-laden PetSmart and PetCo. The tank is basically a revolving door. Sometimes we throw a fish in there and it ends up too aggressive, and then we pull it out. There have been dozens of fish in our tank over the last 4 months and we’ve probably donated half of them back to the store
Right now there are 16 fish:
1 Fancy Tail Guppy
1 Platy
6 Ember Tetras
2 Scarlet Badis
2 Cory pygmaeus
1 Otocinclus
2 Amano Shrimp
1 Cherry Shrimp
The inhabitants come from 3 different LFS, 2 different PetSmarts and a PetCo. We’ve had sword plants (a misinformed purchased) and PetCo plants (misleadingly-labeled as aquarium plants that research proved were actually terrestrial plants.) Now, we have proper, low-light, low maintenance plants, but they’re also proving to be a handful – not sure how much we should dose, etc.
Even with 15 years of fish keeping under my belt, it’s been a while since I had a tank and I’m finding that I’m relearning it all over again. A lot has changed with the hobby. I mean, back then undergravel was all the rage, which is why I regretfully installed an undergravel filter.
That said, so far we’ve dodged the bullet a bunch of times and we've really pressed our luck. There have been 2 occurrences of ich (1st time only the embers got it; 2nd time only the otos got it) and we treated both by just turning up the heat and no medication or salt. A platy was on its deathbed with a bad internal bacteria infection, but it seems to be near full recovery with just water changes (also no meds). There was an outbreak of hair algae on a lot of plants but that seems to have subsided. And the tank was overrun with snails, but the population seems to have been exterminated.
But how do you know if your fish are healthy and happy? In our tank, all the fish are very active and peaceful. They show great colors—much deeper than when they came from the store. They eat voraciously. The water parameters remain steady between weekly water changes.
We’ve gone to great lengths and some expense into creating a nourishing home for the fish by providing lots of live plants, natural shelters and two filters, including a canister filter.
Here are the plants:
Lots of Standard Java Fern
1 Finger Java Fern
1 Needle Java Fern
1 Anubias
1 Petite Anubias
3 pieces of driftwood covered in Java Moss
Here are the filters:
Undergravel filter
Eheim 2211 attached to UGL
Aquaclear 20 HOB
My primary concern is the Cory pygmaeus. There are only two. They seem to be much happier in schools. I’d also like to get some frozen bloodworms or the Hikari Freeze Dried Bloodworms (does anyone have a preference?)
But I don’t really want to feed another type of food just for two cories and risk overfeeding the entire tank and throw off water conditions. So should we add a few cories? Or will that be straw on the camel ‘s back?
We don’t quarantine livestock or plants. We used to buy from everywhere, even disease-laden PetSmart and PetCo. The tank is basically a revolving door. Sometimes we throw a fish in there and it ends up too aggressive, and then we pull it out. There have been dozens of fish in our tank over the last 4 months and we’ve probably donated half of them back to the store
Right now there are 16 fish:
1 Fancy Tail Guppy
1 Platy
6 Ember Tetras
2 Scarlet Badis
2 Cory pygmaeus
1 Otocinclus
2 Amano Shrimp
1 Cherry Shrimp
The inhabitants come from 3 different LFS, 2 different PetSmarts and a PetCo. We’ve had sword plants (a misinformed purchased) and PetCo plants (misleadingly-labeled as aquarium plants that research proved were actually terrestrial plants.) Now, we have proper, low-light, low maintenance plants, but they’re also proving to be a handful – not sure how much we should dose, etc.
Even with 15 years of fish keeping under my belt, it’s been a while since I had a tank and I’m finding that I’m relearning it all over again. A lot has changed with the hobby. I mean, back then undergravel was all the rage, which is why I regretfully installed an undergravel filter.
That said, so far we’ve dodged the bullet a bunch of times and we've really pressed our luck. There have been 2 occurrences of ich (1st time only the embers got it; 2nd time only the otos got it) and we treated both by just turning up the heat and no medication or salt. A platy was on its deathbed with a bad internal bacteria infection, but it seems to be near full recovery with just water changes (also no meds). There was an outbreak of hair algae on a lot of plants but that seems to have subsided. And the tank was overrun with snails, but the population seems to have been exterminated.
But how do you know if your fish are healthy and happy? In our tank, all the fish are very active and peaceful. They show great colors—much deeper than when they came from the store. They eat voraciously. The water parameters remain steady between weekly water changes.
We’ve gone to great lengths and some expense into creating a nourishing home for the fish by providing lots of live plants, natural shelters and two filters, including a canister filter.
Here are the plants:
Lots of Standard Java Fern
1 Finger Java Fern
1 Needle Java Fern
1 Anubias
1 Petite Anubias
3 pieces of driftwood covered in Java Moss
Here are the filters:
Undergravel filter
Eheim 2211 attached to UGL
Aquaclear 20 HOB
My primary concern is the Cory pygmaeus. There are only two. They seem to be much happier in schools. I’d also like to get some frozen bloodworms or the Hikari Freeze Dried Bloodworms (does anyone have a preference?)
But I don’t really want to feed another type of food just for two cories and risk overfeeding the entire tank and throw off water conditions. So should we add a few cories? Or will that be straw on the camel ‘s back?
