valiant. wrote:hi guys! for the past couple months i've wanted to buy myself a betta and i'm getting fairly serious about it now, so i'd like to ask a few questions!
i'm planning on a 3-5 gallon tank and i'm leaning towards using live plants to prevent damage to the fish fins. one thing i'm not too sure on is what gravel/sand these plants can grow in, i would really like to use a white sand, and in some videos that i've watched this has sufficed for live plants. i'm just curious as to what you guys use!
another thing i'm not sure on is how often you should clean the water and what percentage that should be at. i've seen a lot of differing opinions and i'm curious as to what you guys do?
one last thing i'm having troubles deciding on is a sponge filter, what are your personal favourites?
thank you!! 
Plants aren't that picky about what they grow in, some don't even like their roots being burried. Too coarse gravel of course makes it harder for them to stick onto it with their roots. Too fine sand on other hand can clogg up and the roots won't get oxygen and nutrients properly as there's not enough flow to them. With white sand you need to make sure it doesn't contain anything that can dissolve into the slightly accidic water you want to go for with a betta. So basically anything coral sand etc. is bad in freshwater tank, as that will just boost the KH level and probably GH level as well, which you don't really want super high. I have some natural brown-ish mix sand in my tank. Can't remember the grain size of it anymore, but it's bit coarser than say average beach sand. Also keep in mind sand and gravel need bit different treatment when using the siphon/gravel vacuum.
You should do water change at least once a week imo, how large depends on the tank. Each tank is little different when it comes to water changes, so you kinda need to learn how your tank functions to figure out exactly how often and how much you need to change the water. How it's stocked and how much/what you're feeding in relation to the size are usually the things to take into considerations. Generally if doing weekly change 30-50% is okay size for the change, smaller than that doesn't do much to reduce nitrates(or allow you to clean up the bottom properly) etc. in the water and bigger one might swing the values too much. If doing two changes per week I wouldn't do 50% changes. So usually with new tanks it's good to monitor the nitrate value for couple weeks after the tank is fully functioning, to see how fast they move up, and also follow up how much poop there's to be seen(light sand is good and bad in this matter, since you can easily see if it's dirty or not). And then adjust your water change rutine accordingly. With planted tanks the nitrate value can be miss leading, since plants eat that up, so for example in my tank I can leave the water unchanged for two weeks with fish being fed every other day and there's very little rise in the nitrate reading. But I can still tell the water is 'dirty' as there's usually quite bit of poop on the bottom. Personaly I tend to stick to 33% once a week(sometimes I might stretch it to 8-9 days), with occasional 40-50% if the tank starts to look little too messy.
I wish you luck on getting a fishy pet in the future, and remember to cycle the tank before getting the fish.
Floofems<3 wrote:So I woke up this morning and every one of my five neon tetras are dead... I'm really upset about it because I know it was something I did wrong. I haven't had chance to check the parameters yet as I have an exam this morning, but I'm guessing it was either that or when I did the water change last night I changed half of the filter, which could have had something in it? Less likely but also possible is the fertilisers I've been using (although I've been using them for a while and they've been fine), a dish sponge I've been using to clean the glass (same story as with the fertiliser) or I could have put too much water conditioner into the water? Another possibility is I was under feeding them, but if I was I doubt they would all die at the same time.
They were fine last night 
Very sorry to hear that.
Sometimes things just happen with fish and the reason remains a mystery... All fish dying at once how ever does point out to poisoning of some sort or lack of oxygen, rather than disease which are usually more slowly killers. When using tap water there's always a possibility that it's consistency changed somehow and it had something in it that didn't get removed properly with the usual dose of water conditioner. The water conditioners shouldn't be dangerous if over dosed though and I doubt the fertilisers are either, though those can cause some irritation if fish gets direct hit from undiluted product but still not leathal. If the sponge hasn't come in contact with any sort of chemical(like it hasn't been used for anything else but the tank cleaning) I don't think that's it either...
The filter material change may have caused imbalance and thus nitrite spike, but the material itself probably wasn't the problem. Usually it's recommended you rinse out new materials to get rid of any dust etc., but still even without doing that I really doubt they'd have something very harmfull in them. Nitrite spike though would have had to be pretty big to kill the fish that fast or the fish would have needed to be weaked by something already before the spike. When I was setting up my tank some years ago, I remember some local fish people saying neons really weren't as hardy as they used to be and more than often were quite sickly and sensitive. So who knows, but sudden mass death is most likely from poisoning of some sort...
Shikajino wrote:Username: ShikajinoHow many fish tanks do you have: 1; a five gallon that I upgraded from the measly one gallon I was allowed in college
Types of fish that you have: 2 Angel Fish; 1 Pleco; 1 Veil Tale Male Betta
Your fishs' names: Moo;
Two Stripe;
Lucky-Lucky;
I.B. (which is short for Impulse Buy because he was the first thing I bought after college and he was incredibly unplanned)
How long have you had fish: About 12 years. I used to have a 10 and a 20 gallon from ages 10-17, then I went to college and we sold it all off. Then I could only have a one gallon (which wasn't nearly enough space and the fish died, so I stopped), but now that I graduated (and with my other pets) I only have space for a five gallon.
I really hope you are aware that the angel fishes and pleco will need much much bigger tank to grow healthy.
